This is the English translation of the memorial book of the destroyed Jewish Community of Smorgon. This book contains first-hand descriptions of the rich life of the Jewish community of Smorgon before the Shoah and its destruction by the Nazis. May this book serve as a memory to those who perished and the community that was destroyed.
Inspired by the new diversity of science fiction, fantasy, and horror in the twenty-first century, Hot Equations: Science, Fantasy, and the Radical Imagination on a Troubled Planet confronts the kinds of literary and political “realism” that continue to suppress the radical imagination. Alluding both to the ongoing climate catastrophe and to Tom Godwin’s “The Cold Equations”—that famous touchstone of “hard science fiction”—Hot Equations reads the crises of our "post-normal" moment via works that increasingly subvert genre containment and spill out into the public sphere. Drawing on archives and contemporary theory, author Jesse S. Cohn argues that these imaginative works of science fiction, fantasy, and horror strike at the very foundations of modernity, calling its basic assumptions into question. They threaten the modern order with a simultaneously terrible and promising anarchy, pointing to ways beyond the present medical, ecological, and political crises of pandemic, climate change, and rising global fascism. Examining books ranging from well-known titles like The Hunger Games and The Caves of Steel to newer works such as Under the Pendulum Sun and The Stone Sky, Cohn investigates the ways in which science fiction, fantasy, and horror address contemporary politics, social issues, and more. The “cold equations” that established normal life in the modern world may be in shambles, Cohn suggests, but a New Black Fantastic makes it possible for the radical imagination to glimpse viable possibilities on the other side of crisis.
A revolutionary fairy tale for adults that makes sharpening your critique of capitalism fun. Why? follows the travels of a boy named Pochemu—“Why” in Russian—as he tries to understand the Tsar’s empire, capitalism, state violence, and more. The answers his rapid-fire questions elicit, which make less and less sense the deeper he probes, are just as ridiculous today as they were a century ago, and just as descriptive of a society gone wrong. When Pochemu eventually enters the Land of Anarchy, he is confronted by his own strangeness to its citizens, who study the bizarre customs he brings to their free society. This is a timeless tale of the ludicrousness of power and its deluded defenders. In this fable, a child’s innocent questions meet the lies used to justify a world of cruelty and inequality. The result is quasi-absurdist, political comedy. Abba and Wolf Gordin, Jewish anarchists in the Russian Revolution, wrote proletarian literature to enlighten and entertain. It’s a genre that no longer really exists, but given this delightful book, maybe it should.
Created by the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the monumental 7-volume encyclopaedia that the present work inaugurates will make available - in one place for the first time - detailed information about the universe of camps, sub-camps, and ghettos established and operated by the Nazis - altogether some 20,000 sites, from Norway to North Africa and from France to Russia. This volume covers three groups of camps: the early camps established in the first year of Hitler's rule, the major concentration camps with their constellations of sub-camps that operated under the control of the SS-Business Administration Main Office, and youth camps. Overview essays precede entries on individual camps and sub-camps. Each entry provides basic information about the purpose of the site; the prisoners, guards, working and living conditions; and key events in its history. Material drawn from personal testimonies helps convey the character of each site, while source citations for each entry provide a path to additional information.
The districts of Ashmyany, Svir, and Švenčionys were formed by the German occupation authorities as part of the Generalkommissariat Lithuania in 1941-43 (today these districts are divided between Lithuania and Belarus). In May 1942, the German authorities conducted a census of the population of the Generalkommissariat Lithuania, including the Jewish inmates of the ghettos who had survived the mass murders of July 1941-April 1942. Pp. 13-118 contain an article by Arūnas Bubnys in Lithuanian, with translations in Russian and English: "Švenčionių, Ašmenos ir Svierių apskričių žydų likimas (1941-1943)" = "Sudba yevreyev Shvyanchyonskovo, Oshmyanskovo i Svirskovo uyezdov (1941-1943)" = "The Fate of the Jews of Švenčionys, Oshmyany and Svir Regions (1941-1943)". Pp. 119-155 present a selection of historical documents and postcards sent from the ghettos, as well as photographs of the sites of mass murder. Pp. 176-633 contain lists of prisoners in the ghettos of the three districts (ghettos of Halshany, Ashmyany, Kreva, Smarhon, Svir, Švenčionis, Vidzy, etc.). Pp. 658-707 contain an index of names.
"After decades of research, a noted Israeli genealogist has produced a book about the Vilna Gaon that contains a rare portrait of the illustrious 18th-century Eastern European sage, a discussion of his substantial influence on the Jewish world and a thoroughly-documented family tree listing more than 20,000 descendants of the rabbi and his siblings ... Besides exploring the life and times of the Vilna Gaon, the 704-page book identifies, provides documentation for more than 20,000 descendants of the Vilna Gaon and his siblings. There is an index listing all persons in the book. The Gaon's descendants seem as diverse as the Jewish people itself, Freedman said. Some descendants were prominent rabbis and academicians. Some were involved in a rare agricultural settlement experiment in Russia, while others variously served in the American Civil War and emigrated to places like England and Australia well before the mass migrations of the 1880s.
This book presents a comprehensive overview of the tourism market development in Central and Eastern European countries. It is divided into 13 chapters, including a chapter dedicated to Belarus, all richly illustrated with colorful maps and illustrations. The book presents the output of international conferences organized every two years by the Department of Regional Geography and Tourism of the University of Wroclaw which have served as inspiration for this book. Chapter 1 provides the characteristics of 20 post-communist countries of the region on the international tourism market and it sets the background and context for the following chapters. Chapters 2 to 13 present the condition of research on tourism, tourist attractions, tourist infrastructure, tourism movement, main types of tourism as well as tourist regionalization in 12 Central and Eastern European countries. All chapters have been updated with reference to the statistics. This book is a revised and updated version of “The Geography of Tourism of Central and Eastern Europe Countries” published by the Department of Regional Geography and Tourism of Wroclaw University in 2012. It has been developed by a group of specialists through their exchange of research experience in the scope of international tourism in Central and Eastern Europe.
For 900 years the Polish shtetl was a home to generations of Jewish families. In 1944 almost every Jew was murdered and with them died a way of life that had survived for centuries. Yaffa Eliach has written a landmark history of the shtetl.
