Livia Rothkirchen, The Jews of Bohemia and Moravia: Facing the Holocaust
Yad Vashem in association with University of Nebraska Press, 2005, 496 pages, NIS 129 (in Israel only)

“We were both small nations whose existence could never be taken for granted,” Vaclav Havel said of the Czechs and the Jews in 1990. Indeed, the complex and intimate links between the fortunes of these two peoples is unique in European history. The Jews of Bohemia and Moravia: Facing the Holocaust, the most recent volume in the series The Comprehensive History of the Holocaust, is written by one of the world’s leading authorities on the history of Czech and Slovak Jewry during the Nazi period. It is the first to thoroughly document this singular relationship and to trace its impact—both practical and profound—on the fate of the Jews of Bohemia and Moravia during the Holocaust.

Livia Rothkirchen provides a detailed and comprehensive history of how Nazi rule in the Czech lands was shaped as much by local culture and circumstances as by military policy. The extraordinary nature of the Czech Jews’ experience emerges clearly in chapters on the role of the Jewish minority in Czech life; the crises of the Munich Agreement and the German occupation; the reaction of the local population to the persecution of the Jews; the policies of the London-based government in exile; the question of Jewish resistance, and the special case of the Terezin (Theresienstadt) ghetto.

The book is based on a wealth of primary sources, many uncovered only after the 1989 November Revolution. With an epilogue on the post-1945 period, this richly woven historical narrative supplies information essential to an understanding of the history of the Jews in Europe.
 

Two more books in the new series of memoirs published jointly by Yad Vashem and the Holocaust Survivors’ Memoirs Project are now available: [Series Editor, Dr. David Silberklang; Managing Editor, Daniella Zaidman Mauer]
 

Hadassah Rosensaft: Yesterday: My Story
Yad Vashem in association with The Holocaust Survivors’ Memoirs Project, 2005, 210 pages, $21 (airmail included) / NIS 69

Widely regarded by Holocaust survivors as one of their matriarchs, Dr. Hadassah Rosensaft (1912-1997) was imprisoned in Auschwitz-Birkenau and Bergen-Belsen. Together with other inmates, she kept 149 Jewish children alive in Bergen-Belsen from December 1944 until their liberation on 15 April 1945, and then served as administrator of the camp’s hospital. Rosensaft was one of the leaders of the Jewish Displaced Persons in the British zone of Germany, served as a principal witness for the prosecution at the first trial of Nazi war criminals in 1945, and played a pivotal role in the creation of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

 

By the Grace of Stragers: Two Boys' During the Holocaust
Yad Vashem in association with The Holocaust Survivors’ Memoirs Project, 2005, 286 pages, $21 (airmail included) / NIS 69

This memoir comprises two father-son rescue stories. The first—told in the father’s diary—relates the story of Gabor Mermelstein (Gabriel Mermall) as a slave laborer in the Hungarian military’s Labor Service, and his rescue in 1944 together with his young son Thomas. Unable to save his wife, who was deported to Auschwitz, Gabor hid with his son in the Ruthenian forests, aided by a poor Hungarian lumberjack, Ivan Gartner, who generously supplied them with food and shelter for more than six months.

The second story is told by the son, Norbert Yasharoff. As a young man, Yasharoff was forced to move with his family into the Sofia, an experience that returned to Sofia, where he lived under communist rule. He assisted his father, an attorney, in the post-war defense of Dimitur Peshev, who had been instrumental in preventing the deportation of Bulgarian Jews. Yasharoff relates his experiences as a student and writer in Sofia University, followed by his immigration to Israel, where he immediately joined the army, finding fulfillment in the land of his dreams.
 

top