Hope and Honor »

Major General Sid Shachnow was ten years old when he escaped the notorious Kovno concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Lithuania. He made his way across Europe where he made a living by smuggling contraband. He eventually came to America and enlisted in the U.S. Army, volunteering for U.S. Special Forces, where he served for thirty-two years. After serving in Vietnam and earning two Silver Stars and three Bronze Stars with V for Valor, he rose to the status of major general in charge of all U.S. Special Forces. Since his retirement in 1994, he has traveled widely, consulting for the Pentagon on special operations in the world's trouble spots, notably in Korea. He is a much-sought-after public speaker, and instructs from time to time at military institutions such as the U.S. Army Command General Staff College and the U.S. Army War College.

Major General Sid Shachnow is more than a highly decorated Vietnam War veteran with two Silver and three Bronze Stars with V for Valor. He survived a crucible far crueler than the jungles of Vietnam: Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe, spending three years in the notorious Kovno concentration camp as a child. At age ten, with nothing but rags on his back, he was finally able to flee that hellhole. Most of those he left behind died.

After returning to his home in Lithuania, now occupied by the Soviets, and finding it unbearable, Shachnow and his family decided to head west, often on foot, across Europe to the U.S. zone in Germany, where they found refuge. To earn a living in the grim aftermath of war, he smuggled black market contraband for American GIs. His next journey was to America, where he worked his way through school and enlisted in the U.S. Army, volunteering for U.S. Special Forces, where he served for thirty-two years. His primary goal was to save others from the indignities he had endured and the deadly fate he so narrowly escaped.

From Vietnam to the Middle East to the Berlin Wall, Sydney Shachnow served in Special Operations. He grew as Special Forces grew, receiving both a master's and a doctoral degree. He traveled the world, rising to major general, responsible for American Special Forces everywhere, but the lessons of Kovno stayed with him wherever he turned, wherever he soldiered.

Hope and Honor is a powerful and dramatic memoir that shows how the will to live—-so painfully refined in the fires of that long-ago death camp—-was forged, at last, into truth of soul and wisdom of the heart.

Publishers Weekly

Part Holocaust memoir and part U.S. Army career narrative, this tale of an extraordinary life begins with young Schaja Shachnowski, a Lithuanian Jew, watching the Nazis march into his town. Taken with his family to a concentration camp, they survived by bribery, quick wits, the help of the Jewish camp police and the occasional assistance of local Lithuanians. Schaja was impressed by American GIs and remembered them after he and his family were eventually admitted to the U.S.: wanting to marry a Christian girl whom his family loathed and also unable to find a decent job, he enlisted in the army in 1955. This began a 40-year career, covered in the book's second half, that ended with him a much decorated major general, having spent most of his career in Special Forces, eventually becoming its commanding general. He served two tours in Vietnam, commanded the Berlin Brigade and fought for an enlarged role for Special Forces. He is also still married to his boyhood love, a remarkably enduring person in her own right. Schachnow's life certainly demonstrates the title qualities, as well as high professional integrity and a ferocious will to survive. His telling of it is not always graceful, but his story comes through clearly and with conviction. Agent, Elizabeth Winick for McIntosh & Otis Inc. (Oct.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.