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Life in Transit is the long-awaited sequel to Shimon Redlich¿s widely acclaimed Together and Apart in Brzezany, in which he discussed his childhood during the War and the Holocaust. Life in Transit tells the story of his adolescence in the city of Lodz in postwar Poland. Redlich¿s personal memories are placed within the wider historical context of Jewish life in Poland and in Lodz during the immediate postwar years. Lodz in the years 1945-1950 was the second-largest city in the country and the major urban center of the Jewish population. Redlich¿s research based on conventional sources and numerous interviews indicates that although the survivors still lived in the shadow of the Holocaust, postwar Jewish Lodz was permeated with a sense of vitality and hope.
About the author
Shimon Redlich (Ph.D. New York University) was born in Lwow, Poland in 1935 and lived in the nearby town of Brzezany where most of his family was annihilated during the Holocaust. He and his mother survived with the help of a Polish family and a Ukrainian peasant woman. The author lived in the city of Lodz in the years 1945-1950 and emigrated to Israel in early 1950. He served as Professor of Modern History at Ben-Gurion University until his retirement in 2003. Redlich published books and articles on the History of the Jews in the Soviet Union and on Ukrainian-Jewish relations. He is author of War, Holocaust and Stalinism: A Documented History of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee in the USSR and Together and Apart in Brzezany: Poles, Jews and Ukrainians, 1919-1945.
Summary
Life in Transit is the long-awaited sequel to Shimon Redlich’s widely acclaimed Together and Apart in Brzezany, in which he discussed his childhood during the War and the Holocaust. Life in Transit tells the story of his adolescence in the city of Lodz in postwar Poland. Redlich’s personal memories are placed within the wider historical context of Jewish life in Poland and in Lodz during the immediate postwar years. Lodz in the years 1945-1950 was the second-largest city in the country and the major urban center of the Jewish population. Redlich’s research based on conventional sources and numerous interviews indicates that although the survivors still lived in the shadow of the Holocaust, postwar Jewish Lodz was permeated with a sense of vitality and hope.
Additional text
Life in Transit is populated by living, breathing people—rendered unfiltered by Redlich—who, in the shadow of the Holocaust, evinced a tremendous will to live. . . . [T]he distinctive contribution of Life in Transit is its emphasis, as shown through the lens of the remarkable Lodz Jewish community, on the vitality of the remaining remnant. Far from being dispirited, demoralized, or helpless, these Jews were protagonists both in their own survival during the Holocaust and in the rebirth of Jewry in its aftermath. In portraying this community—and, in so doing, revising the predominant historiographical reconstruction of postwar Polish Jewry—Redlich has produced a wondrous book.
