There Once Was a World: A 900-Year Chronicle of the Shtetl of Eishyshok [Paperback]

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 --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

It's hard to imagine that one Jewish town could keep a reader enthralled for so many pages, but Eliach pulls it off. Equal parts history and memoir?the author survived the Holocaust in Eishyshok as a child?the book focuses on the rich lives built by the Jews in the community, which, depending on the year, was under Polish, Lithuanian, Russian or German control. After detailing the central role that the synagogue and religion played in shtetl life, Eliach uses oral history, written documents and numerous photos to describe how Eishsyhok's Jews went about their daily affairs. The Brooklyn College professor deftly demonstrates how the Jewish population reacted to forces outside the shtetl. Some of these forces were political?the 1648 Chmielnicki massacre, the Russian takeover of the town as a result of the final 18th-century partition of Poland?while others were intellectual?the Jewish Enlightenment and the growth of Zionism, both of which modernized life in the town. What results is a case study that sheds light on the entire Eastern European Jewish experience. While Eliach goes to great lengths to focus on the world that the Jews created, the book's most moving moments come in its final chapters, as some of Eishyshok's residents, including the author herself, struggle for survival in the face of genocide. As in her "Tower of Life" exhibit on Eishyshok at the United States Holocaust Museum in D.C., Eliach revives a people and a place that seemed irrevocably lost. 430 b&w photos.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Every town has its history, and even though Eishyshok was a small Polish community, it reflected the trends and tendencies of the wider world. Eliach (Judaic studies, Brooklyn Coll.; Hasidic Tales of the Holocaust, LJ 10/1/82) has spent 17 years researching the Jewish community where her ancestors were among the first settlers and where she spent her early years. Although Jewish history there had a grim finale in the Holocaust, Eliach set out to write a book celebrating the town's robust and creative past. What she has accomplished is a scholarly masterpiece for the informed lay reader. The double-columned pages and extreme length of the work may be daunting to some, but the endlessly fascinating stories will soon captivate. The photographs, an essential element, are taken from "Tower of Life," the permanent exhibit Eliach created for the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. Biographies, historical movements and episodes, local folklore, religious culture, and more are addressed in this prodigious study. Highly recommended for libraries with holdings on Jewish studies.?Paul M. Kaplan, Lake Villa Dist. Lib., IL
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Eliach, a writer, historian, and professor, is the founder of Brooklyn's Center for Holocaust Studies and the creator of the Tower of Life exhibit at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. The author was born in a small Jewish market town in Lithuania. In September 1941, the Germans killed almost 5,000 Jews there. The few who survived, including the author, were in hiding until their liberation in July_ 1944. Eliach has spent the past 17 years documenting the town's Jews, poring over diaries, letters, and birth and marriage certificates. She obtained Lithuanian archival records for the years 1857^-1940. Eliach vividly brings to life the community's synagogue and study house, its schools, its bathhouse, its mutual aid societies, and its rabbis and their wives. She describes the town's economic life: the work of farmers, shopkeepers, livestock and fur traders, foresters, artisans, and craftsmen. She depicts the shtetl's households, including relationships within the family, marriages and divorces, and the celebration of holidays and the Sabbath. A remarkable book. George Cohen --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

A monumental recreation of a lost world. Eliach (Judaic Studies/Brooklyn College) is best known for the 1,500 photographs that make up the ``Tower of Life'' she created for permanent display at the US Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. Nearly 20 years ago, she experienced an epiphany while flying over Vilna during her tour of the ``Holocaust Kingdom'' of Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Warsaw. Somewhere below her were the remains of the Polish shtetl where she began her life, one of the oldest Jewish settlements in Eastern Europe. That sudden realization led to a vow to reconstructas far as possiblethe life of that unique yet representative place. Eliach calls Eishyshok a ``paradigm'' of the European shtetl. Seventeen years later, the final product of that vow is an exhaustivelyyet lovinglydetailed chronicle of Eishyshok, that ``small town with big-city aspirations.'' Failing to find the proper documentation and records in official archives, she turned to oral history, private collections, family, and friends. The result is a painfully personal microhistory. This is a monument to a living, thriving community, not a memorial to death and destruction. Accordingly, humanity's foibles and fantasies are recorded with equal vigor. The people of Eishyshok ``were complicated, contradictory, multifaceted, and fascinating, true representatives of the family of man in all its complexity.'' Founded in the middle of the 11th century, the town soon had a significant Jewish population. Under the successive domination of Lithuanians, Poles, Germans, Russians, and Soviets, it managed to survive even the Second World War; its Jews did not. Giving voice to those who suffered unspeakable loss, this unique document contains a glossary, demographics (birth, marriage, divorce, death certificates), and 430 b&w illustrations. (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

"heartbreaking and gripping" -- NY Times

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.

Along with Jacqueline Onassis, Eliach was named one of CBS TV's Women of the Year in 1994. She has also been profiled in People, Vogue, USA Today and The Washington Post.