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“The struggles of Belarusian Jews in the first years after WWII to maintain Jewish religion and culture were stubborn and often heroic, but they were rarely successful and almost never documented. In this book, Leonid Smilovitsky painstakingly reconstructed a lost chapter of modern Jewish history. The contents describe the day to day courage of ‘ordinary Jews’ living in conditions of almost hopeless adversity and are a testimony to the power of the human spirit.” Shaul Stampfer, Sandrow Professor of Soviet and East European Jewish History, Hebrew University, Jerusalem “Belarus was devastated by the Nazi occupation. At least a quarter of its population perished in these years, including nearly 90 per cent of the Jewish population of the area. Most of the Jews who survived did so by flight into the interior of the Soviet Union and many returned after the war, so that in the years until 1953 there were nearly 200,000 Jews in the Belarusian Soviet Republic. They were largely terrorised by their wartime experiences and the official antisemitism of Stalin’s last years. However, some Jewish life did continue as is demonstrated by this detailed and comprehensive study. It is essential reading for all those interested in the Holocaust and its aftermath in Belarus and in the Soviet Union as a whole.” Antony Polonsky, Albert Abramson Professor of Holocaust Studies at Brandeis University and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum “Leonid Smilovitsky has made good use of his rare access to Belarusian archives, including those of the secret police, and has written a fine-grained, detailed history of Belarusian Jewry in the tumultuous decade after WWII. The reader gains a palpable sense of Soviet realities and Jewish courage, as Jews tried to reconstruct their lives, including the practice of Judaism, in the post-war era. Our impressions of that time will have to be revised in view of the fascinating evidence that Smilovitsky has brought together.” Zvi Gitelman, Preston R. Tisch Professor of Judaic Studies, University of Michigan “The Jews in Belarus are part of modern Belarusian history. This authoritative monograph deals with a very short time segment of Jewish life in what was called Soviet Byelorussia. The author has to be complimented for finding and retrieving so much original material for the period following the destructive years of WWII. Hopefully this publication will serve as an introduction to the study of Jews on the entire Belarusian territory where they interacted with the Belarusian population for many centuries.” Vitaut Kipel, Director of the Belarusian Institute of Arts and Sciences in New York Central European University Press Budapest – New York Sales and information: ceupress@ceu.hu Website: http://www.ceupress.com ...

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