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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.
