This week, part 2 of our 2018 Summer Reading List. This list is a compilation of books that have been reviewed on Ukrainian Jewish Heritage here on Nash Holos.
Books can entertain, inform, edify. But they always enrich minds – those of the reader but also of the author – some of whom are inspired by the writing a book to write more on a topic that intrigues them. That includes a few of the authors in this list.
So here are seven more books recommended by Nash Holos Ukrainian Roots Radio and the sponsor of this series, the Ukrainian Jewish Encounter, for your summer reading pleasure, and edification.
East-West Street tells the story of two jurists from Lviv who were instrumental in shaping the precedent setting Nuremberg trial.
Most people the world over still really have no idea of the origins of the term genocide, which like the Holocaust, is in danger of becoming an empty cliché instead of a powerful metaphor for the capacity of man’s inhumanity to man. East-West Street is a gripping account of the origins—in effect, the invention—of the terms “genocide” and also “crimes against humanity.”
These two concepts became the centerpiece for the prosecution of Nazi war criminals.
The author of EAST WEST STREET, Phillipe Sands, brings together the stories of his grandfather and these two jurists from Lviv, Rafael Lemkin and Hersch Lauterpacht.
All three men had the misfortune of having their entire families sent to their deaths by the Nazi governor of German-occupied Poland Hans Frank, who visited Lviv in 1942. In an astonishing twist, Sands met and got to know the son of Hans Frank while working on this book. Sands also met the son of another Nazi, Otto von Wachter, who was in charge of Lviv during the Second World War.
What the reader will find in this fascinating book is that in the face of horror it is possible to find the courage and strength to achieve extraordinary goals.
City of Lions is a story about Lviv, the western Ukrainian city often referred to as the Vienna of the east.
The book consists of an essay by Polish author Josef Wittlin who waxes eloquent about an early twentieth century Lviv still glittering with an imperial Austrian splendor. It was a city that ceased to exist by 1945.
A matching essay My Lviv by Philippe Sands, echoes the Wittlin text but brings Lviv into modern times.
Sands calls out the failure of those in today’s Lviv to fully acknowledge all its history; but nonetheless he admits the ineffable spirit of the city ultimately seduces him.
Author Martin Pollack has written three books that reveal some startling facts about Galicia and its fascinating history.
In The Dead Man in the Bunker, a man is found murdered in 1947 in the mountains between Austria and Italy.
He was not just any man. He was a highly ranked SS officer who commanded death squads in Eastern Europe and was head of the Gestapo in the Austrian city of Linz. And he was the author’s father.
Martin Pollack developed an interest in Galicia after he was barred from Poland by communist authorities from 1980 to 1989. His first book cemented a lifelong passion for the subject: To Galicia: Of Hassidim, Hutsuls, Poles, and Ruthenians. An Imaginary Journey Through the Vanished World of Eastern Galicia and Bukovina. (In German and Polish only.)
Until 1918, Galicia was a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It was actually an enlightened empire; it provided emancipation for the Jews and institutionalized nation-building for both Poles and Ukrainians.
