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AS AMBITIOUS and daunting a task as this
Shtetl Foundation's project may seem, it is of a piece with other projects
that have already been brought to successful conclusions by Professor
Eliach.
Founder of the first Center for Holocaust Studies in the United States
and a scholar of Eastern European history, she has to date completed
two major memorials commemorating the way of life in the shtetl - one
in the form of a deeply moving collection of photographs which is a
major museum exhibit, the other in a book recounting nine hundred years
of shtetl history which became a National Book Award finalist.The first
of these memorials was inspired by her experience as a member of President
Carter's Holocaust Commission, whose mandate was to find a suitable
way to pay tribute to the victims of the Holocaust. During a fact-finding
mission to Eastern Europe in the summer of 1979, Professor Eliach found
herself on a plane passing over the town of her childhood, the shtetl
of Eishyshok, whose nearly 4000 Jews had almost all been murdered by
the Nazis and their local collaborators. Thinking of those who had lost
their lives, who included most of the members of her own family, she
decided that her recommendations to the Holocaust Commission would focus
on painting a portrait not of loss, but of the life before that loss,
and that she would use her own beloved shtetl as the basis for that
portrait, both because it was so typical of the thousands of small Jewish
settlements that once dotted the countryside of all of Eastern Europe,
and because it was among the oldest, having been established in 1065.
It was her great good fortune to see that vision realized in a permanent
exhibit within the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, which now
sits on the banks of the Potomac in Washington, D.C. The exhibit contains
a magnificent three-story tower, called the Tower of Life, which displays
1500 of the photos that she gathered around the globe in the years following
that moment of inspiration on the plane. These are family and studio
photographs depicting the Jews of Eishyshok not as their murderers saw
them but as they saw themselves - at their weddings and bar mitzvoth
and funerals, their country outings and their sports events, their Seders
and their Sabbath gatherings. By focusing on the richness of daily life
in the shtetl, rather than on the death and destruction, these photos
speak volumes about what was lost. In 1998 another aspect of Professor
Eliach's vision was realized in the form of a book, the culmination
of nineteen years of work. There Once Was A World: A 900-Year Chronicle
of the Shtetl of Eishyshok, was named one of the five National Book
Award finalists in Nonfiction, and has been hailed as a "moving
monument not only to a lost town but to the entire Eastern European
Jewish experience." Elie Wiesel described it as "poignant,
richwith unforgettable images and memories...a miracle in itself,"
and Cynthia Ozick called it "monumental, magisterial...astonishing…with
its Maimonidean proportions and its scriptural reach." Like the
museum exhibit, the book has helped people to transcend the stereotypes
of the Jews of the shtetl, to see them in the fullness of their humanity,
not simply as quaint characters in a Fiddler on the Roof production
or emaciated victims in concentration camp photos.
Biographical Information
Professor Yaffa Eliach is a pioneering scholar in Holocaust studies
and a Professor of History and Literature in the Department of Judaic
Studies at Brooklyn College, with areas of specialty in Eastern European
history, Russian intellectual history, Holocaust studies, and Hasidism.
As founder of the first Center for Holocaust Studies in the United States,
she introduced new concepts in Holocaust documentation - written, oral
and visual. As an East European historian, she also introduced new concepts
about the origins of Hasidism. Her scholarship has made her a valued
contributor to the Encyclopedia Judaica, the Women's Studies Encyclopedia,
the Encyclopedia of Hasidism, as well as numerous scholarly as well
as literary and popular publications in the United States, Canada, Israel,
Europe, Australia, and Japan.
Earlier books by Yaffa Eliach include Hasidic
Tales of the Holocaust, which won a Christopher Award when it was published
and then in the two decades since then has become an enduring classic
translated into many languages, We Were Children Just Like You, The
Liberators: Eyewitness Accounts of the Liberation of Concentration Camps
(co-editor), The Last Jew (co-author), The Fisherman's Wife (Hebrew).
Professor Eliach is an internationally renowned figure who has been
the recipient of many awards and honors. Among them are: the Holocaust
Humanitarian Award (2001) awarded by the American Association of Holocaust
Survivors from the former Soviet Union- for the immense contributions
made to the field of Holocaust education and to the history of the Holocaust;
the Eternal Flame Award in 1999, which was presented at the Annual International
Scholars Conference on the Holocaust and the Churches. The Award is
given to an individual who has made an exceptional contribution to the
field of Holocaust Education, and she was chosen "Woman of the
Year" by CBS-TV in 1995. She lectures frequently to academic and
lay audiences and makes frequent appearances on television and radio
both in the United States and abroad.
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