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Isaac by Robert Karmon, a captivating story, reflecting a powerful will to survive.

Pleasure Boat Studio
is honored to present a new work
of historical fiction

ISAAC
by ROBERT KARMON

Order a book for yourself, or as a gift!

Paperback: ISBN 978-0-912887-56-2 – $17.95
Hardback: ISBN 978-0-912887-53-1 – $26.95
ePub: ISBN 978-0-912887-54-8 $4.99

Order

ISAAC is based on a true story of the real Isaac that Robert met thirty years ago, a miraculous survivor of a horrendous Nazi Massacre in Poland, a hero in a Russian Partisan Brigade where he fell in love for the first time with a Russian Nurse and, a hero among American Soldiers, who found a new home in America.

On the night of November 6th, 1941, the life of Isaac Gochman, a 16-year-old Polish Jew, changes tragically and profoundly. Over 20,000 Jews from Rovno, Poland, are marched into the Sosenki Forest by the Nazis, stripped and shot to death, then buried in an endless, unmarked ravine. All of Isaac’s family and friends die in the massacre. But Isaac miraculously survives the slaughter, and so begins his incredible and harrowing journey through the Polish forest, facing unimaginable hardships and the constant threat of death from the Nazis and their sympathizers.

To save himself, he adopts a new identity, Sergei, a Russian Christian, and joins the Russian Partisan Brigade, to become a demolition “miracle man.” As a Partisan, he falls passionately in love for the first time in his young life with Ducia, a Russian nurse. Near the end of the war, he turns his back on his homeland, heroically saves the lives of American soldiers, and finds a new home in America.

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Upcoming May Readings – Cornelia Cafe 5.22 & Pomegranate Gallery Party 5.23 / Click on flyers for details.

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Author Blurbs

“Isaac, based on a true story, follows the epic journey of young boy from near-death to ultimate triumph as a man. It is as harrowing as “The Revenant.” In parable-like prose, it captures Isaac’s miraculous survival of the Nazi massacre of his family and his escape alone into a vast, nightmarish European Forest. After being saved by his friend, Pietka, a gentile from near his village, he joins the Russian Partisans and falls in love with Ducia, a Russian Partisan Nurse. I was immediately drawn into the plight of this brave young man as he learns how love and friendship can overcome the memories of hatred, discrimination, and terrible loss. is is a masterful coming-of-age novel amid the horrors and passions of war.”

~ DICK ALLEN, author of Present Vanishing, Ode to the Cold War, is Shadowy Place, and Connecticut State Poet Laureate (2010-2015)

“Isaac narrates the story of a young Jew from Rovno whose wartime survival among partisan fighters in the forests of eastern Europe is grippingly told from first page to last. For their sheer terror, the descriptions of Isaac’s ordeals match those in Jerzy Kosinski’s The Painted Bird and some of Aharon Appelfeld’s fiction. Readers drawn to tales of human resiliency against all odds will find this a compelling novel.”

~ ALVIN H. ROSENFELD, author of A Double Dying, one of the seminal books on Holocaust Literature; Professor of English and Jewish Studies at Indiana University.

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Gulliver

 

The Tyrone Guthrie opera Louis Phillips and I wrote for “Opera Today” and the Minnesota Opera Company- Includes the “New Yorker Review”and some pages from the elaborate program from the Opera.

Click on images to expand into full view.

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An intriguing Interview with London’s Jewish Telegraph

Author’s regret that hero never saw finished book

THIRTY years ago, New York playwright Robert Karmon first met Holocaust survivor Isaac Gochman, who wanted his amazing story to be told.

Last week, Robert finally published his first novel, Isaac, based on Gochman’s life.

The 78-year-old explained the decades-long delay.

He said: “In the late 1980s, my agent put me in touch with Isaac. I didn’t believe Isaac’s story at first. He was in his 70s. I went to his home in the Bronx. As I sat down in his little kitchen, he started talking about his experiences surviving the massacre in Rovno, Poland.”

In 1941, more than 20,000 Jews from the city were shot and buried in trenches. Among the victims were Isaac’s parents and aunt.

Wounded Isaac, who was then only 16, was buried alive, only to later miraculously emerge, naked. After surviving months of wandering alone around forests, Isaac joined a band of Polish partisans.

The group included a nurse Ducia, with whom Isaac fell in love. Sadly she became ill giving birth to Isaac’s child and was never seen again after she was taken away for hospital treatment.

Broken-hearted Isaac was proclaimed a hero by the invading American army after saving them from a Nazi insurgency.

Robert, professor emeritus of literature and creative writing at Nassau Community College in Garden City, Long Island, told me: “The story sounded so incredible at first that I didn’t believe it. But Isaac started sharing photos and hand-written notes with me and it became obvious that it had really happened to him.

“Yet he was such a sweet, incredibly tranquil individual. I kept coming back to him once every two weeks. We began to put together some notes to turn the story into a novel. I was at his place at least 10 times over the next few months. Eventually I began writing the book. I shared the first few chapters with him. Then he moved to Florida. My agent died and we lost touch. But he had left me all his material.”

The writing of Isaac went on Robert’s backburner as he concentrated on writing plays and teaching creative writing. Nevertheless, over the years Robert kept returning to it.

He said: “As I was nearing the end of the novel, I tried to trace Isaac. I had lost his address. I found a different Isaac Gochman. But eventually I discovered that he had died in 1993. I was disappointed. I would have loved to have shared the book with him. I think he would have been happy. He had seen the first few chapters. Those were the most difficult ones.”

The first chapters of the book describe the horrific Rovno massacre. The task of writing them was made difficult for Robert, not only because of horrific nature of the material, but because Robert’s fear of flying made it impossible for him to actually visit Poland.

Robert, who is married with two daughters and three grandchildren, said: “I have never visited places which are monuments to the horrors of the Holocaust. But I did a lot of research. As a writer I projected myself into that world. It was difficult writing the first few chapters about the death march and Isaac’s survival from the grave in the trench from which he climbs out naked. It was the most difficult writing I have ever done.

“It was a privilege to deal with it, but there was also a feeling that somehow it was beyond me. It took me a long time to get it right without exploiting it and becoming too graphic, but at the same time being as true as possible.”

Robert added: “It was another element of the Holocaust. The death camps have become almost tourist attractions as monuments so people will never forget. But it is very hard to signify by monuments, people like Isaac’s parents, who were buried in trenches in horrifying massacres. The Nazis threw quick lime over them and they were forgotten forever.”

Robert, who has worked on screenplays for Columbia Pictures, CBS and Eddie Murphy Productions, continued:

“The things Isaac told me helped me understand it. Then I had to go back and search for texts about the forest. Somehow I created a real world I had not visited. The book becomes a kind of testimony or legacy for Isaac.

“Whatever I wrote, I heard Isaac always whispering in my ear. He was such an impressive and wonderful man.
He gave me permission to make it fictional and add my own insights and literary style. I could not have done it without him. I wish I could have seen him again so I could have shared the novel with him.”

Isaac was given honorary citizenship of America for having saved the lives of American soldiers. He was granted a prestigious job in the US Postal System, where his knowledge of five languages came in handy.

By the age of 16, not only had Isaac become a linguist, but he also had medical knowledge from helping out his older brother Dr Sol Gochman, a popular Rovno doctor, who was shot for not carrying out the Nazis’ instructions.

Even though he married and had a family in America, Isaac never forgot his first love, Ducia.

Robert has also adapted Isaac’s story into the play The Resettlement of Isaac.

Isaac is published by Pleasure Boat Studio

 

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The Resettlement of Isaac at the Jewish Film Festival 8.21.17

double role in stage adaptation of novel ISAAC by Robert Karmon

Posted by Anne Marie Hagenaars on August 2, 2017

I just finished reading a novel that I would recommend to anyone: ISAAC by Robert Karmon. I read the novel as part of the research for a double role that I am working on for the next few weeks. Robert Karmon is also a playwright and he adapted his novel to the stage play “The Resettlement of Isaac” in which I will play two of the lead roles. We will perform it at the third annual Jewish Film Festival in Southampton on August 21st, directed by Robert Kalfin (founder New York’s Chelsea Theatre Center, winner of five Tony Awards, four Tony nominations and 21 Obie Awards).

I am truly astonished by Karmon’s book. In Dutch we have an expression that says: “This book reads like a train”. And it means that you can’t put it down once you start reading. It is exactly what happened to me.

Karmon’s novel is inspired by the true-life story of Isaac Gochman, a 16 year old Polish Jew, who looses all his family and friends in one night stripped, shot to death and buried by the Nazis in an endless trench. Miraculously Isaac survives the slaughter and when he wakes up he finds himself among the dead bodies of over 20,000 Jews. Then his incredible journey of survival in the Polish forest begins. For months he travels by himself with whatever the woods have to offer. Then he adopts a new identity and he joins the Russian Partisan Brigade where he becomes a hero and falls in love for the first time. ISAAC is a beautiful story about survival, courage and love. For more information on the novel check it out here.

If you happen to be in the Hamptons on August 21st, come out and see the staged play reading at 7pm. For more details and information, click here.

double role in stage adaptation of novel ISAAC by Robert Karmon

Jewish Film Festival: The Resettlement of Isaac

Talk Back with Playwright Robert Karmon

In concert with this year’s film festival we are pleased to present the Playwright’s Theater of East Hampton’s premiere staged reading of “The Resettlement of Isaac”. This play is based on the true, incredible story of Isaac Gochman, a 17-year old from Rovno, Poland, who, in one horrific night, survives a Nazi massacre of his entire family along with 20,000 other Jews.

Thrust alone into the forest and the wilderness of war, Isaac finds the courage to fight back as a Russian partisan blowing up Nazi trains, and finds the passion to fall deeply in love with Anya, a Russian partisan nurse– in love for the first time in his young life. It is a tragic love that transcends religious differences.

Many years later in New York, the elderly Isaac is still haunted by the memory of his first love. His only friend, a young German-American woman, is tormented herself by doubts about her father’s role as a German soldier during the war. Deeply affected by Isaac’s past, she becomes the loving caretaker of his memories after he is gone. The play confirms what Faulkner once wrote, “The past is never dead, it’s not even past.”

Robert Kalfin founded New York’s Chelsea Theatre Center, winner of five Tony Awards, four Tony nominations and 21 Obie Awards. Mr. Kalfin directed more than 200 productions and new play workshops, musicals and the classics on Broadway, Off-Broadway, in major American regional theaters, in Europe, and the Middle East.

His many Broadway productions include Strider, Yentl and Candide. He also directed the television production of The Prince of Homburg starring Frank Langella, for the PBS Great Performances “Theatre in America” Series.

Robert Karmon is an American playwright and screen writer. Several of his plays have been produced off Broadway and in regional theaters. Karmon’s screen writing credits include scripts for CBS, Columbia Pictures, and Eddy Murphy Productions. He is currently a professor of English and creative writing at Nassau Community College.

Jewish Film Festival: The Resettlement of Isaac

The Resettlement of Isaac (Script)

 

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A review of Isaac from Foreword Magazine

“Isaac is profound and consequential historical fiction, a novel worthy of inclusion in the Holocaust canon.”– GARY PRESLEY (Foreword Reviews, Nov/Dec 2017)

HISTORICAL

Robert Karmon’s Isaac is a moving tale of a young Polish Jew trapped during the Holocaust, a person who joins anti-Nazi partisans out of necessity, only to be confronted again with virulent anti-Semitism.

In 1941, the Nazi blitzkrieg strikes Rovno, Poland. Isaac’s father is a prosperous factory owner, but his family is looted of their possessions, marched into Sosenki Forest, executed, and dumped into a mass grave. Only Isaac escapes.

In shock and terrified, Isaac roams the forest. He is near starvation and dying of exposure when he encounters a partisan group. In the group is Pietka, a gentile boy from a neighboring village. Pietka urges Isaac to identify himself as “Sergei,” a Russian. Many hard, brutal partisans are anti-Semitic, but Isaac keeps his secret and learns demolitions.

Isaac falls in love with Ducia, an older widowed nurse. Soviet agents bring supplies and assign missions. They too remain ignorant of Isaac’s background, but they find his skill with dynamite and his ability to blow up Nazi supply trains admirable.

Kolpak, the Russian agent, proves a memorable character, as does Pietka. Ducia is the most nuanced character—written as strong-willed but kind, loving and independent, even among the partisans, who regard women as chattel.

With danger always present, the narrative remains tense, if it also relies heavily on exposition. Other than Isaac, Ducia, and Pietka, characters are less dimensional than they are role fillers, particularly the nearly indistinguishable cast of Nazis. The setting, rendered with its bitter cold, great gray forest, scarcity of food, and constant danger, makes for a believable atmosphere.

The novel’s foundation is reality, drawing from the experiences of the real Isaac Gochman, whom the author met when Gochman was in his seventies, and so every page rings with hard truths.

Isaac is profound and consequential historical fiction, a novel worthy of inclusion in the Holocaust canon. GARY PRESLEY (November/December 2017)

Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The author of this book provided free copies of the book to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. No fee was paid by the author for this review. Foreword Reviews only recommends books that we love. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.

 

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Barnabas Among the Animals

My play, “Barnabas Among the Animals”. It was produced by “The Extension Theatre” and nominated as BEST PLAY by “Show Business” and includes a number of reviews.

 

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Reviews from “Demons”

Here are some reviews from my play, “Demons” that began in workshop at Playwrights Horizons as “Mercy Short”. It was produced later on Long Island.

 

Review by Mark Pechenik in The Delphian
From “The Good Times”, April 24-May 7, 1979
Review by Nancy Wallis
Review of Demons by Howard Lord
From the Long Island Catholic – May 10, 1979