Czernowitz at 100 represents a collection based on the proceedings of a 2008 international conference convened at York University in Toronto. Each chapter looks back at a portion over a long century, one marked with the mass migration of Ashkenazi Jews across the globe, two world wars, the Holocaust, the birth of Israel, and the rise and fall of the Soviet bloc. They assess the achievements and fate of those who participated in the 1908 Yiddish Language Conference that was held at...

From the ashes of former Yugoslavia an independent Croatian state has arisen, the fulfillment, in the words of President Franjo Tudjman, of the Croats' "thousand-year-old dream of independence." Yet few countries in Europe have been born amid such bitter controversy and bloodshed: the savage war between pro-independence forces and the Yugoslav army left about one-third of the country in ruins and resulted in the flight of a quarter of a million of the country's Serbian minority.I...

It seems at first commonplace: a group photograph of peasants at harvest time, after hard work well done, resting contentedly with their tools behind the fruits of their labor. But when one finally notices the "crops" scattered in front of the group, what seemed innocent on first view become horrific skulls and bones. Where are we? Who are the people in the photograph, and what are they doing? The starting point of Jan Tomasz and Irena Grudzinska Gross's Golden Harvest, this haunting photo...

A POWERFUL, DEEPLY MOVING NARRATIVE OF HOPE REBORNIN THE SHADOW OF DESPAIRFifty years after it was bombed to rubble, Berlin is once again a city in which Jews gather for the Passover seder. Paris and Antwerp have recently emerged as important new centers of Jewish culture. Small but proud Jewish communities are revitalizing the ancient centers of Budapest, Prague, and Amsterdam. These brave, determined Jewish men and women have chosen to settle–or remain–in ...

‘Do you ever think about those you left behind?’, I ask father.‘Not often’, he says. ‘Such memories are a luxury I can’t afford.’First his parents made a journey to the New World. It was the 1930s, and Europe was seething. As he grew up, Arnold Zable heard tales, songs, fragments of the world they had left behind. He had inherited a fractured, vibrant past which both fascinated and disturbed him. Finally, he had to confront the mystery: he had to travel ba...

The International BestsellerMaybe Esther is the inventive, unique, and extraordinarily moving debut memoir that pieces together the fascinating story of one woman's family across twentieth-century Russia, Ukraine, Poland, and Germany.Katja Petrowskaja wanted to create a kind of family tree, charting relatives who had scattered across multiple countries and continents. Her idea blossomed into this striking and highly original work o...

In the nineteenth century, the largest Jewish community the modern world had known lived in hundreds of towns and shtetls in the territory between the Prussian border of Poland and the Ukrainian coast of the Black Sea. The period had started with the partition of Poland and the absorption of its territories into the Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires; it would end with the first large-scale outbreaks of anti-Semitic violence and the imposition in Russia of strong anti-Semitic legislation...

Essays on the restoration and revival of Jewish sites in post-Holocaust, post-Communist Poland: "Highly recommended." — ChoiceIn a time of national introspection regarding the country's involvement in the persecution of Jews, Poland has begun to reimagine spaces of and for Jewishness in the Polish landscape, not as a form of nostalgia but as a way to encourage the pluralization of contemporary society. The essays in this book explore issues of the restorati...

In A Short History of Russia Mary Platt Parmele takes the reader on a survey of Russia’s rich past, from the state’s early dramatic beginnings to its struggle to control society, the transformation of the empire into a multi-ethnic empire, and beyond.

Moldova: Arena of International Influences brings international perspective to Moldova’s foreign relations since its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. Eighteen chapters analyze the policy toward Moldova of selected international actors: Belarus, Bulgaria, China, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, the European Union, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Russia, Turkey, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the unrecognized breakaway state of Transnistri...

Russia's rich history is full of secrets: there's not another country in the world with so many skeletons in its closet. Vladimir Medinskiy's new book offers the reader the opportunity to get better acquainted with some myths about Russia in an quick, easy and entertaining way. The book covers some of the most interesting, colourful and controversial debates in Russian history and the most popular myths about Russia: vodka and its role in some incredible adventures, Russia's problems (apar...

Escape into Danger tells the remarkable story of a young girl’s perilous adventures and coming of age during World War II. Born in Kiev to a Catholic mother and a Jewish father, Sophia Williams chose to be identified as Jewish when she was eligible for a Soviet passport, mandatory at the age of sixteen, little realizing the life-changing consequences of her decision. Only seventeen when Germany invaded Russia in 1941, Sophia left Kiev, unwittingly escaping the Babi Yar massacre. On her jou...