There Once Was a World: A 900-Year Chronicle of the Shtetl of Eishyshok - Softcover

Eliach, Yaffa

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0316232394 ISBN 13: 9780316232395

Publisher: Back Bay Books, 1999

Synopsis

For 900 years the Polish shtetl was a home to generations of Jewish families. In 1944 almost every Jew was murdered and with them died a way of life that had survived for centuries. Yaffa Eliach has written a landmark history of the shtetl.

About this title

Review:

Eishyshok, in Lithuania, was for nine centuries a center of Jewish life in Eastern Europe, where Jews lived "under all the various governments that had fought for control of it: Lithuanian, Polish, German, Russian, and Soviet." But as a result of the Holocaust, writes Eishyshok native Yaffa Eliach in this rich, vastly detailed history, "nearly a millennium of vibrant Jewish life had been reduced to stark images of victimization and death." Eliach offers his chronicle by way of a memorial to those lost citizens and their disappeared history, working through archives, family photo albums, and the memories of survivors. It is a fine and fitting memorial indeed, one that ranks alongside the important work of Raul Hilberg and Lucy Dawidowicz. --Gregory McNamee

About the Author:

"Yaffa Eliach is a pioneering scholar in Holocaust studies and the founder of the first Center for Holocaust Documentation and Research in the United States; she has introduced new concepts in Holocaust documentation, both written and visual. She is a professor of history and literature in the department of Judaic Studies at Brooklyn College, with areas of specialty in Eastern European history, Holocaust studies, and Hasidism. A member of President Carter's Holocaust Commission, she lectures frequently to academic and lay audiences and appears often on television at home and abroad. Her earlier book, Hasidic Tales of the Holocaust, is an international classic."

About this edition

• Publisher: Back Bay Books
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0316232394
• ISBN 13: 9780316232395
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 864