Itzik, Be Strong, is the story of a yeshivah bachur from a small town near Warsaw, whose family was uprooted from its home and driven into exile in the Russian zone. He was sent off to begin a five-year sentence of backbreaking labor in Siberia, with his physical and spiritual survival highly in question, but when the amnesty for Polish prisoners was finally declared, Itzik was set free, But even this freedom did not last for long. With the war at a critical stage, he was drafted into the Russian army.

Through his eyes, the reader feels the intense heat of battle on the advancing front and the eerie silence of the once teeming Jewish towns whose inhabitants have all vanished. Itzik, Be Strong is the story of a determined young man who, despite torture, starvation and exile, stays true to his ideals and steadfast in his conviction that Heaven would protect him no matter what the future had to offer