A Lost World: the Galician Shtetl and Siberia

Meer over het boek

The memoir intertwines the lost worlds of East European Jews and life under Soviet rule, tracing a Jewish family's journey from the Galician shtetl of Mos´ciska (Mostyska) to America. It captures their experiences through two World Wars, deportation to a labor settlement in the Soviet regime, and travels across Central Asia and the Middle East. The narrative emphasizes the resilience of Jewish tradition amid mass human rights violations. Most Polish Jews who survived World War II did so as refugees in the Soviet Union. Meier Landau and his family fled the Germans in Kraków but were later deported by the Soviets from Lviv, alongside many Polish families. This memoir serves as a powerful reminder of the importance of remembrance, especially relevant in times of war and displacement. Expertly annotated and edited by Lidia Zessin-Jurek, Landau’s detailed account reconstructs a remarkable odyssey of Polish Jewish life, survival, and communal organization from the First World War through the Second. The collaboration with historian Zessin-Jurek, language editor Laura Garland, and George Landau, who experienced these events as a child, provides a complex and evocative portrait of a journey through adversity. This volume enriches our understanding of a history that remains too little known.