Okay, once again, I’ve wondered off our usual genre path into ugly nonfiction. While traveling, I met Michael R. Bien, the author of The Jews of Birzai: The Last Sabbath. Not surprisingly, our conversation turned to books, and I choose to read his book. I should tell you that while it is difficult to read the close up look at the impact of the early WWII events on a small community in northern Lithuania, nonetheless, this is an important story.
I’ve always found reading about the holocaust to be extremely painful. The level of inhumanity that manifested during that era and the failure of society to contain the monstrous behaviors of its leaders is a sad statement about our human species. Having a background in history, I have probably read much more about WWII than most people, but this book provided a different take. It looked at a small shtetl (a small Jewish village or town located in Eastern Europe) and particularly the individuals who lived there. Essentially, this was a microhistory of the holocaust. As Hitler began his aggression against other European countries and then signed a non-aggression back with Russia, the locals in Birzai debated what steps they needed to take. For most of the inhabitants of the shtetl, there could be no escape from murder, but a few fortunate people found a way out. Bien tracks them all in his book in what is a meaningful addition to the holocaust literature.
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