The University of Wisconsin Press

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History / Jewish Studies / Slavic Studies / Demography

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The Long Life and Swift Death of Jewish Rechitsa A Community in Belarus, 1625–2000 Albert Kaganovitch “A major contribution to our understanding of the history of the Jews of Rechitsa, a typical Jewish shtetl, and of the transformation and tragic end of Jewish life there.” —Antony Polonsky, Brandeis University and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Located on the Dnieper River at the crossroads of Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine, the town of Rechitsa had one of the oldest Jewish communities in Belarus, dating back to medieval times. By the late nineteenth century, Jews constituted more than half of the town’s population. Rich in tradition, Jewish Rechitsa was part of a distinctive Lithuanian-Belorussian culture full of stories, vibrant personalities, achievement, and epic struggle that was gradually lost through migration, pogroms, and the Holocaust. Now, in Albert Kaganovitch’s meticulously researched history, this forgotten Jewish world is brought to life. Based on extensive use of Soviet and Israeli archives, interviews, memoirs, and secondary sources, Kaganovitch’s acclaimed work, originally published in Russian, is presented here in a significantly revised English translation by the author. Details of demographic, social, economic, and cultural changes in Rechitsa’s evolution, presented over the sweep of centuries, reveal a microcosm of daily Jewish life in Rechitsa and similar communities. Kaganovitch looks closely at such critical developments as the spread of Chabad Hasidism, the impact of multiple political transformations and global changes, and the mass murder of Rechitsa’s remaining Jews by the German army in November to December 1941. Kaganovitch also documents the evolving status of Jews in the postwar era, starting with the reconstitution of a Jewish community in Rechitsa not long after liberation in 1943 and continuing with economic, social, and political trends under Stalin, Khrushchev, and Brezhnev, and finally emigration from post-Soviet Belarus. The Long Life and Swift Death of Jewish Rechitsa is a major achievement. Albert Kaganovitch is Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Humanities, University of Manitoba, and a former research fellow at the Judaic Studies Program of Manitoba University; the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.; the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism at Hebrew University in Jerusalem; and the International Institute for Holocaust Research at the Yad Vashem Museum of the Holocaust in Jerusalem. For more information regarding publicity and reviews contact our publicity manager, phone: (608) 263-0734, email: publicity@uwpress.wisc.edu Of related interest: The Tree of Life: A Trilogy of Life in the Lodz Ghetto Chava Rosenfarb Translated from the Yiddish by the author         in collaboration with Goldie Morgentaler Book I: On the Brink of the Precipice, 1939 Book II: From the Depths I Call You, 1940–1942 Book III: The Cattle Cars Are Waiting, 1942–1944

PAPERBACK ORIGINAL March 2013 LC: 2012013015 DS 416 pp.   6 x 9   21 b/w photos, 1 map Paper $29.95 s ISBN 978-0-299-28984-3 eBook $21.95 s ISBN 978-0-299-28983-6   Adobe Digital Edition (PDF) About our e-books Printing and cut/paste allowed, access on six different devices. ADD TO CART   Click here for a further explanation of the shopping cart feature. “Albert Kaganovitch has superb command of diverse primary sources in several languages and organizes his findings in a well-balanced and vivid reconstruction of Jewish life in Rechitsa, an old town on the crossroads between Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.” —Mikhail Krutikov, University of Michigan

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