Together and Apart in Brzezany: Poles, Jews, and Ukrainians, 1919-1945

Book Description
ãProfessor Redlich has made a remarkable effort to transcend narrow ethnic perspectives in telling this sad and shocking story. . . . This is a moving and impressive book. . . . Its significance extends far beyond the context of local or regional history.ä --Antony Polonsky ã. . . by reconstructing the history/experience of Brzezany in Jewish, Ukrainian, and Polish memories [Redlich] has produced a beautiful parallel narrative of a world that was lost three times over. . . . a truly wonderful achievement.ä --Jan T. Gross Noted historian and Holocaust survivor Shimon Redlich tells the tragic story of the multiethnic community of Brzezany, in eastern Galacia, in the years 1919- 1945, based on historical sources and on the memories of its former inhabitants, including those of the author.


About the Author
Shimon Redlich, born in Poland and a survivor of the Holocaust, is an internationally distinguished specialist on the history of the Jews in Eastern Europe. He holds degrees from Hebrew University, Harvard University, and New York University. Redlich holds the Solly Yellin Chair in Lithuanian and East European Jewry and lectures on modern European history at Ben-Gurion University, Israel. His publications include War, Holocaust and Stalinism: A Documented History of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee in the USSR and Propaganda and Nationalism in Wartime Russia.


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Shimon Redlich draws on the historical record, his own childhood memories, and interviews with Poles, Jews, and Ukrainians who lived in the small eastern Polish town of Brzezany to construct this account of the changing relationships among the town's three ethnic groups before, during, and after World War II. He details the history of Brzezany from the prewar decades when it was part of independent Poland and members of the three communities remember living relatively amicably "together and apart," through the tensions of Soviet rule, the trauma of the Nazi occupation, and the recapture of the town by the Red Army in 1945. Historical and contemporary photographs of Brzezany and its inhabitants add immediacy to this fascinating excursion into history brought to life, from differing perspectives, by those who lived through it.


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