Shtetl - Softcover

The shtetl was a unique micro-society with its own customs, beliefs and rituals, its own social distinctions, organisation and civic structures. It was also a long and fascinating experiment in multiculturalism, cut short by the Holocaust. Before World War II, Bransk, in eastern Poland, was a shtetl whose population was equally divided between Poles and Jews. Today there are no Jews left in Bransk. In SHTETL, Eva Hoffman explores the culture and institutions of Polish Jews, and by probing the deep ambivalence that coloured relations between Poles and Jews on the eve of World War II, SHTETL throws new light on motives which influenced Christian villagers' descisions to rescue or betray their Jewish neighbours when the Nazis invaded. Hoffman brings a penetrating intelligence and compassionate eye to a history that is fraught with intensely private emotions and profound implications for humanity.

Eva Hoffman was born in Cracow, Poland and emigrated to America at the age of thirteen. She was an editor of the New York Times Book Review and has written two other critically acclaimed books, Exit into History and Lost in Translation. She is the recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Whiting Award and an award from the American Academy of the Insititute of Arts and Letters. She is currently living in London.