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.
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 4.0 / 5.0
A very important tribute:
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... more info
Excellent account of an inredibly sad situation:
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.
Interesting look at Galicia:
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... more info
a bit of a disappointment:
I was prepared to like this book better, as I have a strong interest in Jewish life in Eastern Galicia (present-day West Ukraine) and have traveled in this area. I agree with the author's main theory that for present-day Ukrainians to truly memorialize Jews who are no longer among them, they would need to deal with the role some Ukrainians had in the massacre of the Jews. So instead they memorialize Ukrainian nationalists. I found the book somewhat repetitive, with the situation being roughly the same in... more info
