Customer Reviews

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

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Having read this book, I don't quite know what to make of it. On one hand, she gives a tremendous amount of detail, including photographs, in showing the reader what life was like in the shtetl at Eisyshok. Not only does one learn about the rites of passage in shtetl life, but one also learns such seldom-discussed topics as the care of the mentally ill, and the treatment of converts to and from Judaism. She expresses sadness that the shtetl is gone (whence her title, There Once Was a World), but on the other hand one must remember that the Jews now have their own homeland, something which was only a distant dream (if that) for the centuries of Jews who lived in Eishyshok. I find it ironic to hear her defenders denounce the fact that her father, Moishe Sonenson, was a communist collaborator, in view of the fact that he is quoted, towards the end of her very book, as protesting his exile to Siberia in view of all of the work he did on behalf of the Soviet communists! Other things she writes are not so clear, and, forgive me if I find it hard to believe them. Can we seriously believe that her parents' killers, so observant that they noticed a scratch on the floor, suddenly forgot that little Jaffa might still be alive under her mother Zipporah's body? Or that there might be others hiding in the attic-closet? And who, especially under the trauma of a killing in action, counts and remembers the number of bullets fired by the assailants? Furthermore, after the killings of much of her family, she says that the Poles might come back to mutilate the bodies. Can we seriously suppose that a guerilla group would take the risk of a succeeding military operation just to mutilate bodies? These and other statements of hers do not seem to partake of reality.

There is an ongoing controversy about this book. Was her family killed by the Polish underground, with her the only lucky survivor, because they were Jewish or because they were Communists? The Poles have documentary evidence to support their case. And those who have followed Eliach's claims over the years allege that Eliach has changed her story a number of times. As for her personal experience, one wonders how the then 7-yr old Eliach could determine what the motives of her killers were anyway. Not too many 7 yr olds can make such judgements, and so Eliach's opinion, as the adult author of this book, can only rest solely on extraneous Polonophobic sources. As for Polish collaboration with the Nazis, Winston Churchill praised the Poles for being the only European nation not to produce a Quisling. Was he a victim of propaganda for making this statement?

This book is especially significant and timely in light of the recent apology by Polish president Aleksander Kwasniewski for the wartime massacre of Jewish villagers by their Polish neighbors 60 years ago. Read this book for a wonderfully detailed account of a town and a way of life that has been lost forever. It's disheartening to see how many of the Polish reviewers of this book are victims of the decades of propaganda that has taught them to believe that Poles were not collaborators in Nazi atrocities.

Eliach's book is thoroughly enjoyable and recreates the shtetl of Eishyshok and its long-ago murdered Jewish residents. It is extraordinary that some Poles have accused her of engaging in "wild anti-Polish fantasies". I suppose that telling the truth about the cold-blooded murder of Eliach's mother and baby brother in front of her eyes in 1944 by Poles after liberation must seem like an anti-Polish fantasy by those who refuse to come to terms with the crimes some Poles committed against Jews during and, as in this case, after the war. To claim that her parents were communists (actually, her father survived this atrocity) and that this was the reason her mother was killed are beyond contempt. Was Eliach's baby brother also killed because he was a communist? This shows the absurdity of the claim. They were killed because of virulent Polish anti-Jewish hatred and for no other reason!

Please read this book to learn about the shtetl of Eishyshok and don't be fooled by some of the reviewers. They have an obvious agenda of their own.

How does a Jewish reader feel when reading that the Holocaust never happened? Well, the same way a Polish reader feels when reading this revisionist work. Unfortunately, the Holocaust deniers do not own a monopoly on falsification of history. This book is likewise departs substantially from historical reality. The reader is not informed that the author's parents were Communists, and that is the reason for their venomous hatred of Poles and Poland. Eliach's parents were killed by the Polish underground because they were Communists, not because they were Jews. I am also amused to hear her treat Soviet Communist sources as truthful representations of the views and policies Polish patriotic organizations...

I am not Jewish, but I have a deep appreciation for the culture and history. When I first saw this book, I immediately remembered the wall of pictures I saw in the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC, which inspired the book. I prefer not to comment on the political issues raised in others reviews, because this is the story of a shetl, told from a personal perspective. It is hard to argue with the first hand accounts as related and I would not expect them to be 100% objective being told on a personal level. But, the book itself must be experienced, not just read. The entire culture and way of life comes back in the pages, as if one was living there all over again. I, for one, recommend this book to those who wish to insert themselves in places of those written about, to relive history and a culture that has vanished.

This is a monumental work, one that will intrude upon your life while you are reading it. Be prepared to be fascinated, mesmerized, even obsessed with the tragic history of the Eishyshok shtetl. Eliach should be commended for her attempts to piece together a world that has been irremediably demolished by savagery beyond all comprehension.

I must strongly disagree with John Remus' review below, which characterizes this book as a "wild anti-Polish fantasy." Mr. Remus has read this book prejudiced by his own Polish nationalist agenda, for the sole purpose of discrediting it. I had to laugh when I read the titles and publishers of the books he recommends as having a "more balanced" view. The "Polish Educational Foundation"! What could be more biased than that?