Leibisch's Journey

Lenny Ackerman tells the gripping, true story of his father, Leibisch, who at age 12, is forced to flee his home in Ukraine during the upheavals of the Russian Revolution. Intending to follow in the footsteps of his older brother, Sydney, who had emigrated to the U.S. four years earlier, Leibisch sets out alone, carrying little more than a knapsack with some food, a packet of Sydney's letters and the precious ritual objects given to him by his father for a Bar Mitzvah the following year. Traveling west via a battle-scarred, patchwork railway system, Leibisch makes his way through the villages and towns of Ukraine, Poland, and Germany to the port of Hamburg, where he will board a steamship to America. But an unexpected, tragic event during the final spasms of World War I will change everything. Diverted by 5,000 miles and delayed by five years, Leibisch's long journey to America will shape the complicated, driven man Leibisch eventually becomes: one who achieves the American Dream yet is forever haunted by the past and the fate of the family he left behind.