The Jewish War is a rare Holocaust story, one told from the perspective of a young boy who has survived the war due to the extraordinary efforts of his parents to save him. The Jewish family moves through a series of hiding places in the countryside. When the father is murdered, his family flees across Poland, carrying forged papers identifying them as Catholics. They must act as if they are not hiding -- and as if they are not Jews. To maintain the facade, the boy adopts a false life where his father is a captured officer and he himself must study catechism and take first communion.In The Victory, Grynberg continues the story with the advance of the Red Army in 1944. The narrator and his mother move to yet another town to pick up the pieces of their lives. The boy, aware he has been tainted by the war, fights to reclaim his Jewishness. Through the boy's straightforward observations, Grynberg portrays the despair of Polish Jews in 1945 as they confront the horrors of the past and the agonizing choices of the present.