There Once Was World

When asked to work on a memorial to the victims of the Holocaust, Yaffa Eliach decided that the best way to remember the dead was to honor the lives they lived. So in 1979, she set about a 17-year project to reconstruct the 900-year history of Eishyshok, a small Jewish settlement in Poland where no Jews remain. There Once was a World chronicles the centuries of Jewish life that so violently came to an end in World War II. A finalist for this year's nonfiction National Book Award, There Once was a World is a richly detailed history of changing life and enduring traditions in the small Polish shtetl.