Memoirs of a Jewish District Attorney from Soviet Ukraine

Mikhail Goldis (1926-2020) worked as a detective and district attorney for 30 years in Soviet Ukraine and wrote his memoirs after immigrating to the US in 1993. Translated by Marat Grinberg, the memoirs tell the fascinating story of what it took for a Jew to survive in the halls of Soviet power. 

List of contents

Introduction
Part One: Criminal Cases


The Krasyliv Years
1. A Jewish Hullabaloo 
2. Thou Shalt Not Kill
3. Meir and Khoma
4. Guilty without Guilt
5. On the Shores of the River Bug

The Kamyanets-Podilskyi Years
6. The Forbidden Zone
7. “Seven Forty”
8. A Mistaken Object
9. Twenty Years Later
10. A Defendant’s Oral Argument

Women
11. Valya-Valentina
12. Samara
13. Nadezhda Petrovna
14. Alla

Part Two: Other Memoirs

15. Serbiyanka 
16. Above the Abyss
17. One Day in the Life of a Detective

Notes

About the author

Mikhail Goldis (1926-2020) fought in the Red Army during World War II, graduated from the Law faculty of the Kyiv State University, and worked as a detective and district attorney for more than 30 years in Soviet Ukraine. He immigrated to the US in 1993.

Summary

What was it like to work as a Jewish district attorney in provincial Soviet Ukraine in the post-Stalinist eras? What role did antisemitism and Holocaust memories play in solving and investigating the criminal cases? How does a detective’s mind work? The answers to these and many other fascinating questions are found in this book. Mikhail Goldis (1926-2020) worked as a detective and district attorney for 30 years in Ukraine and wrote his memoirs after immigrating to the US in 1993. Translated by Marat Grinberg, a prolific scholar of Russian and Jewish literature and cinema, the memoirs tell the rich and poignant story of Goldis’s life and what it took for a Jew to navigate and survive in the halls of Soviet power. 

Product details

• Authors: Mikhail Goldis
• Assisted by: Marat Grinberg (Editor and translation)
• Publisher: Ingram Publishers Services
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 15.10.2024
• EAN: 9798887195902
• ISBN: 979-8-88719-590-2
• No. of pages: 180
• Dimensions: 127 mm x 203 mm x 11 mm
• Weight: 216 g
• Illustrations: schwarz-weiss Illustrationen
• Series: Immigrant Worlds & Texts
• Subjects: Fiction > Narrative literature > Letters, diaries; Social sciences, law, business > Sociology > General, dictionaries; History: specific events & topics, European History, HISTORY / Jewish, BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Lawyers & Judges, Judaism: life & practice, Crime & criminology, HISTORY / Europe / Ukraine