Book Recommendations

84840 results

Centropa in Poland

3,500,000 Jews lived in pre Holocaust Poland, 3,000,000 were murdered and 500,000 tried to start life over after the war. With the coming of Communism and a wave of anti-Semitic violence, the majority fled for the west and for Israel. In 1968 a government-sponsored program against Jews sent another 20,000 out of the country. Every government since democracy returned in 1989, however, has been strongly positive to the country's Jewish institutions and organizations. Although the number of Jews living in Poland today has been exaggerated, what is not in dispute is that this small community is quite lively, with a Jewish school and kindergarten, an active synagogue in Warsaw, and Jewish community centers in Warsaw and Cracow.

Regarding elderly Jews in Poland today, those who we interviewed, they are scattered about the country in Warsaw, Lublin, Legnica, Cracow and a few other towns. Our interview team was headed by Anka Grupinska, a noted author of three books on Polish-Jewish relations.

Anka also served in Poland's embassy in Israel for six years during the 1990s and currently hosts a Jewish cultural program on public radio in Warsaw.

Our Polish project is unique: until Anka and her team begun seeking out these last witnesses to a world destroyed, no one-to our knowledge--had ever interviewed them about their lives in pre-Holocaust Poland.

That makes this archive of stories and images all the more compelling, and all the more useful for historians, archivists and social anthropologists.

Centropa in Poland

Anka also served in Poland's embassy in Israel for six years during the 1990s and currently hosts a Jewish cultural program on public radio in Warsaw.

That makes this archive of stories and images all the more compelling, and all the more useful for historians, archivists and social anthropologists.

Centropa in Romania

800,000 Jews lived in interwar Romania, which then included all of Moldova and a slice of northeastern Bulgaria. Around 200,000 to 250,000 were murdered during the Holocaust. Fewer than10,000 Jews live in Romania today; most of them are elderly as more than 340,000 Romanian Jews emigrated to Israel.

Between 2001 and 2007, Centropa employed two teams in Romania, a large country where elderly Jews are scattered in small communities separated by long distances and bad roads. In the northwest part of the country (where most elderly Jews still speak Hungarian) Ildiko Molnar directed our team. Ildiko, a graduate of the Jewish Studies program in Cluj, has worked for Centropa since 2001 and trained more than a dozen interviewers and editors.

In 2006 we began a cooperative partnership with the Goren Goldstein Center for Jewish Studies in Bucharest, and Anca Ciuciu is our education coordinator and Professor Felice Waldman is our historical advisor.

Centropa in Romania

Centropa in Former Yugoslavia

This short text describes our work in Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Macedonia

There was no country called Yugoslavia before 1918, and this “Union of South Slavs” brought together lands that had spent centuries under Austrian, Italian, Hungarian and Ottoman rule. Some 87,000 Jews lived in this new land and they ranged from Sephardic Jews in Bosnia, Serbia and along the Adriatic to Ashkenazi Jews in most of Croatia and in the Hungarian-speaking parts of Serbia (Vojvodina).

Much to the chagrin of the other republics in Yugoslavia, Serbia dominated this interwar state, and when the Germans invaded in 1941, more than a few Slovenes and Croats saw them as liberators. Jews, of course, did not.

During the Second World War, citizens of Yugoslavia fought the invading Germans, Bulgarians, Hungarians and Italians and also fought each other. Although the Allies originally backed Serbian partisans, they switched their allegiance to Tito’s Communist partisans, who were clearly winning.

At war’s end, ten percent of the country’s population had died but over seventy percent of its Jews had been murdered. Yugoslavia then became a one party state under Tito, who, after breaking with Stalin in 1948, ruled the country until his death in 1980. His country would last just over another decade without him.

Before the break-up in 1991, some 6,500 Jews were living in the country and when Yugoslavia began its decade of wars they began fleeing the country for Israel, England and North America.

Even as of this writing, in 2019, it can be said with the economy continuing to languish (except for Slovenia), a great many of ex-Yugoslavia’s Jews have continued to leave. Very few remain today, although Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Macedonia all maintain lively, spirited communities, despite their miniscule size.

As for Centropa’s interviews: we have been lucky to work with Rachel Chanin in Serbia - an American who speaks excellent Serbian and who is married to Yitzhak Asiel, Serbia's chief rabbi. Aside from Rachel's extensive social welfare and cultural activities, she conducted interviews for us in Serbia and in Macedonia. Over the years, we have also managed to pick up a handful of interviews in Croatia and Bosnia.

In Croatia, Silvia Heim and Lea Siljak conducted two excellent interviews for us in Zagreb. We would also like to call your attention to a book published in 2013 called 1941: The Year That Keeps Returning, by Slavko Goldstein. Professor Goldstein, who died in 2017, was a publisher, Jewish community activist and writer. His memoirs are considered by many to be one of the finest personal stories published on the Holocaust in the past ten years.

For more information about the Holocaust in Croatia, read this article by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance

Here’s a brilliant set of pages about what happened in Serbia during the Holocaust

Regarding the Second World War in Bosnia, we highly recommend Emily Greble’s study, Sarajevo 1941.

Regarding Macedonia: https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-holocaust-in-macedonia-deportation-of-monastir-jewry

Centropa in Former Yugoslavia

This short text describes our work in Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Macedonia

Before the break-up in 1991, some 6,500 Jews were living in the country and when Yugoslavia began its decade of wars they began fleeing the country for Israel, England and North America.

For more information about the Holocaust in Croatia, read this article by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance

Here’s a brilliant set of pages about what happened in Serbia during the Holocaust

Regarding the Second World War in Bosnia, we highly recommend Emily Greble’s study, Sarajevo 1941.

Regarding Macedonia: https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-holocaust-in-macedonia-deportation-of-monastir-jewry

Centropa in Former Yugoslavia

This short text describes our work in Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Macedonia

Before the break-up in 1991, some 6,500 Jews were living in the country and when Yugoslavia began its decade of wars they began fleeing the country for Israel, England and North America.

For more information about the Holocaust in Croatia, read this article by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance

Here’s a brilliant set of pages about what happened in Serbia during the Holocaust

Regarding the Second World War in Bosnia, we highly recommend Emily Greble’s study, Sarajevo 1941.

Regarding Macedonia: https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-holocaust-in-macedonia-deportation-of-monastir-jewry

Centropa in the Czech Republic

More than 78,000 Czech Jews were deported to their deaths during the Second World War. In 1946 between 12,000 to 15,000 lived in the country. The community shrunk further with the coming of Communism in 1948, the Communist show trials soon after, and in the wake of the Soviet-led invasion of 1968. Today there are around 3,000 Jews live in today's Czech Republic.

Almost no religious Jews remained in the Czech Republic after 1948, and our family stories and their accompanying photographs reflect this. What we have, however, is a collection of stories and pictures of some of the most erudite and well educated Jews anywhere in Central Europe and their biographies make for fascinating reading. More than a few of these people remained in their country after 1948 because they strongly believed in Communism, and all of them became wholly disenchanted-if not during the anti-Semitic show trials of the early 1950s, then during the Soviet invasion of 1968.

We interviewed 73 elderly Jews in Prague, Brno and other cities. Dr Martin Korcok directs our team in the Czech Republic. We have been working in the Czech Republic since 2002, and we cooperate closely with The Federation of Czech Jewish Communities, The Jewish Museum of Prague, and with The Terezin Memorial.

Centropa in the Czech Republic

Centropa in Romania

Centropa in Russia

Using the term Russia can often be misleading, as the term is used to describe the Soviet Union, the pre-1917 Russian Empire, and the post 1991 Russian federation. Centropa worked in that section of the Federation we will address as Russia proper. We highly recommend an essay by Dr Michael Stanislawski who goes into some detail on the various historical chapters of Russian Jewry. His essay can be found through the YIVO website: http://www.yivoinstitute.org/pdf/russian_empire.pdf

Centropa worked through two separate offices in Russia. In Moskow, Svetlana Bogdanova conducted several interviews for us and concentrated on Soviet Jewish veterans of the Second World War. Most of our interviews, however, were conducted in St Petersburg, where we worked closely with the Adain Lo Jewish Community Center. Our coordinator there was Natasha Gordina. Although we have interviewed more than fifty people in St Petersburg, once again, we concentrated primarily on Soviet army veterans.

Our more than 120 Russian interviews offer a fascinating picture of how Jews lived in 20th century Russia. In these interviews you will find stories of those who fled to Central Asia during the Second World War, front line soldiers' stories, and even a few stories of those imprisoned in Stalin's gulags.