The Witness Trees: Lithuania

From Booklist
Another vital expression of the European Jewish cultural revival, whose most successful aspect has been the Yiddish vernacular music renaissance (see Henry Sapoznik's Klezmer! 1999), this book features an American poem and its Yiddish translation. Sklarew's Lithuania recounts her visit to her mother's home village, Keidan, whose Jews were brutally exterminated by some of their own gentile neighbors during Nazi occupation. In free-verse stanzas of eight lines each, which are centered on the page rather than justified to either margin, she reviews the carnage, the ways survivors escaped, and what witnesses, mostly gentiles, told her. The Yiddish version is the work of a major Yiddish poet born in Keidan and a relative of Sklarew's, David Wolpe, now 92 and residing in South Africa. Besides the dignified, reportorial poem, the book includes an excellent brief introduction to Jewish Lithuania by Dovid Katz, Wolpe's memoir "The Destruction of Keidan," and several period photographs, some from Sklarew's family's collection. A fine complement to the likes of Roman Vishniak's photographic classic, A Vanished World (1983). Ray Olson
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Language Notes
Text: English, Yiddish (translation)
Original Language: English


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