The First part of My Life

Memoir of woman born in pre-WWII Poland, flight from Nazism to the Soviet Interior, re-settlement in Poland and Jewish life following the war, growing antisemitism, and immigration to Israel.

The First Part of My Life provides insights into what it meant to come of age as an intelligent and ambitious young Jewish woman in the shtetls of pre-World War II Poland. Brenner's Bereza Kartuska is a town marked by the ruins of the monastery of the "Kartuz Brothers." These same surroundings produced several famous Jewish figures, including the Yiddish writer, Kadya Molodowsky (1894-1975); Hebrew poet, Dov Chomsky (1913-1976); poet Masha Shtuker-Paiuk (1914-1988); and artist Moyshe Bernstein (1920-2006). The memoir also sheds light on the experience of Polish Jews who fled to the Soviet Interior during WWII, and on what it meant to live as a Jew in the shadow of the Holocaust in postwar Poland, only to ultimately flee antisemitism for Israel in 1956.

Laypersons, genealogists, and scholars of Jewish Studies, Holocaust Studies, Eastern European History, Polish History, Refugee and Migrant Studies, Feminist Studies, and Yiddish Studies, alike, will find this book both informative and compelling. The 25+images and maps bolster and contextualize the storyline.