Erased: Vanishing Traces of Jewish Galicia in Present-Day Ukraine |  | Author: Omer Bartov
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Category: Book
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Rating:  7 reviews
Sales Rank: 136691
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 256
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 8.5 x 5.8 x 1.2
ISBN: 069113121X
Dewey Decimal Number: 305.892404779
EAN: 9780691131214
ASIN: 069113121X
Publication Date: September 17, 2007
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Product Description
In Erased, Omer Bartov uncovers the rapidly disappearing vestiges of the Jews of western Ukraine, who were rounded up and murdered by the Nazis during World War II with help from the local populace. What begins as a deeply personal chronicle of the Holocaust in his mother's hometown of Buchach--in former Eastern Galicia--carries him on a journey across the region and back through history. This poignant travelogue reveals the complete erasure of the Jews and their removal from public memory, a blatant act of forgetting done in the service of a fiercely aggressive Ukrainian nationalism. Bartov, a leading Holocaust scholar, discovers that to make sense of the heartbreaking events of the war, he must first grapple with the complex interethnic relationships and conflicts that have existed there for centuries. Visiting twenty Ukrainian towns, he recreates the histories of the vibrant Jewish and Polish communities who once lived there-and describes what is left today following their brutal and complete destruction. Bartov encounters Jewish cemeteries turned into marketplaces, synagogues made into garbage dumps, and unmarked burial pits from the mass killings. He bears witness to the hastily erected monuments following Ukraine's independence in 1991, memorials that glorify leaders who collaborated with the Nazis in the murder of Jews. He finds that the newly independent Ukraine-with its ethnically cleansed and deeply anti-Semitic population--has recreated its past by suppressing all memory of its victims. Illustrated with dozens of hauntingly beautiful photographs from Bartov's travels, Erased forces us to recognize the shocking intimacy of genocide.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 7
 Excellent account of an inredibly sad situation August 29, 2008
Max Heffler (Houston, TX USA)
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
This book explained the extremely said situation of the erasure of Jewish heritage in the Ukraine. It is quite thorough on the towns that were visited. It is a must read for anyone with roots in the former Galicia.
A very important tribute October 5, 2008
Seth J. Frantzman (Jerusalem, Israel)
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
As the world has come to learn about each and every depopulated Palestinian village and record their names and the Nakhba (All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948, or Sacred Landscape: The Buried History of the Holy Land since 1948 (Honorable Mention for the Albert Hourani Award, Middle Eastern Studies Association)) it is interesting to learn how Europeans, the same Europeans who value every inch of Palestinian history, obliterated, destroyed and crushed the Jewish history of eastern Europe, in this case Galicia. The book tells how the Jews were first destroyed and then their history, through neglect, communistic anti-semitism and finally Ukrainian nationalism, was forgotten and pushed aside. This is one of the few testaments to a vanished people. While German Jewry has been done justice in numerous important publications (The Pity of It All: A Portrait of the German-Jewish Epoch, 1743-1933), there has been comparatively little interest in the Yiddish civilization and the Jews of the Pale of Settlement or Galicia. Outside of the Annihilation of Lithuanian Jewry and Synagogues Without Jews this history has simply vanished. This is such an important book not only for Jews whose ancestors came from these places but also for all the Jews whose roots are in Eastern Europe and Russia, and for Europeans who might one day want to recall this vanished people who once lived among them.
A very sad book that describes a hidden history that, while most recall the holocaust, few can see the physical traces of the once vibrant, warm, loving communities that were crushed under the Nazi boot and then erased to make way for modernity.
Seth J. Frantzman
 Interesting look at Galicia April 19, 2008
T. Kunikov (United States)
13 out of 15 found this review helpful
For a long time Galicia was a 'hotbed' of nationalism and this book shows the ramifications of that. I am from a city that is, according to the author, part of Galicia but it is not one of the cities he traveled to and wrote about in the book, sadly. I would have been quite interested to read his take on what happened to this city after the war, etc.
Overall, as another reviewer has said, the book is at times repetitive. What readers will notice is that for the most part in practically every city Ukrainians partook in the pogroms or murders of Jews from the beginning days of the German occupation. Few, on the other hand, tried to save Jews. One can argue that they had no time to save Jews as they were looking out for themselves, yet that does not go a long way in explaining why so many were implicit in their deaths.
Today all the memorials erected to commemorate the suffering and death of the Jewish people are overlooked or forgotten about, in their place have sprung up dozens of monuments to Ukrainian nationalists, many of them guilty of mass murder and anti-Semitism. It should be mentioned that during the Soviet era the Holocaust was not mentioned, the Soviets did not want to single out any one group of people (commendable in some respects but not realistic or to a degree honest) and most of the memorials do not mention which group died but rather you will find them saying that so many 'Soviet citizens' died/were murdered, etc. It seems that it will be a long while, if ever, before Ukraine and Ukrainians can come to grips with their past in regards to WWII and the Holocaust.
Overall the book is an interesting read because one can get a glimpse of the exact same thing happening in every village/town/city, one after another. It is not a natural phenomenon, I'm sure to a degree it is part of a state sponsored program to erase the Ukrainian past during WWII in regards to the Holocaust and replace it with heroic nationalistic characters like Stepan Bandera.
Time does not heal October 10, 2007
N. Ravitch (Savannah, GA United States)
20 out of 33 found this review helpful
Professor Omer Bartov's holocaustic travelogue in the Western Ukraine has been published just when the US Congress is about to pretend that the Armenian Genocide of 1915 did not happen, lest Turkish nationalism be offended. Bartov has visited the Western Ukraine, once called Eastern Galicia, where all memory of centuries of Polish rule and Polish and Jewish habitation has been virtually ignored and erased.
Of all the countries occupied in WWII by the Nazis Ukraine was the most enthusiastic about being liberated from the Soviets and the most eager to help kill as many Jews as possible. Clearly this was the result of the weakness of Ukrainian nationalism and its perceived need to cleanse its territory ethnically of Poles and Jews whose long history there compromised the integrity of the newly nationalistic Ukrainians. Something similar could be found in Lithuania and Latvia, but what this reminds me of the most is the Turkish refusal to recognize that over one million Armenians were killed through the policies of the Ottoman government during WWI. If Bartov visited Eastern Turkey, the homeland of the Armenians, he would find denial by both Turkish officials and the indigenous Kurd population, both of which cannot accept that Armenians ever existed there.
Nationalism is a deadly poison and the Jews and Armenians have been its most notable victims. Pity, then, that Zionists also have to pretend there was no Armenian genocide lest its Turkish friends take umbrage, and that Armenians have persisted in their pro-Arab stance in the Middle East long after it had any real utility for them.
The ruling castes of the world one hundred years ago feared class warfare above all. Little did they know that nationalistic not socialist hatreds would be the most devastating for peace and security.
Bartov is a well respected scholar of the Holocaust and his visit to the new Ukrainian nation is very illuminating. Let us hope the Ukrainians some day get to feel secure enough to face the truth about what they have done in the name of their nation.
Descriptive Atlas Outstanding; Historical Narratives Need Improvement February 20, 2009
Jan Peczkis (Chicago IL, USA)
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
This work provides a city-by-city survey of remnants of Jewish architecture in eastern Galician towns. The properties that once belonged to the Polish expellees, often still bearing half-concealed Polish writing, are also frequently mentioned. Featured are the towns of Lviv (Lwow), Sambir (Sambor), Drohobych (Drohobycz), Stryi (Stryj), Bolekhiv (Bolechow), Ivano-Frankivsk (Stanislawow), Kolomyia (Kolomyja), Kosiv (Kosow), Kuty (Kitov), Horodenka (Gorodenka), Husiatyn (Gusiatyn), Chortkiv (Czortkow), Zolotyi Potik (Potok Zloty), Buchach (Buczacz), Monastyryska (Monasterzyska), Ternopil (Tarnopol), Berezhany (Brzezany), Zolochiv (Zloczow), Brody (Brodie), and Zhovkva (Zolkiew). Surprisingly, Boryslav (Boryslaw), the city of my ancestors, is omitted.
One learns many things. Prewar Poles and Ukrainians were poorer than the Jews (p. 17); 80% of present-day Jews have their ancestry in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (pp. 16-17), and both the Ukrainian and the Jewish ("Ha-Tikvah") national anthems were influenced by the Polish national anthem. (p. 121). Approximately 1.4 million Ukrainian soldiers and 2.2 million Ukrainian civilians perished at the hands of the Nazis. (p. 67).
Omer Bartov shows bias in featuring writers that he agrees with (e. g. Gross, Michlic), while mentioning, but ignoring the findings of, historians such as Marek Chodakiewicz (p. 40, 206), who he mischaracterizes as part of "the right-wing turn in Polish politics." Bartov also repeats unsupported Polonophobic assertions, such as: "Moreover, even as Poland did courageously resist the German occupation and paid a horrendous price for its struggle, numerous Polish patriots and nationalists were also anything but displeased with the `removal' of the Jews from their country, and not a few collaborated with the effort to bring about that `removal'." (p. 205).
He recognizes the fact that "Nazis chose Poland as the site of the death camps because of Poles" has no basis in fact, but then uses his "being a victim doesn't absolve you form being a victimizer" thinking inconsistently. (p. 159). Bartov is in strong denial about the fact and magnitude of Jewish-Soviet collaboration against Poles and Ukrainians. (pp. 35-36, 40, 68, 159-160, etc.). In actuality, this collaboration was substantive, and, contrary to exculpations, was not primarily driven by Jewish fear of the Nazis. (See detailed English-language review of Przemilczane zbrodnie: Zydzi i Polacy na Kresach w latach 1939-1941 (Polish Edition)).
Bartov repeatedly discusses Ukrainian-Nazi collaboration, and condemns the glorification of the OUN-UPA, which occurs through such things as the erection of statues honoring Bandera at Drohobych (p. 53), Buchach (p. 137), and Berezhany (pp. 164-165). However, he has only a rather superficial grasp of the magnitude of the OUN-UPA genocide of Poles (p. 52, 65-66, 92, 102, 129). For details, see my Listmania: Ukrainian Fascism...
Showing reviews 1-5 of 7
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