Behind the Curtain, the Candles Burn

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, a calling from God led Stewart and Chantal Winograd to move their family from upstate New York to Belarus, in order to minister to the Jewish people. One Shabbat dinner with a group of Holocaust survivors led to over two decades of friendship as the Winograds' lives became intertwined with hundreds of survivors. This book was written to honor some of their dearest friends by telling their stories.

Stories of unimaginable suffering, but also courage, hope, and redemption.

Behind the Curtain, the Candles Burn chronicles the stories of fifteen individuals who were in their youth when their country was attacked by the Nazis. Their idyllic lives in thriving Ashkenazi Jewish communities on the eastern edges of Europe were transformed overnight into the living hell of the Holocaust. Their carefree childhoods were replaced with the terror of life under Nazi occupation.

Suffering the overwhelming sorrow of losing many loved ones, they fought to survive amid deprivation and starvation in the ghettos or while hiding in remote forests. After the war, they found themselves trapped in the grim, oppressive, atheistic Soviet Union, facing antisemitism and a new set of challenges as they attempted to rebuild their lives. These stories, after being hidden behind the Iron Curtain for decades, are finally being told. Through them, readers will discover the amazing possibility for hope and the redemptive work of the Messiah of Israel in the aftermath of great suffering and loss.