Shtetl: The History of a Small Town and an Extinguished World, The Life and Death of a Small Town and the World of Polish Jews - Hardcover

Hoffman, Eva

3.94

251 ratings by Goodreads

9780436204821: Shtetl: The History of a Small Town and an Extinguished World, The Life and Death of a Small Town and the World of Polish Jews

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0436204827 ISBN 13: 9780436204821

Publisher: Secker & Warburg, 1998

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Today, the word "shtetl" (Yiddish for "small town") summons only hazy, distant associations: images of Chagall-like crooked streets and Sabbath dinners on the one hand, of pogroms and brutal Cossacks on the other. In fact the shtetl was a highly resilient micro-society with its own customs, beliefs and rituals, its own social distictions, organization and civic structires. It was also an experiment in multiculturalism, cut short by the tragedy of the Holocaust. Before World War II, Brasnk in eastern Poland, was a shtetl whos population was equally divided between Poles and Jews. Today, there are no Jews left in Bransk. The book reconstructs the lost world of the eastern European Jewry up until its final days. Eva Hoffman explores the culture and institutions of Polish Jews, and looks at the forms of multicultural coexistence during several centuries, the shades of prejudice and tolerance and the phases of conflict and comity. By probing the deep ambivalence that coloured relations between Poles and Jews on the eve of World War II, "Stetl" throws fresh light on motives which influenced Christian villagers' decisions to rescue or betray their Jewish neighbours when the Nazis invaded.

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Review:

Relations between Jews and Poles were troubled even before the second world war began, writes Eva Hoffman in this powerful memoir of life under Nazi occupation. Dealings between the groups were no easier with the arrival of a common enemy, who exploited longstanding anti-Semitism to destroy the inhabitants of both city and shtetl, the rural Eastern European small town that stood as "the site of the Jewish soul". This extraordinary account of cultures in conflict has led to much discussion--even controversy--in Europe. Hoffman's vigorously defended view of Poland's role in the Holocaust will doubtless generate debate elsewhere.

About the Author:

Eva Hoffman was born in Cracow, Poland and emigrated to America at the age of thirteen. She was an editor of the New York Times Book Review and has written two other critically acclaimed books, Exit into History and Lost in Translation. She is the recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Whiting Award and an award from the American Academy of the Insititute of Arts and Letters. She is currently living in London.

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