In Of Lodz and Love, Chava Rosenfarb revisits her themes of the the shtetl and pre-Holocaust Poland, of economic and political oppression, and of the upheavals that would herald a new Jewish national and political awakening. The story takes Yacov, son of Hindele, and Binele, the daughter of the chalk vendor Yossele Abedale, to the industrial town of Lodz during the first years of Poland's independence, both before and after the country entered the war with the Bolsheviks. The would-be young lovers evolve separately against the backdrop of the city's own struggle for economic survival. In sometimes tragic turns, they make their way in the strange urban culture, rapidly acquiring the skills to survive. Translated from the original Yiddish, this book serves as prologue and as counterpoint to the urbanization of Jewish life in Poland. In its elegance and subtle wit, and overwhelming human dignity, it is not only the testimony of a vanished world, but a powerful love story.

In Bociany, Rosenfarb offers completely absorbing portrayals of Jews and Christians from several walks of life in the shtetl. Her primary characters are the scribe’s widow Hindele, her son Yacov, the chalk vendor Yossele Abedale, and his daughter Binele. Jewish relations with neighboring Catholics are generally civil, if complicated. Despite living next door to a convent, Hindele finds the nuns’ behavior implacably alien. Rosenfarb establishes an indelible sense of place, evoking its charm and the shtetl residents’ ease with the natural world. Her vivid characters and portrait of the preurban, pre-Holocaust world ring true. Yet even in isolated Bociany, new ideas—socialism, Zionism, Polish nationalism, secularism—begin to challenge the shtetl’s traditional agrarian and mercantile economy.

In 1939, the Germans invaded the town of Lodz, Poland, and moved the Jewish population into a small part of the city called a ghetto. As the war progressed, 270,000 people were forced to settle in the ghetto under impossible conditions. At the end of the war, there were 800 survivors. Of those who survived, only twelve were children. This is the story of Sylvia Perlmutter, one of the twelve.

Longlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize In February 1940, the Nazis established what would become the second-largest Jewish ghetto in the Polish city of Lódz. Its chosen leader: Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski, a sixty-three-year-old Jewish businessman and orphanage director -- and the elusive, authoritarian power sustaining the ghetto’s very existence. From one of Sweden's most critically acclaimed and bestselling authors, The Emperor of Lies chronicles the tale of Rumkowski's monarchical rule over a quarter-million Jews for the next four years. Driven by a titanic ambition, he sought to transform the ghetto into a productive industrial complex and strove to make it --and himself -- indispensable to the Nazi regime. Drawing on the detailed records of life in the Lódz ghetto, Steve Sem-Sandberg captures the full panorama of human resilience and probes deeply into the nature of evil. He asks the most difficult questions: Was Rumkowski a ruthless opportunist, an accessory to the Nazi regime driven by a lust for power? Or was he a pragmatic strategist who managed to save Jewish lives through his collaboration policies? Winner of the August Prize, Sweden’s most important literary award, The Emperor of Lies is a haunting, profoundly challenging novel.

Offers a powerful testimonial to the everyday horrors and the enduring human spirit present in Lodz Ghetto

After thirty-five years of quiet acceptance, Tonia Rotkopf Blair returned to Poland and confronted the Holocaust. Growing into an outspoken survivor, she began to write precise, poignant stories. Some concerned her childhood or traveling halfway around the world, or New York City, where she raised a family and attended the renown Columbia University. But all grappled with memories, dreams, and the Holocaust, many taking us into its depths, notably the three weeks she endured in Auschwitz. What makes Rotkopf Blair's perspective unique is that, while working as a nurse in the Lodz ghetto or enduring the concentration camps, she remained very much a romantic young woman. As history's most murderous war raged around her, she practiced love and kindness, and was sustained by encounters with decent people-including some Germans. So fresh are her views on these fraught subjects, Love at the End of the World includes an essay by her son, which teases those issues out by examining Darwin's theory of evolution, revising it from "survival of the fittest" to "survival of the 'lovingest.'"

Literary Nonficiton. Jewish Studies. With Rebecca Fromer. RUMKOWSKI AND THE ORPHANS OF OD is a chilling account of a young woman's experiences in the notorious od Ghetto. The ghetto was lorded over by Chaim Rumkowski, Nazi-appointed Jewish Elder of od and former head of the orphanage. Many have long hailed Rumkowski as a hero who did the best he could leading his community through the worst of circumstances. Now Lucille Eichengreen shares, with firsthand evidence, how Chaim Rumkowski flouted his authority through collaboration, corruption, and the abuse of its children."