Customer Reviews

The Vanished City of Tsanz

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This book is an in-depth look at chassidic jewish life in the town of Nowy Sanz or Tsanz as the jews called it. The book describes the jewish history of the town and is filled with stories about the various rabbis and characters of the town. One gets the feeling of peering through a looking glass back in time before the holocaust and getting a true sense he liniage of the rabbis, what the town looked like, the people in the town leading the reader almost to the point of smelling the shabbos meal. He discusses in deatil the history of the Divrei Chaim and the descendants of the great Rabbai Halberstam. He gives a detailed description of how many the jewish holidays were celebrated and the prayers said. He paints vivid pictures of the people of the region and how the town was a center for chassidic life in southern Galicia.

Approximately 2/3 of the book takes place in prewar Tsanz. The last 1/3 is a stunning first hand account of his life in the camps and the people he runs into and how he survived. As I read the book I could it brought home the feelings of the brutality of the Nazis.

I highly recommend this book for anyone wanting to get a true sense of Jewish life before during and after WWII