Poignant and nuanced, this work is an important contribution. . . . Highly recommended.
― Choice
Auerbach’s work deserves the highest praise as it is the first attempt at a comprehensive study of Jewish assimilation across generational lines covering the last eighty years of post-Holocaust Poland. . . . Auerbach’s book is undoubtedly an achievement. Beautifully written and skillfully contextualized, her study of Jewish assimilation in postwar Poland will become a must read for everyone interested in twentieth-century Polish-Jewish history.
― H-Poland H-Net Reviews
Amply illustrated with photographs of the families whose lives Auerbach chronicles, the book reverberates with hope and trembles with the tentative efforts of the people to rekindle the flames of their humanity after inestimable loss and trauma.
― Jewish Book Council
This is an interesting and often moving tableau about the efforts of some wounded people to overcome their personal tragedies while redefining their communal loyalties.
― Booklist
This imaginative and innovative monograph offers quite a new way of looking at the development of Jewish identity in People’s Poland. . . . This book is certainly essential reading for all those interested in the history of postwar Poland and its Jewish minority.
― Slavic Review
Filled with strongly drawn portraits of fascinating individuals . . . Auerbach’s book is an immense work of retrieval. She expands the range of Polish history, of Jewish history, and of the borderlands between them.
— Michael Steinlauf
Book Description
Two generations rebuild their lives in Poland after the Holocaust
From the Author
Karen Auerbach is Kronhill Lecturer in East European Jewish History at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. A former journalist, she reported for the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Star-Ledger of Newark, and the Forward.
About the Author
Karen Auerbach is Kronhill Lecturer in East European Jewish History at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. A former journalist, she reported for the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Star-Ledger of Newark, and the Forward.