BOOK NOTES

A view of Berezhany's multi-ethnic community

"Together and Apart in Brzezany: Poles, Jews and Ukrainians" by Shimon Redlich. Indianapolis, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 2002, 224 pp., $29.95 (cloth).

In "Together and Apart in Brzezany: Poles, Jews and Ukrainians," historian and Holocaust survivor Shimon Redlich tells the story of the multi-ethnic community of Berezhany (Brzezany is the Polish-spelling of the city's name) in eastern Galicia, in the years 1919-1945, based on historical sources and on the memories of its former inhabitants, including those of the author.

The author writes in the conclusion, "Poles, Jews and Ukrainians lived side by side in Brzezany for years. They lived together and apart at the same time. Their 'togetherness' could hold only during periods of relative stability. When destabilization came, the Polish-Ukrainian-Jewish 'triangle' started to disintegrate. The unprecedented wartime circumstances and the brutality of life under both Soviets and Germans brought out the worst in human nature. Ordinary mortality was tested by extraordinary circumstances. Poles, Jews and Ukrainians lived through difficult and cruel times. But there was a difference: whereas Poles and Ukrainians reversed roles as oppressors and oppressed, the Jews were always powerless victims. Most of the Poles and Ukrainians survived the war. The Jews didn't."

"The research and writing of this book were both a professional and a personal experience for me," the author notes. "As a historian I wanted to place my past within a wider historical context ... Going back to Brzezany made me happy. Was I chasing after my good childhood years, before life was shattered? Did I look for proof that once I too had a normal life?..."

Prof. Redlich was 6 years old when the Germans invaded Berezhany. On his research visit to Berezhany, Mr. Redlich reunites with the families of Karol Codogni, a Pole, and Tanka Kontsevych, a Ukrainian (to whose memory the book is dedicated), both of whom risked their lives to hide him from the German troops. The complicated ethnic undertones and tensions in Berezhany were the result of the numerous times the city changed hands. It was held by Poland, the Hapsburg Empire, the Soviet Union and Germany.

Prof. Redlich currently holds the Solly Yellin Chair in Lithuanian and East European Jewry and lectures on modern European history at Ben-Gurion University in Israel.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, June 23, 2002, No. 25, Vol. LXX

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