In this intimate blend of history, memoir, and reportage, author Maksim Goldenshteyn illuminates an oft-overlooked chapter of the Holocaust and traces its echoes across decades, continents, and generations.
In August 1941, with its invasion of the Soviet Union underway, Nazi Germany ceded part of southwestern Ukraine to its most important ally on the Eastern Front: Romania. Romanian occupiers quickly established camps and ghettos throughout the territory, targeting the local Jewish population and those deported from nearby regions.
Four months later, the author’s grandfather Motl Braverman, then 12, was forced from his hometown of Tulchyn, Ukraine. He endured a harrowing march to a death camp in the remote village of Pechera alongside his family and neighbors. Against staggering odds, the Bravermans survived the notorious Romanian camp and witnessed the Red Army’s liberation in March 1944.
Upon their return to Tulchyn, survivors like Motl—many of them still children—faced the daunting task of rebuilding their shattered lives and communities. They remained in their native towns through the collapse of the Soviet Union and beyond, constituting some of the last Yiddish-speaking Jewish communities in Eastern Europe.
