Taking Risks: A Jewish Youth in the Soviet Partisans and His Unlikely Life in California

The night the SS rounded up the Jews of his ghetto, 18-year-old Yosel Epelbaum crawled on his hands and knees to a nearby forest soon to be engulfed by winter. There he joined a band of pro-Soviet partisans who resisted the Nazis and saved hundreds of civilians. After the war, he smuggled contraband from one end of Europe to the other. Then, without money or a formal education and knowing no English, he immigrated to San Francisco. Within a decade, Yosef—now known as Joe Pell—was on his way to becoming one of Northern California’s leading real estate developers.