A Small Town in Ukraine: The place we came from, the place we went back to

Description

The revelatory history of Krakowiec - 'a little place you've never heard of ' - through which we see life in Eastern Europe as never before Decades ago, the historian Bernard Wasserstein set out to uncover the hidden past of the town forty miles west of Lviv where his family, especially his grandfather Berl, originated- Krakowiec (Krah-KOV-yets). In this book he recounts its dramatic and traumatic history. 'I want to observe and understand how some of the great forces that determined the shape of our times affected ordinary people.' Wasserstein traces the arc of history across centuries of religious and political conflict, as armies of Cossacks, Turks, Swedes and Muscovites rampaged through the region. In the Age of Enlightenment, the Polish magnate Ignacy Cetner built his palace at Krakowiec and, with his vivacious daughter, Princess Anna, created an arcadia of refinement and serenity. Under the Habsburg emperors after 1772, Krakowiec developed into a typical shtetl, with a jostling population of Poles, Ukrainians and Jews. In 1914, disaster struck. 'Seven years of terror and carnage' left a legacy of ferocious national antagonisms. During the Second World War the Jews were murdered in circumstances harrowingly described by Wasserstein. After the war the Poles were expelled and the town dwindled into a border outpost. Today, the storm of history once again rains down on Krakowiec as hordes of refugees flee for their lives from Ukraine. In the lives of Wasserstein's own family and the many others he has rediscovered, the people of Krakowiec become a prism through which we can feel the shocking immediacy of history. Original in conception and brilliantly achieved, A Small Town in Ukraine is a masterpiece of recovery and insight.

Bernard Wasserstein is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Chicago and a corresponding Fellow of the British Academy. Born in London, he now lives in Amsterdam. His previous books include The Secret Lives of Trebitsch Lincoln (CWA Gold Dagger Prize for Non-fiction), On the Eve- The Jews of Europe Before the Second World War (Yad Vashem International Book Prize), and Barbarism and Civilization- A History of Europe in Our Time.

A fine and deeply affecting work of history and memoir -- Philippe Sands