Jacob's Courage is a tender coming of age love story of two young adults living in Salzburg at the time when the Nazi war machine enters Austria. This historical novel presents accurate scenes and situations of Jews in ghettos and concentration camps, with particular attention to Theresienstadt and Auschwitz. It explores the dazzling beauty of passionate love and enduring bravery in a lurid world where the innocent are brutally murdered. From desperate despair, to unforgettable moments of chaste beauty, Jacob’s Courage examines a constellation of emotions during a time of incomprehensible brutality.

 In 1939, seventeen-year-old Austrians Jacob Silverman and Rachael Goldberg were bright, talented, dazzlingly happy and deeply in love.  But, because they were Jews, their families lost everything.  The Nazis took away their jobs, their houses and apartments, their possessions and their money.  They lost contact with loved ones.  Finally, they lost their liberty.  Jacob and Rachael "grew up" during the Holocaust.  As teenagers, they survived the beatings, rapes, and murderous acts of the Nazis, enjoyed the physical and spiritual pleasure of being in love and were able to become husband and wife in the Theresienstadt camp.  They escaped, joined the partisans and fought the Nazi enemy, before Jacob and his father were imprisoned in Auschwitz.  In the end, only their love and their faith that God had a plan for them kept them alive.