There Once Was a World: A 900-Year Chronicle of the Shtetl of Eishyshok

Eishyshok, in Lithuania, was for nine centuries a center of Jewish life in Eastern Europe, where Jews lived "under all the various governments that had fought for control of it: Lithuanian, Polish, German, Russian, and Soviet." But as a result of the Holocaust, writes Eishyshok native Yaffa Eliach in this rich, vastly detailed history, "nearly a millennium of vibrant Jewish life had been reduced to stark images of victimization and death." Eliach offers his chronicle by way of a memorial to those lost citizens and their disappeared history, working through archives, family photo albums, and the memories of survivors. It is a fine and fitting memorial indeed, one that ranks alongside the important work of Raul Hilberg and Lucy Dawidowicz. --Gregory McNamee