Anka's Secret : Tamar Ohrenstein : 9789659304691 : 9659304692 : 06 Apr 2023 : 1939, Vilnius. A heartbreaking and powerful story about a young woman who is sent to Pre-State Israel to save her family, but when WW II breaks out, she gets cut off from them and her fiancé. While trying to survive in the new, unfamiliar place, she stumbles upon a lost childhood sweetheart, and is torn between him and the love for her fiancé. Anka is forced to leave Vilnius after Jewish shops are broken into and looted in the late 30s. Sensing the impending danger, her father sends her to Pre-State Israel, to submit the immigration request to the British authorities on behalf of the family. She leaves them and her beloved fiancé, Zalman, who promises to wait for her when she returns. Anka meets Abrasha, who was her counselor in the Socialist Zionist youth movement in Vilnius a few years earlier. Abrasha was also her first love, and when he left for Israel to join the Kibbutz and become a Zionist-he