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Together and Apart in Brzezany , livre ebook

Indiana University Press - Shimon Redlich

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172 pages

English

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2001-02 National Jewish Book Award Finalist

". . . by reconstructing the history/experience of Brzezany in Jewish, Ukrainian, and Polish memories [Redlich] has produced a beautiful parallel narrative of a world that was lost three times over. . . . a truly wonderful achievement." —Jan T. Gross, author of Neighbors

Shimon Redlich draws on the historical record, his own childhood memories, and interviews with Poles, Jews, and Ukrainians who lived in the small eastern Polish town of Brzezany to construct this account of the changing relationships among the town's three ethnic groups before, during, and after World War II. He details the history of Brzezany from the prewar decades (when it was part of independent Poland and members of the three communities remember living relatively amicably "together and apart"), through the tensions of Soviet rule, the trauma of the Nazi occupation, and the recapture of the town by the Red Army in 1945. Historical and contemporary photographs of Brzezany and its inhabitants add immediacy to this fascinating excursion into history brought to life, from differing perspectives, by those who lived through it.

Preliminary Table of Contents:

Preface and Acknowledgments
A Note on Transliteration
Maps
ONE: My Return
TWO: Close and Distant Neighbors
THREE: The Good Years, 1919–1939
FOUR: The Soviet Interlude, 1939–1941
FIVE: The German Occupation, 1941–1944
SIX: The Aftermath, 1944–1945
SEVEN: Their Return
Concluding Remarks
Interviews
Notes
Abbreviations of Names of Archives
Bibliography and Abbreviations
Index

Sujets

Europe

Holocauste

History

Autobiography

Eastern

History of Europe

Russian

Eastern Europe

The Holocaust

Histoire

Holocaust

Jewish Studies

Informations

Publié par	Indiana University Press
Date de parution	03 mai 2002
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9780253108883
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	3 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0500€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Together and Apart in Brzezany
TOGETHER and APART in BRZEZANY
Poles, Jews, and Ukrainians, 1919-1945

Shimon Redlich
T HIS BOOK IS A PUBLICATION OF
I NDIANA U NIVERSITY P RESS
601 N ORTH M ORTON S TREET
B LOOMINGTON , IN 47404-3797 USA
HTTP://IUPRESS.INDIANA.EDU
Telephone orders 800-842-6796
Fax orders 812-855-7931
Orders by e-mail IUPORDER@INDIANA.EDU
2002 BY S HIMON R EDLICH
A LL RIGHTS RESERVED
N O PART OF THIS BOOK MAY BE REPRODUCED OR UTILIZED IN ANY FORM OR BY ANY MEANS, ELECTRONIC OR MECHANICAL, INCLUDING PHOTOCOPYING AND RECORDING, OR BY ANY INFORMATION STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL SYSTEM, WITHOUT PERMISSION IN WRITING FROM THE PUBLISHER . T HE A SSOCIATION OF A MERICAN U NIVERSITY P RESSES R ESOLUTION ON P ERMISSIONS CONSTITUTES THE ONLY EXCEPTION TO THIS PROHIBITION.
T HE PAPER USED IN THIS PUBLICATION MEETS THE MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS OF A MERICAN N ATIONAL S TANDARD FOR I NFORMATION S CIENCES -P ERMANENCE OF P APER FOR P RINTED L IBRARY M ATERIALS , ANSI Z39.48-1984.
M ANUFACTURED IN THE U NITED S TATES OF A MERICA
L IBRARY OF C ONGRESS C ATALOGING-IN -P UBLICATION D ATA
R EDLICH , S HIMON . T OGETHER AND APART IN B RZEZANY : P OLES , J EWS , AND U KRAINIANS , 1919-1945 / S HIMON R EDLICH .
P. CM .
I NCLUDES BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES AND INDEX . ISBN 0-253-34074-8 ( CLOTH: ALK. PAPER ) 1. B EREZHANY (U KRAINE )-E THNIC RELATIONS . 2. B EREZHANY (U KRAINE )-H ISTORY - 20TH CENTURY . 3. R EDLICH , S HIMON . I. T ITLE : P OLES , J EWS, AND U KRAINIANS , 1919-1945. II. T ITLE .
DK508.95.B48 R43 2002
305.8 009477 9-DC21
2001004948
1 2 3 4 5 07 06 05 04 03 02
In memory of Tanka Kontsevych and Karol Codogni
CONTENTS

PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION

MAPS

1 My Return

2 Close and Distant Neighbors

3 The Good Years, 1919-1939

4 The Soviet Interlude, 1939-1941

5 The German Occupation, 1941-1944

6 The Aftermath, 1944-1945

7 Their Return

Concluding Remarks

INTERVIEWS

NOTES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX
PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The writing of this book was not so much a matter of choice as of necessity. For some time I have contemplated writing about my childhood in Brzezany, a town in eastern Galicia. For those whose childhood ended abruptly and prematurely, clinging to the life before disaster struck is much like holding fast to an anchor of a drowning boat. I was a happy, secure, and loved child of 6 when the Germans occupied Brzezany. And it was to those few normal prewar years that I gradually and consciously started returning for solace and hope. I have been drawn to relive my early past.
The actual writing of my story faced insurmountable difficulties, not least of which is inherent in my craft. As a historian, I am well aware that relying solely on memory to record the past has many pitfalls. Moreover, my authentic childhood memories were rather scattered and scant. There was another reason for my reluctance. Did my own personal ordeal merit telling? Hindered by these obstacles, I searched for a way to fulfill my need to write. I soon realized that my childhood, or what I remembered of it, was the place, the sites, the landscapes, and, most of all, the people with whom I shared a life before the war. Indeed, it was through researching and writing about my hometown that I began to recover the childhood I longed to remember and the war experience that for many years I tried to repress.
In trying to persevere after a trauma, we often bury the deserving memories along with the tormenting ones. Some of the worthiest people in my life, those who saved it, were for many years casualties of my attempt to forget the past and build a new life. It was nearly half a century before I could express my gratitude to Karol Codogni, a Pole whose family provided us with food when we were hiding in the ruined Brzezany ghetto, and to Tanka Kontsevych, a Ukrainian woman who gave us shelter in her house in the nearby village of Raj.
Returning to the sites and people of my early life was delayed by more than the Iron Curtain. While the collapse of communism facilitated the journey, the psychological wall that many of the survivors have erected to separate them from their traumatic past also had to be vanquished before the return. Contemplating going back to Brzezany was not like traveling to London or New York. It uncovered memories of painful losses as well as recollections of exceptional human kindness.
Brzezany was for centuries home to Poles, Jews, and Ukrainians. The war and the Holocaust dismembered this multi-ethnic town, and what is left of it remains only in the historical record and in the memories of its former inhabitants. My attempt in this book is to reconstruct Brzezany of my childhood, its complexity and richness. Using written sources as well as interviews, I have tried to reassemble the Polish-Jewish-Ukrainian triangle as carefully and even-handedly as possible, allowing the different voices to be heard.
Those Brzezanyites with whom I met and spoke shared with me their memories of the relatively peaceful prewar years as well as those of the tragic events that came with the war. Despite the indifference, greed, hatred, and murder that my own people have experienced, I felt a certain sense of compassion for the difficult and tragic history of the Poles and the Ukrainians. This compassion can, apparently, be felt among some of those who were bound together by something that no longer exists. Half a century after we parted under the worst and most tragic circumstances, I attempted to recover the life that existed before darkness set in. It was also my obligation to tell how prewar multi-ethnic Brzezany came to an end.
* * *
The researching and writing of this book was possible only with the help and goodwill many people extended to me. My primary thanks and appreciation goes to those Brzezanyites-Jews, Poles, and Ukrainians-who have agreed to uncover their lives and memories. Without their generosity of heart, this book could not have been written.
I discussed the idea of writing about my hometown with Aharon Appel-feld, Yuval Lurie, Jerzy Tomaszewski, and Theo Richmond. I would like to thank them for their interest in my project. My colleague Gulie Ne eman Arad read the manuscript in its various versions and provided me with valuable suggestions and much encouragement. Rachel Patron and Jolanta Brach-Czaina read the first version and made very useful comments. Eva Hoffman was very kind to read part of the manuscript and to make some very thoughtful suggestions. Jan T. Gross s enthusiastic response as well as Antony Polonsky s detailed remarks convinced me that I was on the right track. I am also grateful to Saul Friedlaender, Ezra Mendelsohn, and Roman Szporluk for taking the time out to read the manuscript and provide me with valuable comments. I would also like to thank David S. Rosenstein for his editorial help. At Indiana University Press, I thank Janet Rabinowitch, assistant director and senior sponsoring editor, who accompanied this project with great interest and wisdom from its beginning.
I would like to extend a very special thanks to Pieter Louppen of Ben-Gurion University s Geography Department for doing such a great job with the maps and to Shlomo Arad (Goldberg) for his help with the illustrations.
Menachem Katz was kind enough to let me use the maps of Brzezany originally published in his edited Brzezany Memorial Book (1978). Thanks also to Verlag J. H. W. Dietz Nachfolger for their permission to reprint the map of eastern Galicia published in Thomas Sandkuhler, Endloesung in Galizien (1996). Yossi Regev, Margo Schotz, and Udi Sheleg assisted me in overcoming the pitfalls of word processing.
In conducting the interviews, I was assisted by Waclaw Wierzbieniec from Poland (who also accompanied me during a visit to Brzezany); Yaroslav Hrytsak, Victor Susak, and Natalia Narolska from Ukraine; and Eynat Rubinstein and Tehila Sagi from Israel. I thank them all.
I would also like to thank Mordechai Altshuler, Dmytro Bartkiw, Ryszard Brzezinski, Aviva Cantor, Ariel Cohen, Shlomit Cohen, Ludwik Czaja, Vadim Dubson, Marek Glazer, John Paul Himka, Kaja Kazmierska, Bela Kirshner, Yehudit Kleiman, Christine Kulke, Bogdan Musial, Joanna Nalewajko, Irena Plastun, Dieter Pohl, Monika Polit, Efrat Redlich, Gabriele Rosenthal, Zbigniew Rusinski, Daniel Terner, Jennifer Turvey, Ayala Yeheskel, and Roman Zakharii. All of them assisted me in one way or another.
I would like to extend my appreciation to the staffs of the following institutions: Yad Vashem Library and Archives and the Central Zionist Archives in Jerusalem, the Central State Historical Archive in L viv, the State Archive of Ternopil Region in Ternopil , and the Zentralle Stelle der Landjustizverwalt-ungen zur Verfolgung nationalsozialistischer Verbrechen in Ludwigsburg.
My Brzezany project has been generously supported by the Israel Science Foundation; the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, New York; and the Rabb Center for Holocaust Studies and the Solly Yellin Chair in Lithuanian and East European Jewry at Ben-Gurion University. I also appreciate the friendship and support of Fanya Gottesman-Heller. Nachum Finger, rector of Ben-Gurion University, and Jimmy Weinblat, dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, were supportive throughout the project.
As always, I owe a great debt to my family: my wife Judy and my daughters Shlomit and Efrat. They have accompanied me throughout this long journey with their love, understanding, and support.
And last, but first, to Karol Codogni and Tanka Kontsevych, without whom I would not have surviv