Description: A vivid firsthand account of the erasure of the Jewish community in the Ukrainian shtetl of Dubova during the pogroms of 1919.
Brief description: Born in the Belarusian shtetl Lyuban in 1885, Rokhl Faygnberg witnessed and wrote about many of the defining events of modern Jewish history-wars, pogroms, and the birth of the State of Israel. She became the first professional Jewish female author who earned a living from writing novels and penning essays for the Yiddish and Hebrew press. After the pogroms of the civil war in Ukraine 1918-1921, which she powerfully chronicled in her work, she moved to Poland and eventually settled in Mandate Palestine in 1933, where she published largely in Hebrew under the name Rakhel Imri. She died in Tel Aviv in 1972.
Review Quotes: "Haunting and horrifying. Faygnberg meticulously documented the genocidal pogroms of the Russian Civil War at a human level through the story of a single town, Dubova, and the complete destruction of its Jews and their community. A century later, English readers can read her important account for the first time. The editor and translators have helped to recover the traumatic memory of the single worst episode of anti-Jewish violence in modern history before the Holocaust." --Polly Zavadivker, Associate Professor of History and Jewish Studies, University of Delaware, USA