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Usually ships in 1 business days | | | 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. | | | |
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| | Product Details | | Author: | Omer Bartov | | Hardcover: | 256 pages | | Publisher: | Princeton University Press | | Publication Date: | September 17, 2007 | | ISBN: | 069113121X | | Package Length: | 8.5 inches | | Package Width: | 5.8 inches | | Package Height: | 1.2 inches | | Package Weight: | 0.95 pounds | | Average Customer Rating: |  based on 4 reviews |
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 Excellent account of an inredibly sad situation Aug 29, 2008
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.
4 of 6 found the following review helpful:
Interesting look at Galicia Apr 19, 2008
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 Ukrainians partook in the pogroms or murders of Jews from the beginning days of the German occupation. Few, on the other hand, tried to save Jews. One can argue that they had no time to save Jews as they were looking out for themselves, yet that does not go a long way in explaining why so many were implicit in their deaths.
Today all the memorials erected to commemorate the suffering and death of the Jewish people are overlooked or forgotten about, in their place have sprung up dozens of monuments to Ukrainian nationalists, many of them guilty of mass murder and anti-Semitism. It should be mentioned that during the Soviet era the Holocaust was not mentioned, the Soviets did not want to single out any one group of people (commendable in some respects but not realistic or to a degree honest) and most of the memorials do not mention which group died but rather you will find them saying that so many 'Soviet citizens' died/were murdered, etc. It seems that it will be a long while, if ever, before Ukraine and Ukrainians can come to grips with their past in regards to WWII and the Holocaust.
Overall the book is an interesting read because one can get a glimpse of the exact same thing happening in every village/town/city, one after another. It is not a natural phenomenon, I'm sure to a degree it is part of a state sponsored program to erase the Ukrainian past during WWII in regards to the Holocaust and replace it with heroic nationalistic characters like Stepan Bandera.
7 of 9 found the following review helpful:
 a bit of a disappointment Dec 08, 2007
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 each place the author visited. It also wasn't clear why the author picked these particular places to visit and not others. I hope this upcoming book on one particular village will be better, as it will allow him to go more in-depth.
17 of 34 found the following review helpful:
Time does not heal Oct 10, 2007
Professor Omer Bartov's holocaustic travelogue in the Western Ukraine has been published just when the US Congress is about to pretend that the Armenian Genocide of 1915 did not happen, lest Turkish nationalism be offended. Bartov has visited the Western Ukraine, once called Eastern Galicia, where all memory of centuries of Polish rule and Polish and Jewish habitation has been virtually ignored and erased.
Of all the countries occupied in WWII by the Nazis Ukraine was the most enthusiastic about being liberated from the Soviets and the most eager to help kill as many Jews as possible. Clearly this was the result of the weakness of Ukrainian nationalism and its perceived need to cleanse its territory ethnically of Poles and Jews whose long history there compromised the integrity of the newly nationalistic Ukrainians. Something similar could be found in Lithuania and Latvia, but what this reminds me of the most is the Turkish refusal to recognize that over one million Armenians were killed through the policies of the Ottoman government during WWI. If Bartov visited Eastern Turkey, the homeland of the Armenians, he would find denial by both Turkish officials and the indigenous Kurd population, both of which cannot accept that Armenians ever existed there.
Nationalism is a deadly poison and the Jews and Armenians have been its most notable victims. Pity, then, that Zionists also have to pretend there was no Armenian genocide lest its Turkish friends take umbrage, and that Armenians have persisted in their pro-Arab stance in the Middle East long after it had any real utility for them.
The ruling castes of the world one hundred years ago feared class warfare above all. Little did they know that nationalistic not socialist hatreds would be the most devastating for peace and security.
Bartov is a well respected scholar of the Holocaust and his visit to the new Ukrainian nation is very illuminating. Let us hope the Ukrainians some day get to feel secure enough to face the truth about what they have done in the name of their nation.
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