WHITE NIGHTS, Menachem Begin’s memoir of his arrest, interrogation and imprisonment by the Soviet authorities after the outbreak of World War II, ranks with House of the Dead and Gulag Archipelago as a masterpiece of prison literature.

As the head of Betar, the Zionist youth movement founded by Vladimir Jabotinsky, Begin knew he was under constant surveillance. He watched as his associates either fled or were arrested, but continued his activities until the knock on the door came and he was taken to Lushiki fortress. There he was starved and kept sleepless for days while interrogators tried to get him acknowledge that Zionism was an anti-Soviet nationalist movement that was engaging in espionage on behalf of the British. He resisted and would only sign a document acknowledging his participation in Zionist activities. Unable to break him the Soviets sentenced him to eight years in a Siberian labor camp. In a miraculous stroke of good fortune he was a liberated along with thousands of Polish prisoners to serve in the Polish Army. Amazingly, he was sent with the Anders battalion to fight in Palestine where he was later allowed to join his compatriots in the struggle for the Jewish homeland.

Begin offers a detailed description of life in the camps, the suffering, the prisoners, the mentality of the jailers, the efforts of the totalitarian system to degrade the human spirit. When the book was published, critics and opponents accused Begin of inflating his heroic role, saying no one could have so stubbornly proclaimed his Zionist beliefs in the face of such torture and deprivation. But with the dissolution of the Soviet Union prison files came to light containing transcriptions of his interrogations. Begin’s version of events was vindicated. His conviction and courage were confirmed.