In the Shadow of the Holocaust

In the Shadow of the Holocaust is a collection of newly translated short fiction written in the aftermath of one of the most significant Jewish tragedies of the 20th century. In these works, Jewish authors from Ukraine, Lithuania, Russia, and Belarus, writing in Yiddish and Russian, tell the stories of ordinary people living on after the devastation of the Holocaust. Filled with memories, love, and loss, these narratives describe not only how people died, but also how they continued to live. Complex reminders of the past become cornerstones of the present and future: a single remaining teacup now holds a family's legacy, the once-raspy voice of a telephone falls silent, a train timetable lists places of destroyed Jewish life.

Despite the official view in the USSR that wartime deaths of Jews resulted from the larger tragedy of Nazi Germany's invasion, Jews in the Soviet Union profoundly engaged with thinking about and memorializing the Holocaust, addressing it in a wide range of literary works. The significance of the texts they wrote, however, has remained largely neglected. This volume brings these compelling stories to light, providing students, teachers, researchers, and interested readers with critical, annotated translations of authors who wrote in richly diverse ways in the shadow of World War II. The voices brought together in this book create a distinct chorus of personal, idiosyncratic experiences of loss and provide new perspectives on questions fundamental to literature of the Holocaust, the legacies of genocide, and the nature of historical trauma and memory.