Antropologicheskij forum, 2015, no. 26

A Review of JEFFREY VEIDLINGER, IN THE SHADOW OF THE SHTETL. Bloomington; Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2013, 385 pp.

Valery Dymshits

European University at St Petersburg
3 Gagarinskaya Str., St Petersburg, Russia
vodym1959()gmail.com

Abstract: Jeffery Veidlinger’s work is a study on the oral history of the Jewish people in the small towns of South-Western Ukraine, based on more than 400 interviews that he recorded during his field studies in the early 2000s. The author focuses on memories of life before World War II and the Rumanian occupation. An important aspect of this work is that it is written on the basis of interviews, recorded exclusively in Yiddish, which had both advantages ad disadvantages. All of the collected materials are placed in a broad historical context. This work is an indispensable guide for those who are interested in the everyday life of Jews in the former shtetls, the last traces of which are disappearing before our very eyes.

Keywords: Shtetls, Ukraine, oral history, 20th century, Jews, Jewish history, social life and customs.

To cite: Dymshits V., 'A Review of Jeffrey Veidlinger, In the Shadow of the Shtetl. Bloomington; Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2013, 385 pp.', Antropologicheskij forum, 2015, no. 26, pp. 293–302.

URL: http://anthropologie.kunstkamera.ru/files/pdf/026/dymshits.pdf