Joy Runs Deeper (The Azrieli Series of Holocaust Survivor Memoirs, 24). This item is unavailable.Joy Runs Deeper (The Azrieli Series of Holocaust Survivor Memoirs, 24)

“I kept asking myself, Was all my suffering worth it? Was it worth staying alive? Nobody was left—no family, no friends . . . Then I remembered that I had Josio and thanked God for that. We joined hands and started walking, ready to face the future.”

Bronia Rohatiner and Josio Beker grow up in the same traditional shtetl in eastern Poland, a small town filled with eccentric characters and extended family. In 1939, that world explodes when first the Russians and then the Germans occupy their town. Joe, drafted into the Soviet army, manages to escape from a German prison; Bronia is devastated after a tragedy in an underground bunker. Only Joe can strengthen Bronia’s will to live. Together they escape the ghetto and hide until liberation. When everything they hold dear is lost, together they build a future.

Bronia Beker was born in Kozowa, Poland on December 9, 1920; Joe Beker was born in the same town on April 1, 1913. After the war they married and came to Canada in 1948, where they raised their two daughters, Marilyn and Jeanne. Joe Beker died in 1988; Bronia lives in Toronto.