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Anatomy of a Genocide: The Life and Death of a Town Called Buczacz
Winner of the Yad Vashem International Book Book Prize for Holocaust Research
“A substantive contribution to the history of ethnic strife and extreme violence” (The Wall Street Journal) and a cautionary examination of how genocide can take root at the local level—turning neighbors, friends, and family against one another—as seen through the eastern European border town of Buczacz during World War II.
For more than four hundred years, the Eastern European border town of Buczacz—today part of Ukraine—was home to a highly diverse citizenry. It was here that Poles, Ukrainians, and Jews all lived side by side in relative harmony. Then came World War II, and three years later the entire Jewish population had been murdered by German and Ukrainian police, while Ukrainian nationalists eradicated Polish residents. In truth, though, this genocide didn’t happen so quickly.
In Anatomy of a Genocide, Omer Bartov explains that ethnic cleansing doesn’t occur as is so often portrayed in popular history, with the quick ascent of a vitriolic political leader and the unleashing of military might. It begins in seeming peace, slowly and often unnoticed, the culmination of pent-up slights and grudges and indignities. The perpetrators aren’t just sociopathic soldiers. They are neighbors and friends and family. They are also middle-aged men who come from elsewhere, often with their wives and children and parents, and settle into a life of bourgeois comfort peppered with bouts of mass murder.
For more than two decades Bartov, whose mother was raised in Buczacz, traveled extensively throughout the region, scouring archives and amassing thousands of documents rarely seen until now. He has also made use of hundreds of first-person testimonies by victims, perpetrators, collaborators, and rescuers. Anatomy of a Genocide profoundly changes our understanding of the social dynamics of mass killing and the nature of the Holocaust as a whole. Bartov’s book isn’t just an attempt to understand what happened in the past. It’s a warning of how it could happen again, in our own towns and cities—much more easily than we might think.
“A substantive contribution to the history of ethnic strife and extreme violence” (The Wall Street Journal) and a cautionary examination of how genocide can take root at the local level—turning neighbors, friends, and family against one another—as seen through the eastern European border town of Buczacz during World War II.
For more than four hundred years, the Eastern European border town of Buczacz—today part of Ukraine—was home to a highly diverse citizenry. It was here that Poles, Ukrainians, and Jews all lived side by side in relative harmony. Then came World War II, and three years later the entire Jewish population had been murdered by German and Ukrainian police, while Ukrainian nationalists eradicated Polish residents. In truth, though, this genocide didn’t happen so quickly.
In Anatomy of a Genocide, Omer Bartov explains that ethnic cleansing doesn’t occur as is so often portrayed in popular history, with the quick ascent of a vitriolic political leader and the unleashing of military might. It begins in seeming peace, slowly and often unnoticed, the culmination of pent-up slights and grudges and indignities. The perpetrators aren’t just sociopathic soldiers. They are neighbors and friends and family. They are also middle-aged men who come from elsewhere, often with their wives and children and parents, and settle into a life of bourgeois comfort peppered with bouts of mass murder.
For more than two decades Bartov, whose mother was raised in Buczacz, traveled extensively throughout the region, scouring archives and amassing thousands of documents rarely seen until now. He has also made use of hundreds of first-person testimonies by victims, perpetrators, collaborators, and rescuers. Anatomy of a Genocide profoundly changes our understanding of the social dynamics of mass killing and the nature of the Holocaust as a whole. Bartov’s book isn’t just an attempt to understand what happened in the past. It’s a warning of how it could happen again, in our own towns and cities—much more easily than we might think.
416 pages, Paperback
First published January 13, 2018
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About the author
Omer Bartov
34 books64 followersOmer Bartov is an Israeli-born historian. He is the Samuel Pisar Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Brown University, where he has taught since 2000. Bartov is a noted historian of the Holocaust and is considered one of the world's leading authorities on the subject of genocide.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 39 reviews
February 27, 2019
If you read most general histories of World War II, you're likely to get the impression that the Holocaust was a simple, straightforward affair. Hitler resolved to "solve the Jewish problem" by simply killing all the Jews in Europe. And once the policy was set, German soldiers in the SS proceeded to murder every Jew in sight. They shot thousands and thousands of people but soon found that was inefficient, expensive, and insufficient to get the job done. So they set up the death camps, where Jews were either worked to death or sent into gas chambers and murdered en masse. And all that is accurate, but only up to a point.
In Anatomy of a Genocide, historian Omer Bartov demonstrates just how much more complicated the Holocaust was. By tracing the history of antisemitism in a single Polish-Ukrainian town from the sixteenth century to the present, and detailing day by day how the Holocaust unfolded there, he brings to light the many nuances lost in historical portraits painted with a broader brush. The book is a masterful effort that should stand for decades if not centuries as one of the most insightful accounts of that shameful episode in what is so casually called civilization.
Anatomy of a Genocide is set largely in the town of Buczacz in what is now western Ukraine. (Buczacz is pronounced Bu-chach, in which "ch" is like the guttural sound of the Scottish word "loch.") Since World War I, the province of Eastern Galicia, where the town was located, had been under Polish control. There, where many thousands of Jews perished during the war, the Holocaust was a complicated affair:
** Developments in Galicia in the decades leading up to World War II set the stage for the Holocaust. "[R]eligion and nationalism were being fused together to produce an ideological and psychological climate ripe for widespread violence once the constraints on social order were removed or altered."Germans were far from alone in murdering Jews in Buczacz (although they certainly were the most efficient). Ukrainians, especially the peasants, raped and murdered hundreds of Jews, often with sadistic glee. Some Poles took part in the killing, too.
** "The Germans accomplished the rapid destruction of the Jewish population by creating a local apparatus of Ukrainians and Jews who helped them organize and perpetrate mass murder and by swiftly decapitating the community so as the minimize organized resistance," Bartov writes. Some Jews acquiesced in hopes, usually in vain, that their lives would be spared. They volunteered to serve as German agents (the Judenrat and the Ordnungsdienst, or Jewish police). Others, who were not part of the apparatus, informed German soldiers or administrators of the whereabouts of Jews in hiding.
** Some 200 wealthy Jews in Buczacz escaped immediate death by bribing German officers to send them to work camps, where some survived. However, these wealthy Jews were a small minority: "the vast majority of the Jews in Buczacz, as in the rest of Galicia, were poor."Yet among every ethnic group—Poles, Ukrainians, Jews, even Germans—there were individuals who bravely and quietly resisted the killing. Many risked their lives to hide Jews, sometimes for money, sometimes simply out of altruism. "Almost all of the more than two hundred testimonies by Jewish survivors of the German occupation of Buczacz and its environs reflect . . . ambivalence about relations with gentile neighbors, ranging from gratitude and admiration to rage and desire for vengeance.
"Anatomy of a Genocide: the Holocaust under the microscope of history
The attitudes of most Germans involved in the occupation are difficult to fathom. "Beyond the extraordinary bloodletting this undertaking entailed," Bartov writes, "perhaps its most scandalous aspect was the astonishing ease with which it was accomplished and the extent to which the killers, along with their spouses and children, lovers and colleagues, friends and parents, appear to have enjoyed their brief murderous sojourn in the region. For many of them, this was clearly the best time of their lives: they had almost unlimited access to food, liquor, tobacco, and sex, and, most important, they became supreme masters over life and death." Bartov documents this claim with abundant examples from eyewitness testimony and written records.
To put this story in perspective, keep in mind that half of all the six million Jews who perished in the Holocaust were Polish. Since the mid-seventeenth century, the "Jews of Poland [had] constituted the single largest Jewish population in the world." And during the nearly 400 years before World War II, Jews had frequently been victims of violence by Poles, Cossacks, and Ukrainians. Over the centuries, hundreds of thousands perished at their hands.
Bartov lays to rest the romanticized image of the shtetl popularized in the Broadway musical, Fiddler on the Roof. "The Jews did not live segregated from the Christian population; the entire notion of a shtetl existing in some sort of splendid (or sordid) isolation is merely a figment of the Jewish literary and folkloristic imagination."Anatomy of a Genocide is a significant contribution to our understanding of one of the most significant events of the 2oth century.
About the author
Israeli-born Omer Bartov is a professor of European history and German studies at Brown University. He has won a great many academic awards, not just in the United States and Israel but in other countries as well. Anatomy of a Genocide, his ninth book, was the product of the author's long-term quest to learn about his ancestors. Researching and writing the book took two decades and involved travel "across three continents and nine countries." Bartov's parents and their families had lived in Buczacz. "Of the family that stayed behind," Bartov writes, "both hers and my father's, not a single member survived—all of them murdered."
In Anatomy of a Genocide, historian Omer Bartov demonstrates just how much more complicated the Holocaust was. By tracing the history of antisemitism in a single Polish-Ukrainian town from the sixteenth century to the present, and detailing day by day how the Holocaust unfolded there, he brings to light the many nuances lost in historical portraits painted with a broader brush. The book is a masterful effort that should stand for decades if not centuries as one of the most insightful accounts of that shameful episode in what is so casually called civilization.
Anatomy of a Genocide is set largely in the town of Buczacz in what is now western Ukraine. (Buczacz is pronounced Bu-chach, in which "ch" is like the guttural sound of the Scottish word "loch.") Since World War I, the province of Eastern Galicia, where the town was located, had been under Polish control. There, where many thousands of Jews perished during the war, the Holocaust was a complicated affair:
** Developments in Galicia in the decades leading up to World War II set the stage for the Holocaust. "[R]eligion and nationalism were being fused together to produce an ideological and psychological climate ripe for widespread violence once the constraints on social order were removed or altered."Germans were far from alone in murdering Jews in Buczacz (although they certainly were the most efficient). Ukrainians, especially the peasants, raped and murdered hundreds of Jews, often with sadistic glee. Some Poles took part in the killing, too.
** "The Germans accomplished the rapid destruction of the Jewish population by creating a local apparatus of Ukrainians and Jews who helped them organize and perpetrate mass murder and by swiftly decapitating the community so as the minimize organized resistance," Bartov writes. Some Jews acquiesced in hopes, usually in vain, that their lives would be spared. They volunteered to serve as German agents (the Judenrat and the Ordnungsdienst, or Jewish police). Others, who were not part of the apparatus, informed German soldiers or administrators of the whereabouts of Jews in hiding.
** Some 200 wealthy Jews in Buczacz escaped immediate death by bribing German officers to send them to work camps, where some survived. However, these wealthy Jews were a small minority: "the vast majority of the Jews in Buczacz, as in the rest of Galicia, were poor."Yet among every ethnic group—Poles, Ukrainians, Jews, even Germans—there were individuals who bravely and quietly resisted the killing. Many risked their lives to hide Jews, sometimes for money, sometimes simply out of altruism. "Almost all of the more than two hundred testimonies by Jewish survivors of the German occupation of Buczacz and its environs reflect . . . ambivalence about relations with gentile neighbors, ranging from gratitude and admiration to rage and desire for vengeance.
"Anatomy of a Genocide: the Holocaust under the microscope of history
The attitudes of most Germans involved in the occupation are difficult to fathom. "Beyond the extraordinary bloodletting this undertaking entailed," Bartov writes, "perhaps its most scandalous aspect was the astonishing ease with which it was accomplished and the extent to which the killers, along with their spouses and children, lovers and colleagues, friends and parents, appear to have enjoyed their brief murderous sojourn in the region. For many of them, this was clearly the best time of their lives: they had almost unlimited access to food, liquor, tobacco, and sex, and, most important, they became supreme masters over life and death." Bartov documents this claim with abundant examples from eyewitness testimony and written records.
To put this story in perspective, keep in mind that half of all the six million Jews who perished in the Holocaust were Polish. Since the mid-seventeenth century, the "Jews of Poland [had] constituted the single largest Jewish population in the world." And during the nearly 400 years before World War II, Jews had frequently been victims of violence by Poles, Cossacks, and Ukrainians. Over the centuries, hundreds of thousands perished at their hands.
Bartov lays to rest the romanticized image of the shtetl popularized in the Broadway musical, Fiddler on the Roof. "The Jews did not live segregated from the Christian population; the entire notion of a shtetl existing in some sort of splendid (or sordid) isolation is merely a figment of the Jewish literary and folkloristic imagination."Anatomy of a Genocide is a significant contribution to our understanding of one of the most significant events of the 2oth century.
About the author
Israeli-born Omer Bartov is a professor of European history and German studies at Brown University. He has won a great many academic awards, not just in the United States and Israel but in other countries as well. Anatomy of a Genocide, his ninth book, was the product of the author's long-term quest to learn about his ancestors. Researching and writing the book took two decades and involved travel "across three continents and nine countries." Bartov's parents and their families had lived in Buczacz. "Of the family that stayed behind," Bartov writes, "both hers and my father's, not a single member survived—all of them murdered."
February 3, 2020
Rigorously researched story of the fate of the once-thriving Jewish community in the town of Buczacz. This book gives a troubling picture of how anti-Semitism, festering beneath the surface of the town's Polish and Ukrainian Catholics, erupts when Nazis invade, giving full cover to the oppression and murder of the Jews by the Poles - but especially by the Ukrainians, who aligned themselves with the Nazis. However, it was a bloody time for all parties involved, with the Poles and Ukrainians also butchering each other over rival claims of control and ownership of the region. This book doesn't rise to four or five stars for me, as it plodded along, the way detailed research tends to do. There was also too, too much material excerpted from documents, diaries, and other sources. The scores of quotation marks were almost a distraction.
August 11, 2019
Книжка про Голокост в Бучачі і те, як місто, де всі начебто живуть собі поряд століттями перетворюється на інкубатор ненависті. До цієї книжки безумовно буде ряд запитань, зокрема щодо структури і певної телеологічності, щодо національної парадигми і так далі. Попри те, три розділи власне про Голокост дуже вражають і завдяки цитатам створють враження, що ти знаходишся там, всередині і це саме ти вирішуєш що робити. Речі, які мене зачепили найбільше:
- повоєнні інтерв'ю з нацистськими злочинцями, в яких вони виправдовуються, що це не я вбивав, я стояв поруч курив, взагалі мене жінка попросила розстріляти її доньку, щоб не мучилася, а я відмовив, і ще поміг діду дійти до місця розстрілів, ось такий я гуманний. А взагалі ми любили Бучач, там так гарно і смачна кава в кав'ярнях.
- Нацистські злочинці до і після війни, так само як і сусіди не вирізнялися нічим особливим, люди як люди, і всі способи знайти у минулому чи у їхній психології відповідь на те, чому вони так чинили, не працюють
- неоднозначність допомоги/співпраці місцевих . Ми часто пишаємося праведниками і ними є як пишатися, але допомога могла виглядати дуже по різному. Хтось міг переховувати родину, а потім вигнати. Хтось давав їм їжу, а хтось зброю. Хтось брав єврейських жінок, а потім їх ґвалтував. Навіть у таких умовах є вибір.
- повільна дегуманізація. Все починається з текстів, розмов і промов, а завершується тим, що єврейські мешканці Бучача стають чимось на кшталт тварин на полюванні, живуть у стайнях серед відходів кіз і корів, ховаються у полях стогах сіна і зрештою мріють про смерть.
Книжка розповідає не лише про Голокост, а про всі конфлікти, що були до і після і залучає багато нових джерел, тому дуже варто читати, хоча й дискутувати також варто.
- повоєнні інтерв'ю з нацистськими злочинцями, в яких вони виправдовуються, що це не я вбивав, я стояв поруч курив, взагалі мене жінка попросила розстріляти її доньку, щоб не мучилася, а я відмовив, і ще поміг діду дійти до місця розстрілів, ось такий я гуманний. А взагалі ми любили Бучач, там так гарно і смачна кава в кав'ярнях.
- Нацистські злочинці до і після війни, так само як і сусіди не вирізнялися нічим особливим, люди як люди, і всі способи знайти у минулому чи у їхній психології відповідь на те, чому вони так чинили, не працюють
- неоднозначність допомоги/співпраці місцевих . Ми часто пишаємося праведниками і ними є як пишатися, але допомога могла виглядати дуже по різному. Хтось міг переховувати родину, а потім вигнати. Хтось давав їм їжу, а хтось зброю. Хтось брав єврейських жінок, а потім їх ґвалтував. Навіть у таких умовах є вибір.
- повільна дегуманізація. Все починається з текстів, розмов і промов, а завершується тим, що єврейські мешканці Бучача стають чимось на кшталт тварин на полюванні, живуть у стайнях серед відходів кіз і корів, ховаються у полях стогах сіна і зрештою мріють про смерть.
Книжка розповідає не лише про Голокост, а про всі конфлікти, що були до і після і залучає багато нових джерел, тому дуже варто читати, хоча й дискутувати також варто.
October 8, 2018
The approach to the Holocaust in this book isn't the typical one. Instead of looking at the large, organized Nazi sytems for extermination, this book focuses on the interethnic violence in one smaller Ukrainian city. Since about half of those exterminated died in this way, rather than in a concentration camp, this is an important and equally horrifying story. Buczacz had been peacefully occupied by Poles, Ukrainians and Jews for at least two hundred years under the Austro-Hungarian Empire. There were tensions between all groups and maybe not affection, but people managed to create a society. This all started to crumble with the nationalism triggered by WWI, culminating in the tragedy of WWII. This is a much more complicated story than one would imagine. Many Jews were murdered by townspeople rather than Germans. Then in the aftermath, the resentment between Ukrainians and Poles resulted in more bloodshed. Finally, the Soviets arrived and deported Poles to Communist Poland, and Ukrainians back to now SSR Ukraine, erasing the former ethnic diversity. I was riveted by this book- reading w/ horror and sometimes tears. The author, whose mother emigrated to Israel from Buczacz in 1935, combines painstaking histori0graphy with insightful analysis. He insures that the stories of the victims and survivors are included. He also is puzzled by how so many ordinary citizens participated in horrible acts, literally got away with murder, and were able to continue to live our the rest of their lives free of guilt. It's important for all of us to consider this aspect of human nature.
My husband's ethnically Polish family is from this region of Ukraine, which was formerly known as Galicia. I read this book just after returning from a week in Ukraine not far from Buczacz. Reading this book helped me to understand the ghosts I sensed were swirling around. I saw the crumbling Synagogue in the town, and the Roman Catholic Church that was decimated by the Soviets but is being slowly restored and has a large congregation. I was immediately repelled by the Soviet era buildings, ugly and crumbling. The word that kept circling in my brain was "grim". After a few days, I grew used to the town and started to become fond of the area. The surrounding landscape is agrarian and peaceful. I can only wish the best for the people of this area which has been the site of so many horrors in the Twentieth Century.
My husband's ethnically Polish family is from this region of Ukraine, which was formerly known as Galicia. I read this book just after returning from a week in Ukraine not far from Buczacz. Reading this book helped me to understand the ghosts I sensed were swirling around. I saw the crumbling Synagogue in the town, and the Roman Catholic Church that was decimated by the Soviets but is being slowly restored and has a large congregation. I was immediately repelled by the Soviet era buildings, ugly and crumbling. The word that kept circling in my brain was "grim". After a few days, I grew used to the town and started to become fond of the area. The surrounding landscape is agrarian and peaceful. I can only wish the best for the people of this area which has been the site of so many horrors in the Twentieth Century.
February 28, 2018
Harrowing account of neighbor against neighbor. I have read many historical accounts of the Holocaust, and many personal accounts of experiences in concentration camps, and of people fighting in the Resistance. I have visited Dachau and Theresienstadt, and heard my father speak of entering Dachau as a US soldier the day after its Soviet Liberation. These have all been framed in my mind within the context of an impersonal, bureaucratic attempt by the Nazis to exterminate a people. What makes this account of genocide in Buczacz so brutal and harrowing is that much of it happened with the townspeople as col- laborators and especially as individual perpetrators. Polish neighbor against Jewish neighbor against Ukrainian neighbor. Former schoolmates, teachers and students, businessmen and customers. People of these three religions and ethnicities had lived together in Buczacz for centuries. By the end of the 19th Century, with its increase of feelings of nationalism, and then WWI, things fell apart. Both Poles and Ukrainians claimed this was there land, and wanted the other out. Both saw the Jews as aligning with the other, and wanted the Jews out. Russian occupation under the German-Soviet pact brought hostilities between the Russian army and Austrian army as WW II progressed, and then eventual Nazi occupation, with its executions and deportations. It is the author's use of so many eyewitness accounts that brings the account down to the local level. It was so much more than betrayals and announcements to the Nazis. We read of former friends killing and mutilating the other, of smashing babies against the wall, of such brutality we have to put the book down for a while. And then, with peace, comes absorption into the Communist Eastern Bloc, more ethnic cleansing and deportations, and mass movements of people groups...many to Siberia.
We learned to see the brutality of Nazi Germany as possible because of the depersonalization of the victims, so this killing of people well known to the perpetrators is especially disturbing. Thankfully, there was the occasional account of altruistic individuals protecting, hiding, and helping victims escape. But as a whole, this account of such a widespread loosing of evil amongst humans who had once lived together peacefully, shakes the reader to the core. To be able to brutally kill someone you know, and then not suffer guilt and remorse, is incomprehensible. We may never comprehend why and how this can happen, but we can learn some lessons.
When a nation composed of diverse people begins to identify others by the group they belong to, rather than by who they are as individuals, we are on shaky ground. When we give in to identity politics, rather than focus on what is for the common good, we need to back up. When one group starts to identify as victims, and blames another group for its victimization, we need to dig deeply into empathy, and emphasize common ground. We need to recognize the God-given dignity of our fellow humans, and build our actions and reactions on that realization. Only then can we defuse polarization and live together in peace.
We learned to see the brutality of Nazi Germany as possible because of the depersonalization of the victims, so this killing of people well known to the perpetrators is especially disturbing. Thankfully, there was the occasional account of altruistic individuals protecting, hiding, and helping victims escape. But as a whole, this account of such a widespread loosing of evil amongst humans who had once lived together peacefully, shakes the reader to the core. To be able to brutally kill someone you know, and then not suffer guilt and remorse, is incomprehensible. We may never comprehend why and how this can happen, but we can learn some lessons.
When a nation composed of diverse people begins to identify others by the group they belong to, rather than by who they are as individuals, we are on shaky ground. When we give in to identity politics, rather than focus on what is for the common good, we need to back up. When one group starts to identify as victims, and blames another group for its victimization, we need to dig deeply into empathy, and emphasize common ground. We need to recognize the God-given dignity of our fellow humans, and build our actions and reactions on that realization. Only then can we defuse polarization and live together in peace.
March 27, 2018
This is more than just a cautionary tale or a look at the history of mass murder. This is a heartbreakingly real account of how greed, hatred and the misunderstanding of minority culture can lead to absolute devastation, and a warning that it is not outside the realm of possibility that it could happen on a large scale again, in the future.
Much like the stereotypes of witches, lepers and others associated with minority groups throughout the history of the world, for every person who dares to be different, there is some power out there that will see it as their duty to put them in their place, using propaganda and mistruths to back up their claims and rally others behind them. The Jewish population have certainly been dealt their fair share of this throughout the centuries, from the great diasporas of earlier times to the more recent events within the last hundred years. This book is important and timely because it not only shows how these mass killings happen and explains the mechanics behind the mentality of those who persecute and those who are the victims of persecution, but it also highlights just how simple it can be to cause an entire group of people to come under fire when they have done nothing to deserve it.
The author did an incredible job of researching these events and organising the material into what we see before us when we read this book. I felt disgust, heartache and overwhelming sadness whilst reading this book, but I also learned a lot and it definitely made me stop and think about the world we live in and the history that has changed so many lives, both for those whose life ended sooner than it should have and for the survivors.
This is the kind of book that you want others to read. I believe it induces compassion through learning and teaches us an important but often forgotten lesson about what it means to be human. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to know more about genocide.
This review is based on a complimentary copy from the publisher, provided through Netgalley. All opinions are my own.
Much like the stereotypes of witches, lepers and others associated with minority groups throughout the history of the world, for every person who dares to be different, there is some power out there that will see it as their duty to put them in their place, using propaganda and mistruths to back up their claims and rally others behind them. The Jewish population have certainly been dealt their fair share of this throughout the centuries, from the great diasporas of earlier times to the more recent events within the last hundred years. This book is important and timely because it not only shows how these mass killings happen and explains the mechanics behind the mentality of those who persecute and those who are the victims of persecution, but it also highlights just how simple it can be to cause an entire group of people to come under fire when they have done nothing to deserve it.
The author did an incredible job of researching these events and organising the material into what we see before us when we read this book. I felt disgust, heartache and overwhelming sadness whilst reading this book, but I also learned a lot and it definitely made me stop and think about the world we live in and the history that has changed so many lives, both for those whose life ended sooner than it should have and for the survivors.
This is the kind of book that you want others to read. I believe it induces compassion through learning and teaches us an important but often forgotten lesson about what it means to be human. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to know more about genocide.
This review is based on a complimentary copy from the publisher, provided through Netgalley. All opinions are my own.
September 8, 2021
Une approche micro historique de la Shoah, fondé sur une monographie de la ville de Buczacz, actuellement en Pologne. Actuellement car il n'en a pas toujours été ainsi. Au début du XXème siècle, la ville est situé en Galicie, dans l'Empire Austro Hongrois. Empire multilingues et surtout multinationales.
Omer Bartov commence son récit dès le Moyen Âge, mais embraye vite sur la période du long XIXème siècle, puis sur celle du court XXème siècle. La Galicie étant multi ethnique c'est à dire qu'on y trouve à la fois des Polonais, des Juifs, et des Ukrainiens. Ce brassage de population s'accompagne souvent de mariages entre Ukrainiens et Polonais, dans certaines régions de la Galicie. Quand aux Juifs, ils seront épargnés par l'antisémitisme, du moins par l'antisémitisme exterminateur. Ils forment en effet une communauté florissante, mais qui sera victime au fil des siècles de multiples persécutions.
Le vrai point de départ du génocide c'est la période de l'entre deux guerres. Avec la multiplication des revendications nationalistes (polonaises et ukraniennes, l'Ukraine actuel étant sous contrôle soviétique), les Juifs deviennent gênants pour les nationalistes. La majorité vit dans une extrême pauvreté (plusieurs fond d'aides sont créés), et si certains prennent le choix de l'émigration vers la Palestine, d'autres s'engagent dans les parties politiques. Cette politisation accru amène à une polarisation de la société de Buczacz et de la Pologne, de manière générale. On voit d'un mauvais oeil, la formation d'un bloc des minorités au parlement Polonais.
Avec le pacte Molotov Ribbentrop, Buczacz se retrouve dans la zone attribué aux Soviétiques. L'occupation soviétique, qui s'accompagne d'exactions et de collectivisations forcés, laissera un goût amer aux Polonais et Ukrainiens de la ville, qui voit les Juifs de la ville comme les agents du communisme (une partie des jeunes de la classe moyenne juive sont membres du parti communiste).
L'horreur commence avec l'invasion allemande, en 1941. Les nazis mettent en coupe réglée la population juive de la ville, accompagné d'auxiliaires ukrainiens, qui voit là l'occasion de faire naître un état indépendant d'Ukraine, sous la protection des nazis.
Hannah Arendt a eu des mots très durs sur les Judenrät, qu'elle a accusé d'avoir collaboré à l'extermination de leur peuple. Mais il faut comprendre, que la mise en place des Judenrät dont les places étaient réservés à l'élite de la communauté juive, était un moyen pour les nazis d'empêcher et de prévenir toutes formations d'une résistance juive. Il est facile de juger aujourd'hui les Judenrät, mais seule une enquête historique minutieuse permet de comprendre leurs rôles. En effet, les nazis procédaient souvent par promesses (par ex : en échange de juifs âgés nous vous laisserons les jeunes), et les possibilités de résistance au vu des pertes gigantesques des partisans polonais, étaient réduite. La collaboration est aussi un fait établi : des Polonais dénoncent, escroquent, les juifs cachés ou qui cherchent à se cacher. Dans ses conditions l'entrée en résistance était difficile voir impossible.
Par la suite, le pouvoir soviétique, confronté à des combattants ukrainiens transformera la Galicie en territoires quasi exclusivement Polonais, les Ukrainiens étant déportés. Avec la chute du régime soviétique, les nationalismes refoulés reprennent de plus belle, si bien qu'on verra en 2016, le drapeau ukrainien flottant sur le château en ruine de Buczacz.
Omer Bartov commence son récit dès le Moyen Âge, mais embraye vite sur la période du long XIXème siècle, puis sur celle du court XXème siècle. La Galicie étant multi ethnique c'est à dire qu'on y trouve à la fois des Polonais, des Juifs, et des Ukrainiens. Ce brassage de population s'accompagne souvent de mariages entre Ukrainiens et Polonais, dans certaines régions de la Galicie. Quand aux Juifs, ils seront épargnés par l'antisémitisme, du moins par l'antisémitisme exterminateur. Ils forment en effet une communauté florissante, mais qui sera victime au fil des siècles de multiples persécutions.
Le vrai point de départ du génocide c'est la période de l'entre deux guerres. Avec la multiplication des revendications nationalistes (polonaises et ukraniennes, l'Ukraine actuel étant sous contrôle soviétique), les Juifs deviennent gênants pour les nationalistes. La majorité vit dans une extrême pauvreté (plusieurs fond d'aides sont créés), et si certains prennent le choix de l'émigration vers la Palestine, d'autres s'engagent dans les parties politiques. Cette politisation accru amène à une polarisation de la société de Buczacz et de la Pologne, de manière générale. On voit d'un mauvais oeil, la formation d'un bloc des minorités au parlement Polonais.
Avec le pacte Molotov Ribbentrop, Buczacz se retrouve dans la zone attribué aux Soviétiques. L'occupation soviétique, qui s'accompagne d'exactions et de collectivisations forcés, laissera un goût amer aux Polonais et Ukrainiens de la ville, qui voit les Juifs de la ville comme les agents du communisme (une partie des jeunes de la classe moyenne juive sont membres du parti communiste).
L'horreur commence avec l'invasion allemande, en 1941. Les nazis mettent en coupe réglée la population juive de la ville, accompagné d'auxiliaires ukrainiens, qui voit là l'occasion de faire naître un état indépendant d'Ukraine, sous la protection des nazis.
Hannah Arendt a eu des mots très durs sur les Judenrät, qu'elle a accusé d'avoir collaboré à l'extermination de leur peuple. Mais il faut comprendre, que la mise en place des Judenrät dont les places étaient réservés à l'élite de la communauté juive, était un moyen pour les nazis d'empêcher et de prévenir toutes formations d'une résistance juive. Il est facile de juger aujourd'hui les Judenrät, mais seule une enquête historique minutieuse permet de comprendre leurs rôles. En effet, les nazis procédaient souvent par promesses (par ex : en échange de juifs âgés nous vous laisserons les jeunes), et les possibilités de résistance au vu des pertes gigantesques des partisans polonais, étaient réduite. La collaboration est aussi un fait établi : des Polonais dénoncent, escroquent, les juifs cachés ou qui cherchent à se cacher. Dans ses conditions l'entrée en résistance était difficile voir impossible.
Par la suite, le pouvoir soviétique, confronté à des combattants ukrainiens transformera la Galicie en territoires quasi exclusivement Polonais, les Ukrainiens étant déportés. Avec la chute du régime soviétique, les nationalismes refoulés reprennent de plus belle, si bien qu'on verra en 2016, le drapeau ukrainien flottant sur le château en ruine de Buczacz.
June 17, 2018
This seems to be the new trend in Holocaust history - making the point that Germans were not the ones who did all (or even most) of the killing. It was friends and neighbors, people looking to benefit materially from your misfortune and death. Bartov argues that the Jews lived relatively peaceably with their neighbors in Eastern Galicia for 500 years. WWI caused a collapse of morals and laws and civilized behavior, and brought about a civil war between Ukranians and Poles. Neither group would accept the Jews as part of their "nation." WWII brought state-sponsored repression and killing from first the Soviet Union, then the Germans. The Ukranians, the Poles, and the Jews all had a hand in the destruction of the Jews, themselves, their neighbors, friends, colleagues, employers, employees, and perfect strangers. The point that Bartov is trying to make is that the perpetrators of genocide thought of themselves as VICTIMS whose only recourse was to kill their OPPRESSORS.
That's disturbing. Not only for what it says about human relations in general, but for the warning we ought to take from the "victim" culture that surrounds us now. These days everyone wants victim status because being a victim somehow entitles you to advantages, rewards, pay-offs, BOOTY of some kind.
Rather than killing the perpetrators, "victims" pressure the "perpetrator class" to get "woke" and "fight" alongside the "victims" for "justice." ANYTHING can be a sign of "privilege" which must answer to the demands of the "victim." The "victim" is always right and not to be questioned. Problem: what happens when one "victim" group goes head to head with another "victim" group? Do we just let everyone have a chance at being a "victim" and pass the "privilege" around forever?
That's disturbing. Not only for what it says about human relations in general, but for the warning we ought to take from the "victim" culture that surrounds us now. These days everyone wants victim status because being a victim somehow entitles you to advantages, rewards, pay-offs, BOOTY of some kind.
Rather than killing the perpetrators, "victims" pressure the "perpetrator class" to get "woke" and "fight" alongside the "victims" for "justice." ANYTHING can be a sign of "privilege" which must answer to the demands of the "victim." The "victim" is always right and not to be questioned. Problem: what happens when one "victim" group goes head to head with another "victim" group? Do we just let everyone have a chance at being a "victim" and pass the "privilege" around forever?
May 8, 2018
I’ll admit this one hits close to home, because my father’s family emigrated from Buczacz. So I knew a little about the town. But Omer Bartov provides a much deeper picture than I ever had, and not just of the tragedies of World War II and the Holocaust. Great research and easy-to-follow writing.
December 3, 2018
A detailed and well-researched book on the town of Buczacz, a border town in present day Ukraine. Mostly focused on WW2, the book still gives historical context leading up to that point. Ukrainians and Poles both think the land is their’s and then the Jews are vilified by both sides depending on the situation and timing. Then WW2 throws more fuel to the fire and you see how neighbors turn on each other. The Nazis aren’t the only villains of WW2 and this is a great look at some of the complexities of war. But in saying that, the book is slow moving.
January 21, 2024
This book should come with a warning: if you were able to live through recent global events with your faith in humankind intact, this book will cure you of your delusion. I don't mean that it is luridly written and full of gross-out descriptions; the writer is an academic who has a personal connection to these events and his writing is clear and focused on facts.
As time goes on, historical events become simplified. This is certainly the case with World War II and the Holocaust. In 1939 Poland was already a basketcase even before the Germans invaded; its government practically fascist, its population even more rabidly antisemitic than Germany's, and the nation smouldering on the edge of civil violence due to the resentment of its subject peoples particularly the Ukrainians. Buczacz summed up the situation. The town lay in Ukrainian territory (it is today part of Ukraine) but had been given to Poland after World War I. Its Polish residents were the top dogs with the best jobs. Its Ukrainian residents were angry and many were either Communists who saw the Soviet soldiers as liberators when they invaded or Nationalists who saw the German soldiers as liberators when they also invaded. The Jewish residents were regarded as foreigners although they had been living there for centuries, and tended to bear the brunt of everyone else's anger. At one stage three simultaneous wars were being fought in the district of Buczacz: the German army versus the Soviet army; the Germans and Ukrainians versus the Jews; and the Ukrainians versus the Poles.
Another thing often overlooked now is that over 80 percent of the Jews murdered did not die in Auschwitz. In fact, a third of them died by bullets. And when Ukrainians were doing the murdering the Jews died by pitchforks, knives and clubs. The Jews of Buczacz died so close to their homes that the Buczacz water supply was polluted by the thousands of corpses mouldering in the pits just outside of town.
The first third of the book is devoted to the history of Buczacz, in particular the twentieth century before World War II, because the writer seeks to understand the psychology that brought about the horrors of 1939-45. It's all interesting reading until page 184 when the nightmare begins. Again, the writer doesn't sensationalise but there is no way you can read the next 100 pages without feeling scourged to your very depths, and hopefully not scarred for life.
In the end, you can't really explain the psychologies involved, that caused people to murder friends, neighbours, workmates and family members in a paroxysm of violence; you can only describe it. The author himself acknowledges feelings of inadequacy trying to understand Germans who before the war had been model citizens - most of them policemen, regular churchgoers, honest, dutiful, good neighbours, loved by their families - who then during the war went to a remote Polish town and became monsters, living like lords with their wives, children and Jewish mistresses, possessing the power of life and death, some of them personally murdering hundreds of people at close range - and then afterwards returned to their prewar lives as though nothing had happened, continuing as policemen, loved and respected, until dying peacefully in their beds. One of the most vivid of these monsters lived to be eighty-nine.
The truth is, you just don't know who your neighbour is, or what they are capable of. Sometimes they can astonish you with their courage and goodness, but more often it seems - and particularly during wartime - you discover a pit of darkness in their souls.
As time goes on, historical events become simplified. This is certainly the case with World War II and the Holocaust. In 1939 Poland was already a basketcase even before the Germans invaded; its government practically fascist, its population even more rabidly antisemitic than Germany's, and the nation smouldering on the edge of civil violence due to the resentment of its subject peoples particularly the Ukrainians. Buczacz summed up the situation. The town lay in Ukrainian territory (it is today part of Ukraine) but had been given to Poland after World War I. Its Polish residents were the top dogs with the best jobs. Its Ukrainian residents were angry and many were either Communists who saw the Soviet soldiers as liberators when they invaded or Nationalists who saw the German soldiers as liberators when they also invaded. The Jewish residents were regarded as foreigners although they had been living there for centuries, and tended to bear the brunt of everyone else's anger. At one stage three simultaneous wars were being fought in the district of Buczacz: the German army versus the Soviet army; the Germans and Ukrainians versus the Jews; and the Ukrainians versus the Poles.
Another thing often overlooked now is that over 80 percent of the Jews murdered did not die in Auschwitz. In fact, a third of them died by bullets. And when Ukrainians were doing the murdering the Jews died by pitchforks, knives and clubs. The Jews of Buczacz died so close to their homes that the Buczacz water supply was polluted by the thousands of corpses mouldering in the pits just outside of town.
The first third of the book is devoted to the history of Buczacz, in particular the twentieth century before World War II, because the writer seeks to understand the psychology that brought about the horrors of 1939-45. It's all interesting reading until page 184 when the nightmare begins. Again, the writer doesn't sensationalise but there is no way you can read the next 100 pages without feeling scourged to your very depths, and hopefully not scarred for life.
In the end, you can't really explain the psychologies involved, that caused people to murder friends, neighbours, workmates and family members in a paroxysm of violence; you can only describe it. The author himself acknowledges feelings of inadequacy trying to understand Germans who before the war had been model citizens - most of them policemen, regular churchgoers, honest, dutiful, good neighbours, loved by their families - who then during the war went to a remote Polish town and became monsters, living like lords with their wives, children and Jewish mistresses, possessing the power of life and death, some of them personally murdering hundreds of people at close range - and then afterwards returned to their prewar lives as though nothing had happened, continuing as policemen, loved and respected, until dying peacefully in their beds. One of the most vivid of these monsters lived to be eighty-nine.
The truth is, you just don't know who your neighbour is, or what they are capable of. Sometimes they can astonish you with their courage and goodness, but more often it seems - and particularly during wartime - you discover a pit of darkness in their souls.
November 11, 2024
Since a youthful stint immersed in the Shoah and WWII in my reading, I've tended to avoid the subject, given its grim chronicles. However, Bartov's study I found recommended as an byway from my current interest in literature from the Yiddish earlier in the last century. It's certainly very detailed, as others have agreed. Full of testimony, with some photos and maps, to illustrate the author's ancestral town, in Galicia, caught (reminding me of Bosnia with its Muslims, Croats, and Serbs contesting for control in a small space fought over for centuries, and unfortunately situated) between Jews and Poles in Buczacz, with Ukrainians and Ruthenians in its down-and-out vicinity.
Bartov charts these ever-shifting boundaries, as it's a front on the Austro-Hungarian vs tsarist Russian conflicts of WWI, then occupied by Ukrainians, Poles, Bolsheviks, and Germany in turn. The inherent instability of the region dooms any hopes for lasting peace. As ethnic rivalries heighten in the aftermath of the Great War, and nationalism enables shaky independence as Poland, the USSR, and the Ukraine entity all batter the area, Bartov shows how the two of the three ethnicities blur by intermarriage between Greek and Latin-rite Catholics, Orthodox Christian Ukrainians, while they in turn take turns either siding with or against their Jewish rivals for power over a hardscrabble place.
I aver Bartov, understandably, underplays the Jewish support given the Reds. For in retrospect, this sounds like blaming the victim, as both fervent Poles and Ukrainians have done given the fate of their peoples under Lenin and Stalin. But Bartov emphasizes that the two Slavic polities always had it marginally better than their Jewish neighbors, who found themselves constantly on edge as the unpredictability of their position, geographically, practically, politically, and in relation to the steady antisemitic threats of their perceived religious foes add up to a volatile, fearful, deadly fate.
The author triangulates the predicaments of those marked by their surnames and how, in a confined setting, difficult it was for the Jews to escape. While both Poles and Ukrainians in certain cases testify to their shared disbelief about the supposed passivity of the Jewish masses, they tend to underestimate how they'd been starved, ripped off, beaten down, sold by those hiding them, lied to, and blackmailed for generations by themselves, not only agents of the Fuhrer or Soviet Union.
Bartov tries, therefore to balance the predominant victimization of the Jewish populace by tallying the costs of an impossible choice of persecution by the Reich or deportation by the communists. All the while, Ukrainians and Poles trapped among their own Nazi-Soviet occupiers must decide their own loyalty, amidst partisans, collaborators, massive terror dealt out with very little respite or mercy. Meanwhile, as Bartok shows with some earned irony, the German military and civilian newcomers tended to live it up with wine, women, and song, as well as lots of loot from those they shot down, buried alive, sent off to Belzec, extorted (the peasants don't come off well here either), or, in the case of "Jewish police" and those deputized by coercion to try to save their own skin while betraying, enslaving, despoiling their own community. It makes for harrowing reading, but it memorializes courage too. Amidst the predictable cruelty, we see rarer moments of kindness.
Bartov charts these ever-shifting boundaries, as it's a front on the Austro-Hungarian vs tsarist Russian conflicts of WWI, then occupied by Ukrainians, Poles, Bolsheviks, and Germany in turn. The inherent instability of the region dooms any hopes for lasting peace. As ethnic rivalries heighten in the aftermath of the Great War, and nationalism enables shaky independence as Poland, the USSR, and the Ukraine entity all batter the area, Bartov shows how the two of the three ethnicities blur by intermarriage between Greek and Latin-rite Catholics, Orthodox Christian Ukrainians, while they in turn take turns either siding with or against their Jewish rivals for power over a hardscrabble place.
I aver Bartov, understandably, underplays the Jewish support given the Reds. For in retrospect, this sounds like blaming the victim, as both fervent Poles and Ukrainians have done given the fate of their peoples under Lenin and Stalin. But Bartov emphasizes that the two Slavic polities always had it marginally better than their Jewish neighbors, who found themselves constantly on edge as the unpredictability of their position, geographically, practically, politically, and in relation to the steady antisemitic threats of their perceived religious foes add up to a volatile, fearful, deadly fate.
The author triangulates the predicaments of those marked by their surnames and how, in a confined setting, difficult it was for the Jews to escape. While both Poles and Ukrainians in certain cases testify to their shared disbelief about the supposed passivity of the Jewish masses, they tend to underestimate how they'd been starved, ripped off, beaten down, sold by those hiding them, lied to, and blackmailed for generations by themselves, not only agents of the Fuhrer or Soviet Union.
Bartov tries, therefore to balance the predominant victimization of the Jewish populace by tallying the costs of an impossible choice of persecution by the Reich or deportation by the communists. All the while, Ukrainians and Poles trapped among their own Nazi-Soviet occupiers must decide their own loyalty, amidst partisans, collaborators, massive terror dealt out with very little respite or mercy. Meanwhile, as Bartok shows with some earned irony, the German military and civilian newcomers tended to live it up with wine, women, and song, as well as lots of loot from those they shot down, buried alive, sent off to Belzec, extorted (the peasants don't come off well here either), or, in the case of "Jewish police" and those deputized by coercion to try to save their own skin while betraying, enslaving, despoiling their own community. It makes for harrowing reading, but it memorializes courage too. Amidst the predictable cruelty, we see rarer moments of kindness.
March 11, 2018
Anatomy of a Genocide: The Life and Death of a Town Called Buczacz by Omer Bartov tells of the violent history in a small Polish town during World War II, when people who lived side by side their whole lives turned on one another. Mr. Bartov is an Israeli scholars who went off to write a family history and stumbled onto something bigger.
This is the book I was waiting to read for a long time. I have had interest in World War II for many decades, I read numerous history books and works of fiction, all trying to explain human nature and the brutality which ensued, seemingly out of nowhere.
But we all know that it wasn’t out of nowhere.
And we all know that atrocities don’t just “happen”.
Mr. Bartov’s mother was raised in Buczacz (present day Ukraine), one day on offhand remark to her son raised his interest. Mr. Bartov started digging, trying to learn how his family lived and died.
Mr. Bartov failed to write a family history, but succeeded enormously in writing a fascinating and important book about the European mindset which caused the justification of genocide.
Buczacz lies in the middle of a politically charged region, due to its strategic importance. The town received its unfair attention from rival superpowers which put a microscope to the region and to the populace.
The violence against Jews did not start with the Third Reich, and sadly did not end with its demise. The district which had a population of Jews, Christians, Poles, and Ukrainians all living together relatively peacefully for centuries. Rivalries always exist where people are, Mr. Bartov analyzes those rivalries, especially those between the Poles and Ukrainian, which was made even more complicated when the Nazis invaded. The Soviets plan was to incorporate the region into the Soviet Union, something the Ukrainians embraced and the Poles rejected, the conflict which started before the First World War saw the population of the region reduced by one-third by the time 1945 came around.
So how did ordinary men and women turn on their neighbors during World War II?
As I mentioned, Anti-Semitism started much earlier, when Jews were lumped together with Russians, communists, and savage hordes. Portrayed as aliens which will not be assimilated into the society, Jews were looked upon as a subversive element. During the wars, this false rhetoric was manifested into mass murder. The Germans transformed the local Ukrainian militia into a district police force which committed dreaded atrocities at an “astonishing ease”. People killed those they personally knew, men, women, children, and friends.
This book of the mindset of mass murder and genocide is an important book which is well written and easy to read. Not only an important history book, but a cautionary tale as well.
For more reviews and bookish posts please visit: http://www.ManOfLaBook.com
This is the book I was waiting to read for a long time. I have had interest in World War II for many decades, I read numerous history books and works of fiction, all trying to explain human nature and the brutality which ensued, seemingly out of nowhere.
But we all know that it wasn’t out of nowhere.
And we all know that atrocities don’t just “happen”.
Mr. Bartov’s mother was raised in Buczacz (present day Ukraine), one day on offhand remark to her son raised his interest. Mr. Bartov started digging, trying to learn how his family lived and died.
Mr. Bartov failed to write a family history, but succeeded enormously in writing a fascinating and important book about the European mindset which caused the justification of genocide.
Buczacz lies in the middle of a politically charged region, due to its strategic importance. The town received its unfair attention from rival superpowers which put a microscope to the region and to the populace.
The violence against Jews did not start with the Third Reich, and sadly did not end with its demise. The district which had a population of Jews, Christians, Poles, and Ukrainians all living together relatively peacefully for centuries. Rivalries always exist where people are, Mr. Bartov analyzes those rivalries, especially those between the Poles and Ukrainian, which was made even more complicated when the Nazis invaded. The Soviets plan was to incorporate the region into the Soviet Union, something the Ukrainians embraced and the Poles rejected, the conflict which started before the First World War saw the population of the region reduced by one-third by the time 1945 came around.
So how did ordinary men and women turn on their neighbors during World War II?
As I mentioned, Anti-Semitism started much earlier, when Jews were lumped together with Russians, communists, and savage hordes. Portrayed as aliens which will not be assimilated into the society, Jews were looked upon as a subversive element. During the wars, this false rhetoric was manifested into mass murder. The Germans transformed the local Ukrainian militia into a district police force which committed dreaded atrocities at an “astonishing ease”. People killed those they personally knew, men, women, children, and friends.
This book of the mindset of mass murder and genocide is an important book which is well written and easy to read. Not only an important history book, but a cautionary tale as well.
For more reviews and bookish posts please visit: http://www.ManOfLaBook.com
April 16, 2021
A good follow-up to Bartov’s earlier “Erased,” his archaeological journey to find the remnants of Jewish life and culture in post-Soviet West Ukraine. Here he fills in the gaps of the pre-Soviet era, beginning with the half-buried reminiscences of his mother and grandmother. Following their threads of memory he reconstructs a land of diversity amputated by conquest, fanaticism, and genocide.
None of the tragedy recorded here was the “inevitable” result of “ancient hatreds,” as the wonk tropes of the late 20th century would have it. Buczacz was never a multi-culti idyll, but its communities of Poles, Ukrainians, and Jews coexisted peaceably enough despite the centrifugal pull of extremes. What changed it was WW II and the German occupation.
The most atrocious aspect recorded here was not exactly the Nazi Holocaust, if only because it was expected; thus becoming the convenient reference point for all others evading their own responsibility. Ukrainian nationalists took center stage, seizing this opportunity to turn cultural self-awareness into racist murder. First collaborating with the SS in exterminating Jewish neighbors, nationalist partisans turned on Poles in an orgy of ethnic cleansing all but forgotten until the Balkan Wars of the 1990s drew researchers looking for parallels.
The motive was to create a “Ukraine for Ukrainians,” a fact on the ground close, in spirit, to the mentality of Israel itself in its own occupied regions. That a Ukrainian state free of Germany, Poland, or Russia was impossible in this era was beside the point. Utopia was part and parcel of the political era. Those who buy into the nationalist propaganda of OUN-UPA and descendants - now resurgent in Kiev and protected by law - should at least be aware of whom they endorse, the equivalent of the Khmer Rouge.
Ironically it was the nationalist’s arch-enemy, the USSR, that tamed them. Despairing of creating any “socialist internationalism” Soviet forces instituted their tried-and-true solution of homogenizing the population through transfer. Thus the remnants of Galicia’s Poles were deported to Poland; the Jews were, by then, no problem.
Although these issues arose again in the 1990s, then seemed to have abated, their embers still burn. The likes of arch-pogromchik Stepan Bandera are memorialized throughout “Free Ukraine;” anti-Semitism, even without Jews, is a cultural norm; while to deny the Holodomor famine of 1933 as the moral equivalent of the Nazi Holocaust is now a statute crime. NATO has replaced Germany as the arch-nationalist patron in new wars of ethnic succession and geopolitics. Though things will not descend into genocide, the perpetrators of this book can take posthumous comfort as their tradition continues.
None of the tragedy recorded here was the “inevitable” result of “ancient hatreds,” as the wonk tropes of the late 20th century would have it. Buczacz was never a multi-culti idyll, but its communities of Poles, Ukrainians, and Jews coexisted peaceably enough despite the centrifugal pull of extremes. What changed it was WW II and the German occupation.
The most atrocious aspect recorded here was not exactly the Nazi Holocaust, if only because it was expected; thus becoming the convenient reference point for all others evading their own responsibility. Ukrainian nationalists took center stage, seizing this opportunity to turn cultural self-awareness into racist murder. First collaborating with the SS in exterminating Jewish neighbors, nationalist partisans turned on Poles in an orgy of ethnic cleansing all but forgotten until the Balkan Wars of the 1990s drew researchers looking for parallels.
The motive was to create a “Ukraine for Ukrainians,” a fact on the ground close, in spirit, to the mentality of Israel itself in its own occupied regions. That a Ukrainian state free of Germany, Poland, or Russia was impossible in this era was beside the point. Utopia was part and parcel of the political era. Those who buy into the nationalist propaganda of OUN-UPA and descendants - now resurgent in Kiev and protected by law - should at least be aware of whom they endorse, the equivalent of the Khmer Rouge.
Ironically it was the nationalist’s arch-enemy, the USSR, that tamed them. Despairing of creating any “socialist internationalism” Soviet forces instituted their tried-and-true solution of homogenizing the population through transfer. Thus the remnants of Galicia’s Poles were deported to Poland; the Jews were, by then, no problem.
Although these issues arose again in the 1990s, then seemed to have abated, their embers still burn. The likes of arch-pogromchik Stepan Bandera are memorialized throughout “Free Ukraine;” anti-Semitism, even without Jews, is a cultural norm; while to deny the Holodomor famine of 1933 as the moral equivalent of the Nazi Holocaust is now a statute crime. NATO has replaced Germany as the arch-nationalist patron in new wars of ethnic succession and geopolitics. Though things will not descend into genocide, the perpetrators of this book can take posthumous comfort as their tradition continues.
Read
June 22, 2022
TW: trauma (in this case, i'm referring to mine ❤️)
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i could never rate this.
anatomy of a genocide is the depiction and exploration of the multifaceted extermination of Jews in the town of Buczacz; a physical, social and psycholological murder closely linked to the Holocaust. indeed, through considerable documentation (diaries, political reports, thousands of archives), omer bartov retraced the precise path that led to the Shoah.
key word: precise.
this nonfiction book was extremely detailed; every page consisted in the exposition of more and more suffering which i was definitely not ready to take or live with. and that's when my perhaps-too-deep sense of empathy came into play. this book gave me severe anxiety. i would find myself breathing loudly, as if a pressure was held to my chest, with fast heart-beats and nightmarish visions which led to occasional panic attacks. i found myself needing to skip through specific passages and the only reason why i completed my reading of this is because i'm part of a jury committee (and basically don't have a choice haha). i'd like to point out that i am in no way stating this to attract pity, but rather to forwarn people who might potentially be triggered as i was.
i can't say i'm glad i read this due to the threshold it had on my anxiety but i do believe that this book can act not as only a cautionary tale but also and perhaps most importantly as a lesson on humanity (as a concept and a species).
in case you would like to know more, i'd gladly direct you towards this conference, as well as this one (please bear in mind that the latter is in french though).
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i could never rate this.
anatomy of a genocide is the depiction and exploration of the multifaceted extermination of Jews in the town of Buczacz; a physical, social and psycholological murder closely linked to the Holocaust. indeed, through considerable documentation (diaries, political reports, thousands of archives), omer bartov retraced the precise path that led to the Shoah.
key word: precise.
this nonfiction book was extremely detailed; every page consisted in the exposition of more and more suffering which i was definitely not ready to take or live with. and that's when my perhaps-too-deep sense of empathy came into play. this book gave me severe anxiety. i would find myself breathing loudly, as if a pressure was held to my chest, with fast heart-beats and nightmarish visions which led to occasional panic attacks. i found myself needing to skip through specific passages and the only reason why i completed my reading of this is because i'm part of a jury committee (and basically don't have a choice haha). i'd like to point out that i am in no way stating this to attract pity, but rather to forwarn people who might potentially be triggered as i was.
i can't say i'm glad i read this due to the threshold it had on my anxiety but i do believe that this book can act not as only a cautionary tale but also and perhaps most importantly as a lesson on humanity (as a concept and a species).
in case you would like to know more, i'd gladly direct you towards this conference, as well as this one (please bear in mind that the latter is in french though).
May 13, 2019
This is, of course, a profoundly upsetting book. That's to be expected. It is also a stunning piece of research. When Bartov writes in his Acknowledgments that it took two decades to research and write, I absolutely believe him. Arendt argued in Origins of Totalitarianism that someone needed to write a thorough history of anti-semitism; this book does not do that, but it does provide a longitudinal micro study of anti-semitism in practice. I suggest that this work be read alongside Snyder's Bloodlands as well.
Bartov tells the story of the town/city of Buczazc chronologically, but he also develops themes in the chapters, including the inter-ethnic tensions and behaviours, and the rare kindnesses and frequent betrayals. Chapter 6 - "The Daily Life of Genocide" - which recounts events involving children, was a particularly difficult read. He does not try to explain what happened with any grand theory. He recounts events with quotes from interviews, letters, reports, and some (far too few) criminal trials. What emerges is a region and peoples of enormous complexity. And it is clear that the events are not "just" history, beyond even the observation that Russia and Ukraine are even now writing new chapters. What I mean is that the tragedies inflicted in Galicia resonate in a way that is terrifying. How easy it is for a multi-cultural society to shatter is a lesson we all need to heed, and how quickly it devolves is breath-taking.
Bartov tells the story of the town/city of Buczazc chronologically, but he also develops themes in the chapters, including the inter-ethnic tensions and behaviours, and the rare kindnesses and frequent betrayals. Chapter 6 - "The Daily Life of Genocide" - which recounts events involving children, was a particularly difficult read. He does not try to explain what happened with any grand theory. He recounts events with quotes from interviews, letters, reports, and some (far too few) criminal trials. What emerges is a region and peoples of enormous complexity. And it is clear that the events are not "just" history, beyond even the observation that Russia and Ukraine are even now writing new chapters. What I mean is that the tragedies inflicted in Galicia resonate in a way that is terrifying. How easy it is for a multi-cultural society to shatter is a lesson we all need to heed, and how quickly it devolves is breath-taking.
February 16, 2018
Excellent account of one city’s experience with the holocaust. Deeply sourced using mostly eyewitness reports (by victims murdered before they could finish their writings) and as a result is moving and shocking. Author has personal stake in story since his family came from town, but his telling is extremely objective and therefore very effective.
Suffice to say, root causes of the genocide go back many years and author gives a nice backstory. He place what I would call “routine” antisemitism in greater context - ethnic divisions involving Poles and Ukrainians. The Jews were caught inbeteeen, and as you might suspect, blamed for the actions of both of these groups.
Nor was the genocide limited to Jews - with the sssistance of the Germans, and after them the Russians, the Polish and the Ukrainian populations got their turns in the killing, this time as victims.
The descriptions of how people were killed are appalling and even worse was how neighbors could turn on each other,murdering or informing on their former friends and acquaintances. Author doesn’t whitewash the Jews’ own involvement with the Judenrat and the OD being reprehensible.
Only faults I found was some confusion regarding interchangeable use of “Ruthenian” and “Ukrainian.” I would also like to have known more about how the survivors ended up.
Suffice to say, root causes of the genocide go back many years and author gives a nice backstory. He place what I would call “routine” antisemitism in greater context - ethnic divisions involving Poles and Ukrainians. The Jews were caught inbeteeen, and as you might suspect, blamed for the actions of both of these groups.
Nor was the genocide limited to Jews - with the sssistance of the Germans, and after them the Russians, the Polish and the Ukrainian populations got their turns in the killing, this time as victims.
The descriptions of how people were killed are appalling and even worse was how neighbors could turn on each other,murdering or informing on their former friends and acquaintances. Author doesn’t whitewash the Jews’ own involvement with the Judenrat and the OD being reprehensible.
Only faults I found was some confusion regarding interchangeable use of “Ruthenian” and “Ukrainian.” I would also like to have known more about how the survivors ended up.
March 22, 2025
Puiki knyga. Puikus mokslinis tyrimas apie vieną miestą/regioną, pateiktas labai prieinamai ir įdomiai. Ką išmokau iš knygos, kad reikia turėti labai gerus santykius su kaimynais, būti labai maloniai žmogui ir mokėti kalbas. Kitaip šansai išgyventi tarp neišvengiamai sužvėrėjusių žmonių yra labai nedideli. Kaip iš šansai pačiai nesužvėrėti. Turint omeny, kad kiti žvėrys, gyvūnai, neužsiima genocidais ir masinėmis žudynėmis, kankinimais ir tremtimis.
Gera knyga geriau suprasti savo vietą ir kaip tautinės mažumos atstovei. Tuo metu, kai 2025-ais džiaugiuosi esant Lietuvos lenke, o ne ruse, nes 'jei ką' nesutarimo ir kaltinimo žvilgsniai ir pirštai iš etninės daugumos bus nukreipti ne į mane, nors dar prieš dešimtmetį būtų buvę kitaip. Tuo pat metu kiti pažįstami Lietuvos lenkai su rusiškomis pavardėmis jaučia didėjančią baimę, nes 'jei ką', nieks nesigilins. Tas momentas, kai 2025 metai, bet skaičiuoji ir džiaugiesi, jei gali gerai 'passinti' už daugumą. Nes masės žmonių sumesti į bendras dideles erdves - miestus yra parako bačka. Net turint omeny, kiek neįtikėtinai homogeniška yra Lietuva.
Sėkmės mums visiems nepasipjauti 🤞🏻
Gera knyga geriau suprasti savo vietą ir kaip tautinės mažumos atstovei. Tuo metu, kai 2025-ais džiaugiuosi esant Lietuvos lenke, o ne ruse, nes 'jei ką' nesutarimo ir kaltinimo žvilgsniai ir pirštai iš etninės daugumos bus nukreipti ne į mane, nors dar prieš dešimtmetį būtų buvę kitaip. Tuo pat metu kiti pažįstami Lietuvos lenkai su rusiškomis pavardėmis jaučia didėjančią baimę, nes 'jei ką', nieks nesigilins. Tas momentas, kai 2025 metai, bet skaičiuoji ir džiaugiesi, jei gali gerai 'passinti' už daugumą. Nes masės žmonių sumesti į bendras dideles erdves - miestus yra parako bačka. Net turint omeny, kiek neįtikėtinai homogeniška yra Lietuva.
Sėkmės mums visiems nepasipjauti 🤞🏻
April 24, 2018
A very interesting book that looked at the political turmoil and ethnic violence in a region that changed hands several times between 1914 and 1945. The focus of the book is the destruction of the Jewish population of the region, but Bartov puts this into a larger context.
"Anatomy of a Genocide" shows the importance of looking at specific details. There is a quote in here from one survivor that while the Jews were hated by Hitler, it was the hatred of their neighbors that proved fatal for so many Jews in Buczacz. This book shows how big events, such as "the Eastern Front" and "the Holocaust," were actually driven by actions of all sorts of people who are usually overlooked in more general history books.
Certain to be an important book for the study of this era and a model for future books examining the Holocaust.
"Anatomy of a Genocide" shows the importance of looking at specific details. There is a quote in here from one survivor that while the Jews were hated by Hitler, it was the hatred of their neighbors that proved fatal for so many Jews in Buczacz. This book shows how big events, such as "the Eastern Front" and "the Holocaust," were actually driven by actions of all sorts of people who are usually overlooked in more general history books.
Certain to be an important book for the study of this era and a model for future books examining the Holocaust.
July 5, 2020
Story of history of Jewish community destruction in this border town torn between Russia & Poland, with a bit of Ukrainian nationalism thrown in. Very dispassionate analysis; used historical records including peoples’ contemporaneous journals. The anti semisitism and Ukrainian/polish tensions were just beneath the surface. The Poles really treated the Ukrainians poorly after WWI when they finally got their own country. The Russians and Germans went back & forth during WWII and Germans were not there as long as other part of Poland. Describes how well the Germans lived during this time; how none of them we imprisoned for their actions; blamed it all on the Ukrainians.
Mother was from Buczacz but had left before WWII.
Mother was from Buczacz but had left before WWII.
December 30, 2020
A stunning book. Brutal, morbid at times. Has incredible breadth in showing the history and complexity of interrelations between groups of people in a certain place. Much bigger than its content matter in showing how history is remade through societal and individual narratives. So reliant on source material woven into the text, yet the author’s subtle and modest arguments shine through and are even more powerful as a result. Relatively short for a history book, only 300 pages, which I appreciated, and the penultimate chapter (‘Neighbours’) even lacked the absolute necessity that every other chapter seemed to bring. Subjective to your interests, but I felt the book picked up pace and was more interesting as it went on in time, as would be expected. This had a big impact on me - as you can probably tell. Please read.
A 9 or 10/10.
A 9 or 10/10.
December 26, 2025
I read this in one day so it’s hard to say it wasn’t riveting the detail that and research that went into this book is evident. It explore the history of the holocaust and antisemitism and roots in an eastern ukrainian/polish town and how often times this part of history is reduced to just during WW2 and a problem then. It’s evident throughout the book how it existed well before and well after and what took place in this town. Towards the end it lost me it was such an in depth application of the material that it was almost too much. So many accounts and it was hard to keep track of what was what and when was what and who was what. Overall though interesting story and author does a good job framing the problem and how it’s definitely still possible today and still happening.
March 26, 2018
Deze geschiedenis focust op een plaats in het voormalige Galicie, Buczacs. Hier woonden al generaties Polen, Joden en Oekrainers samen. Met de eerste wereldoorlog komen de onderlinge problemen, die later en tijdens en na de 2de wereldoorlog alleen maar erger worden. Onvoorstelbaar hoe buren, vrienden en soms zelfs familie ineens tot gruweldaden jegens elkaar in staat blijken te zijn. Het is al in verschillende boeken beschreven, maar hier wordt het persoonlijker gemaakt door de vele namen en de onderlinge relaties, die vermeld worden. Er is soms wat te veel detail, maar over het algemeen goed geschreven.
July 31, 2019
This covers a lot of ground that I've read elsewhere. It is most useful, therefore, in its presentation of tensions between Polish and Ukrainian ethnic politics, of the explosion of both nationalisms between the world wars, and of the manner in which the Jews ended up squeezed between Polish and Ukrainian hopes for national autonomy. It's also especially eye-opening for those who are not already aware of the Ukrainian role in concentrating, intimidating, and liquidating Jewish communities in Galicia.
June 30, 2018
Powrrful
The power derived not from rhetoric, but the dismal facts. This history is not like ours, but is horrible beyond target's reach. Not just that German slaughter of Jews, but Polish and Ukranian participation in the slaughter, as well as in the murders of one another. Some days of light-- the rare rescue-- but mostly lost in darkness. God keep us from forgetting; but also from dwelling so long in this horror that we become acclimated to it.
The power derived not from rhetoric, but the dismal facts. This history is not like ours, but is horrible beyond target's reach. Not just that German slaughter of Jews, but Polish and Ukranian participation in the slaughter, as well as in the murders of one another. Some days of light-- the rare rescue-- but mostly lost in darkness. God keep us from forgetting; but also from dwelling so long in this horror that we become acclimated to it.
April 16, 2022
You might read other accounts of the holocaust and think that could never happen now; it is impossible to read this one and not be struck by the resemblance to current events. Technology may have advanced and made life easier for nearly everyone, but man's inhumanity to man has continued unabated. Russia is currently the worst offender in the current conflict and clearly the aggressor, but all parties involved have a bloody history that they each choose to whitewash or ignore.
February 13, 2018
Well researched history of the genocide of the Jewish population of Buczacz in Western Ukraine. There is a kaleidoscopic interaction of populations: Poles, Ukrainians, Jews, Germans and Soviets. And of course a horrifying level of brutality, especially by the Nazis.
November 16, 2018
Excellent analysis of a diverse town in E Galcia pre WWI through to genocide in WWII. Sad how neighbours could turn on one another during the German occupation.
November 9, 2018
Great read and the author is very objective and fair in his analysis of the horrors that visited this town over many decades!!
December 4, 2018
Grim and graphic reminder that the Poles and Ukraines were as vicious as the Nazis when it came to killing Jews.
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