AKA his seeing eye dog.
Historical Background
The real town of Trochenbrod (Polish: Zofiówka) was an exclusively Jewish shtetl located in the Wołyń Voivodeship of the Second Polish Republic before the Nazi-Soviet invasion of Poland. After the German attack on the Soviet positions in eastern Poland during the 1941 Operation Barbarossa, a Jewish ghetto was established at Trochenbrod for local residents including those from nearby villages. The ghetto was liquidated during the Holocaust. In August and September 1942 nearly all Jews of Trochenbrod were murdered by the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police in the presence of only a few German SS men. According to Virtual Shtetl over 5,000 Jews were massacred, 3,500 of them from Zofiówka and 1,200 from nearby Lozisht (Ignatówka) among other settlements.
Plot Summary
Jonathan Safran Foer (the author), a young American Jew, journeys to Ukraine in search of Augustine, the woman who saved his grandfather's life during the Nazi liquidation of Trachimbrod, his family shtetl (a small town) in occupied eastern Poland. Armed with maps, cigarettes and many copies of an old photograph of Augustine and his grandfather, Jonathan begins his search with the help from Ukrainian native and soon-to-be good friend, Alexander "Alex" Perchov, who is Foer's age and very fond of American pop culture, albeit culture that is already out of date in the United States. Alexander studied English at his university, and even though his knowledge of the language is not "first-rate", he becomes Foer's translator. Alex's "blind" grandfather and his "deranged seeing-eye bitch," Sammy Davis, Jr., Jr., accompany them on their journey.
Names of cities are given in their Russian version (e.g., Lvov), although the Polish or Ukrainian naming would have been correct for the scenes in Trachimbrod and Ukraine.
Thanks, great info and a GREAT movie
It’s now my favorite movie, and you would have to see it to get the context of why I used the term:seeing-eye bitch. It’s a hilariously touching movie, if there are such a thing anymore. BTW, my paternal grandmother was born in Volhynia, southwest of Kiev in a town named Blumenthal. It no longer exists because of the war. P. S. The soundtrack is excellent, and can be dowloaded from youtube.