David Zagier (1908–1999)

A beautiful and haunting story of a world now lost forever. The Holocaust permeates every page; every time a new character was introduced I wondered what his or her fate would be. Many of Botchki's Jews of the author's generation escaped through emigration, but the entire shtetl, including his parents and younger brother and his brother's family, was eaten by Treblinka in 1943.

The book is undeniably sentimental, but the author doesn't stoop from describing the hardships: the occupations by various foreign powers, the abject poverty and hunger his family was eventually cast in, the constant stresses and strains that nearly killed his mother and turned his once-doting father into an abusive, almost hateful man. Although World War II killed the Polish shtetls, they were already on their way out as Jewish youth, fleeing poverty and antisemitism, scattered to the winds. By the eve of World War II, David, his older brother and his sister were living with their respective families on three different continents.

For a more earthy (fictional) story about life in a shtetl before the Holocaust, try Yehoshue Perle's Everyday Jews: Scenes from a Vanished Life.… (mere)