Customer Reviews

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

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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.

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.

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.

Professor Eliach has provided readers with a moving look into a world that has disappeared --stolen from humanity by the horrors of Nazism and anti-Semitism. Researched with academic precision, and written with heartfelt, first hand knowledge and humanity, it is rich in detail and in remarkable photographs, that will give all readers - Jewish and non-Jewish - new understanding of the wealth that was Eastern European Jewish life.

In her very detailed and extensive account of life in a jewish market town of Eastern Europe, the author gives a vivid glimpse of the daily life, emotions and longings of its members. A real interesting book that transports us to the middle of a vibrant community that lived, cried, and smiled during all their history until the bitter end.

A must read for anyone intereste in the jewish culture and it's ethos.

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 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.

A little academic at points but otherwise a book of invaluable historical importance to Jews and all of humanity.

This is the greatest book I have ever come across that chronicles life in the shtetl, a very important time in the history of the Jews. You will be transported to the village of Eishyshok and experience the daily joy , pain, and sorrow of the people. While a historical accounting, the prose is beautiful and the stories of the people will affect you deeply. By reading this book you will better understand the history of the Jews than the typical history text.

In a world where holocaust studies often dwell upon the profundity of loss, Dr. Eliach brings a brilliant historical perspective, rich personal attachment, and splendid prose style to the task of making the village of Eishyshok come alive. In sio doing, she reveals 900 years of history ...social, economic, religious and national history with a luminousity that captures the reader, and preserves the flame of the lives that the Nazi's sought to, but failed to destroy.

Dr. Eliach thus asserts the Jewish tradition of "Yiskor Books," where death is rescued from its chasm, by assembling the documents, papers material remains that lend evidence of a life once lived. This wonderful book, in 900 pages of text and photographs, is not some cobwebbed memory of the past....but is a lovely flowering of life. Its story is a tale of survival through nearly a thousand years of hardship and pogroms; a tale of people sustaining oneanother, as in Zborowski and Herzog's "Life is with People," a voyage of self-discovery and family roots, as in Theo Richmmond's "Konin," and a rapture that can only be shared by those of us who lack such roots, through the artistry of Izzy Singer or Chaim Grade, or the photographs of Roman Vishniac.

I recall the moment when my 9 year-old son, having plodded through the Holocaust Museum, entered into the cavernous room filled with the simple photographs of the people of Eishyshok, at work and play, in portraits and celebration...from the personal collection of Dr. Eliach. He turned to me and said....."All of these people used to be alive?" In telling who they were and how they lived, Dr. Eliach gives meaning to the unfathomable loss of a world and its people.

It is fitting that the book is designed with the same love and attention as its author has given to its text. This will hopefully be a popular Bar\Bat Mitzvah present, and a coffee table book that will gather no dust, and set the highest standard for holocaust studies and future works of history and passion.

I thank the author for her unique use of intellect and sensitivity, and for rescuing the literature of the holocaust from academicism and mourning, creating a universal work of affirmation and elegance.