Konin : One Man's Quest for a Vanished Jewish Community

From Publishers Weekly
Through the oral testimonies of survivors and archival research, English documentary filmmaker Richmond evokes the history, daily life and final ordeal of the Polish town of Konin's 3000-member Jewish community, liquidated by the Germans between 1939 and 1941 through massacres and deportations to death camps. The author, whose parents grew up in Konin and emigrated to England before World War I, spent eight years tracking down Konin's Jewish survivors in America, Canada, Britain and Israel. In Manhattan he meets tailor Louis Lefkowitz, chairman of a Konin society, a survivor of 21 Nazi camps. In Florida he interviews Sarah Trybuch, who, carrying her baby daughter, fled into a forest and joined a Jewish partisan group fighting the Germans. Other survivors tell of Jewish prisoners' doomed, courageous revolt in a Gestapo-run Konin slave labor camp. The testimonies combine the moral force of Primo Levi with the searing intensity of Jerzy Kosinski. Richmond also records his 1989 visit to Communist-ruled Konin accompanied by Holocaust survivor Izzy Hahn. This deeply moving book will achieve a permanent place in the literature. Photos. Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Richmond, a filmmaker living in England, offers a vivid portrait of Konin, the small town in Poland from which his parents came. The book's 72 chapters are divided into five parts. Each part views the lost Konin shtetl from a different perspective, depicting it as it appeared to Konin Jews who emigrated to Britain, the United States, and Israel and as the author envisioned it from a visit to the now modern industrial town. Each part also presents different sets of chronologically arranged reflections of Konin from its beginnings in the 13th century as one of the earliest Jewish settlements in Poland up until its destruction by the Nazis in 1939. Most absorbing are the reflections of this vanishing world that the author remembers hearing from family members as he grew up. The final section of the book describes the author's moving visit to Konin; the bright images of communal life are mixed with dark images of the Holocaust. Highly recommended.Mark Weber, Kent State Univ., Lib., OhioCopyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
The author's parents grew up in Konin, a Polish shtetl on what was then the western edge of the Russian empire, and emigrated to England just before World War I. In 1939 the town had a population of 12,100, of whom 2,700 were Jews. In September of that year--at the start of World War II--German troops entered the town. Subsequently, the Jews were deported to ghettos, their synagogue and cemetery were destroyed, and thousands of Jews from the Konin region were killed in massacres in the nearby Kazimierz forest. (In 1943 there was a revolt of Jewish prisoners in the Konin labor camp, and most of them were killed.) Konin tells the story of Richmond's search for that lost community and its people, what he calls the "texture and color of their every-day lives." Drawing on oral testimony from people in such diverse places as Omaha, Brooklyn, an Israeli kibbutz, and a London suburb, as well as on archival material, Richmond gives us an impressive addition to the growing library of Holocaust literature. George Cohen

Book Description
In 1939 the Polish town of Konin vanished in the wake of Nazi occupation. Twenty-five years later, Theo Richmond set out to find what he could about that vanished world. He traveled across the United States, Europe, and Israel, tracing survivors and sifting through archives and the stories of those he interviewed. A project he thought would take six months took seven years. Finally he confronted the Konin of today. Interweaving past and present, Konin tells the story of one community--how it began, how it flourished, and how it ended--and in the process re-creates the precariousness, anguish and necessity of human memory.

ANNOTATION

The monumental story of an obsession--one man's quest to uncover the history of the town his family had come from and the fate of those who no longer lived there. Drawing on archives as well as oral testimony, interweaving past and present, Konin is an immensely moving story of lives caught up in the sweep of history.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

In 1987 Theo Richmond, an English-born Jew, decided to take a short sabbatical to write a book. What started out as a six-month project would take seven years to complete, as the object of his curiosity took over his life. Richmond's search was for a lost community, one that had vanished along with members of his family when the German army swept into Poland in 1939. Since his early childhood he had heard a word that stayed in his mind: Konin, the name of the Polish shtetl from which his parents had come. He set out to learn more about this small town and its Jewish community, to place on record something of what the Nazis had destroyed. Drawing on archives as well as oral testimony, interweaving past and present, Theo Richmond re-creates in minute detail a world that is gone forever. Konin is a story of this vanished community and the people who once lived there.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Through the oral testimonies of survivors and archival research, English documentary filmmaker Richmond evokes the history, daily life and final ordeal of the Polish town of Konin's 3000-member Jewish community, liquidated by the Germans between 1939 and 1941 through massacres and deportations to death camps. The author, whose parents grew up in Konin and emigrated to England before World War I, spent eight years tracking down Konin's Jewish survivors in America, Canada, Britain and Israel. In Manhattan he meets tailor Louis Lefkowitz, chairman of a Konin society, a survivor of 21 Nazi camps. In Florida he interviews Sarah Trybuch, who, carrying her baby daughter, fled into a forest and joined a Jewish partisan group fighting the Germans. Other survivors tell of Jewish prisoners' doomed, courageous revolt in a Gestapo-run Konin slave labor camp. The testimonies combine the moral force of Primo Levi with the searing intensity of Jerzy Kosinski. Richmond also records his 1989 visit to Communist-ruled Konin accompanied by Holocaust survivor Izzy Hahn. This deeply moving book will achieve a permanent place in the literature. Photos. (Aug.)

Library Journal