A Small Town in Ukraine

The Place We Came from, the Place We Went Back To

De: Bernard Wasserstein

Narrado por: Steven John Shepherd

Brought to you by Penguin.

Decades ago, the historian Bernard Wasserstein set out to uncover the hidden past of the town forty miles west of Lviv where his family, especially his grandfather Berl, originated: Krakowiec (Krah-KOV-yets). In this book he recounts its dramatic and traumatic history. 'I want to observe and understand how some of the great forces that determined the shape of our times affected ordinary people.'

Wasserstein traces the arc of history across centuries of religious and political conflict, as armies of Cossacks, Turks, Swedes and Muscovites rampaged through the region. In the Age of Enlightenment, the Polish magnate Ignacy Cetner built his palace at Krakowiec and, with his vivacious daughter, Princess Anna, created an arcadia of refinement and serenity. Under the Habsburg emperors after 1772, Krakowiec developed into a typical shtetl, with a jostling population of Poles, Ukrainians and Jews. In 1914, disaster struck. 'Seven years of terror and carnage' left a legacy of ferocious national antagonisms. During the Second World War the Jews were murdered in circumstances harrowingly described by Wasserstein. After the war the Poles were expelled and the town dwindled into a border outpost. Today, the storm of history once again rains down on Krakowiec as refugees flee for their lives from Ukraine.

In the lives of Wasserstein's own family and the many others he has rediscovered, the people of Krakowiec become a prism through which we can feel the shocking immediacy of history. Original in conception and brilliantly achieved, A Small Town in Ukraine is a masterpiece of recovery and insight.

©2023 Bernard Wasserstein (P)2023 Penguin Audio

Reseñas de la Crítica

A fine and deeply affecting work of history and memoir (Philippe Sands)

This poignant journey of discovery provides some profound insights into how hatred can be incited and manipulated to destroy communities, and is all too relevant to what is happening in the region today. (Adam Zamoyski)

extraordinarily moving ... Though he has been thinking about the story and researching it for decades, the writing feels immediate. The book is part memoir, part history lesson about 'old Europe' as a battleground between four empires, and part lament for the lost world of European Jewry. Perhaps the most valuable thing about it for British readers is its reminder of how lucky we are to have welcomed refugees to our shores and not to have exported them. Wasserstein has a deep understanding of places where borders have violently changed every couple of generations and whole populations have been massacred as a result of ideology, religion or whim. (Victor Sebestyen)

This formidable book takes pride of place among the growing corpus of literature coming out of the swampy bloodlands. If you want to understand why hate has been unleashed again in Europe, this is the indispensable guide (Roger Boyes)

Using the lens of his own family's betrayal, Bernard Wasserstein's A Small Town in Ukraine revisits one of the country's darkest moments ... revelatory and dramatic ... [a] noble, nicely detailed enterprise of historical and familial recovery (Julian Evans)