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

Yaffa Eliach (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1998

This is the history of a singular yet representative Jewish community from its origins in the Middle Ages to its destruction during the Second World War. For 900 years, this Polish shtetl was a home to generations of Jewish families. In 1944, almost every Jew in Eishyshok was murdered, and with them died a way of life that had survived since the eleventh century. Yaffa Eliach was four years old when the Nazis entered the town and machine-gunned all but thirty-six of its inhabitants. She and her family hid for two years in forests and in a tiny cellar beneath a pigsty. She has devoted the last seventeen years to documenting the stories of the other inhabitants of Eishyshok, collecting thousands of photographs and personal stories from all over the world. The result is this extraordinary book, which weaves these stories into a comprehensive and moving study of shtetl life and culture. Yaffa Eliach has written a landmark history that triumphantly brings to life a people and a world the Nazis sought to destroy.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com 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

From Publishers Weekly

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.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 818 pages
• Publisher: Little Brown & Co (T); 1st edition (October 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316232521
• ISBN-13: 978-0316232524
• Product Dimensions: 10.2 x 8 x 2.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #936,675 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #39 in Books > History > Europe > Lithuania

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An important and moving book., November 20, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: There Once Was a World: A 900-Year Chronicle of the Shtetl of Eishyshok (Hardcover)

This meticulously researched book chronicles the 900-year-old settlement of Eishyshok, a center of culture and tradition that was virtually extinguished by the Holocaust. Rather than focus on the terrible end, the author has endeavored to revive the town and its inhabitants through salvaged photographs, narratives, and history gathered over many years of travel and research. The author has produced a moving and well documented book that serves history while respecting and memorializing the individual people who gave the town its spirit. I have to doubt the motives of those who are using this review space to disect the author's own life and memories, which are not the subject of this book.

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This volume is as thick and meaty as a stew., January 16, 1999

By 

[e-mail], Esther G. Schwartz (Columbus, Ohio) - See all my reviews

This review is from: There Once Was a World: A 900-Year Chronicle of the Shtetl of Eishyshok (Hardcover)

The pictures and captions alone make this book worth the price of admission. You can pick up this book, and randomly turn to any page, and find it intriguing. Once you start, it is difficult to close the book, to put it down. The reader is stunned by the amount of research and the wearying journeys that must have gone into the compiling of this volume. It is a masterpiece with all the photos, the descriptions, the minute details of the once-beautiful life in Eishyshok. It is a heartbreaking book, that so many of those beautiful, shining lights were snuffed out so callously and brutally. Yaffa Eliach has produced unforgettable scenes of a lost world. It is amazing that she could find so many of those wonderful pictures of handsome families, enjoying life in Eishyshok. One feels as though one knows the people, as we look into their faces and read about their lives from long, long ago. This is one of the finest books on any subject that I have ever seen. It definitely deserves to be in every home.

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Gone but not fogotten......, November 11, 2001

By 

Dov B Yair (Sydney, NSW Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: There Once Was a World: A 900-Year Chronicle of the Shtetl of Eishyshok (Hardcover)

This book is extremely well written and Yaffa's research superb. The story itself is very topical at the moment and like Jan Gross' book "Neighbours', it will probably draw the attention of Poles, Lithuanians etc around the world who wish to deny that their people had anything to do with the slaughter of Jews in the holocaust. The story covers pretty much all aspects of life for the Jews of Eishyshok for the past 900 years up until the Nazis destroyed the community together with the help of their Lithuanian, Polish and Latvian aids. This book is definately worth reading and with the many photographs in the book, you come to develop a close affiliation with the people. Do read it, it is certainly extremely thorough.