The Death of the Shtetl

In this book Yehuda Bauer, an internationally-acclaimed Holocausthistorian, recounts the destruction of the shtetls, small Jewish towns inPoland and Russia, at the hands of the Nazis in 1941-1942. Bauer bringstogether all available documents, testimonies, and scholarship, includingpreviously unpublished material from the Yad Vashem archives, pertaining tonine representative shtetls. In line with his belief that 'history is thestory of real people in real situations', Bauer tells the moving stories ofindividual people and communities. Over a million people, approximately aquarter of all victims of the Holocaust came from the shtetls. Bauer writesof the relations between Jews and non-Jews throughout the period (includingthe actions of rescuers); he describes attempts to create undergroundresistance groups, escapes to the forests, and Jewish participation in theSoviet partisan movement. Bauer's book is a definitive examination of thedemise of the shtetls, a topic of vast importance to the history of theHolocaust.