I don't believe this book about Transnistria has been mentioned on the
list yet. Looks excellent. The author is from Czernowitz.
Jim
https://www.maksimgoldenshteyn.com/
Zoom program:
August 2, 2022 | Noon PST (virtual)
A Summer of Stories: Lunch-and-Learn Series
Hosted by Seattle’s Holocaust Center for Humanity
Registration info:
https://holocaustcenterseattle.org/programs-events/virtual-lunch-and-learn-series
When we think of Nazi camps, names such as Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, and
Dachau come instantly to mind. Yet the history of the Holocaust extends
beyond those notorious sites. In the former territory of Transnistria,
located in occupied Soviet Ukraine and governed by Nazi Germany’s
Romanian allies, many Jews perished due to disease, starvation, and
other horrific conditions. Through an intimate blending of memoir,
history, and reportage, So They Remember illuminates this oft-overlooked
chapter of the Holocaust.
In December 1941, with the German-led invasion of the Soviet Union in
its sixth month, a twelve-year-old Jewish boy named Motl Braverman,
along with family members, was uprooted from his Ukrainian hometown and
herded to the remote village of Pechera, the site of a Romanian death
camp. Author Maksim Goldenshteyn, the grandson of Motl, first learned of
his family’s wartime experiences in 2012. Through tireless research,
Goldenshteyn spent years unraveling the story of Motl, his family
members, and their fellow prisoners. The author here renders their story
through the eyes of Motl and other children, who decades later would
bear witness to the traumas they suffered.
Until now, Romanian historians and survivors have served as almost the
only chroniclers of the Holocaust in Transnistria. Goldenshteyn’s
account, based on interviews with Soviet-born relatives and other
survivors, archival documents, and memoirs, is among the first
full-length books to spotlight the Pechera camp, ominously known by its
prisoners as Mertvaya Petlya, or the “Death Noose.” Unfortunately, as
the author explains, the Pechera camp was only one of some two hundred
concentration sites spread across Transnistria, where local Ukrainian
policemen often conspired with Romanian guards to brutalize the prisoners.
In March 1944, the Red Army liberated Motl’s family and fellow captives.
Yet for decades, according to the author, they were silenced by Soviet
policies enacted to erase all memory of Jewish wartime suffering. So
They Remember gives voice to this long-repressed history and documents
how the events at Pechera and other surrounding camps and ghettos would
continue to shape remaining survivors and their descendants.
Reviews & Media
“A blend of intimate family memoir and historical research.” ―
Associated Press
“Goldenshteyn tells his family’s story in ‘So They Remember,’ but he
also walks us through the broader history in a style that blends deep
research with a compelling narrative.” ― KNKX-FM (NPR member station)
“Goldenshteyn’s book lays bare that we’re not so far removed from the
unimaginable, which was exacerbated by … a broad ‘policy of
forgetting.’” ― Seattle Met magazine
”Eighty years later, our Holocaust narrative is built around the
death factories: Auschwitz, Bełżec, Treblinka. But Motl’s story
reminds us that the fate of the Jews of the USSR, like the fate of the
Jews of Poland, all but played itself out long before the Wannsee
Conference, where the Final Solution was codified in early 1942.”
― Jewish Book Council
“Tells the dramatic story of a … Jewish family during Romania's
occupation of this [Soviet] territory. It is one of the few books that
draws attention to the tragedy of Jews from this region.” ― Radio
France Internationale (RFI) Romania
“Without any exaggeration, Maksim Goldenshteyn’s book should be counted
among the best publications on the topic of the Holocaust in Romania.
The author’s intent to document his grandfather’s survival in the death
camp of Pechora (Transnistria) turned into a book which would have made
even a trained historian proud (the author being a journalist) … [he]
did not leave any page of survivors’ testimonies unturned or historical
documentation held in various archives around the word unexamined. The
result is truly formidable, including a panoramic history of the Pechora
camp, as well as the Holocaust in Romania in its entirety. For
specialists, this a must read, truly.” ― Diana Dumitru, Chair of
Romanian Studies and Holocaust historian at Georgetown University
”A family history and a major academic contribution to the field of
Holocaust Studies … bringing to light the crimes against humanity
committed by the Axis (Romanian and German) powers in the oft-overlooked
and lesser-studied Eastern European region of Transnistria.” ― Cristina
A. Bejan, historian at Metropolitan State University of Denver
“I think the strength of this book is that it combines this personal,
family story ... with historical research. It makes it interesting for
the general public, not just for a small circle of scholars. There is
still a lot to be uncovered about Romania’s participation in the
Holocaust — specifically this territory of Transnistria.” ― Stefan
Cristian Ionescu, Holocaust historian at Northwestern University
“This well-written and engaging family memoir is an important
contribution to the growing number of books concerning the Holocaust in
the East. Maksim Goldenshteyn, a second-generation descendant of
Holocaust survivors, embeds personal—at times gripping—family accounts
within a broader historical context. In the process he explores the
complexities and contradictions that defined camp and ghetto
experiences, how survivors remember such events, and underscores both
the suffering and brutality, as well as the resilience and resistance of
Jews struggling to survive against all odds.” ― Barbara Rylko-Bauer,
author of A Polish Doctor in the Nazi Camps: My Mother's Memories of
Imprisonment, Immigration, and a Life Remade
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