The destruction of Trochenbrod, the only exclusively Jewish town outside of Israel, is a mostly overlooked Holocaust tragedy. This book pulls together a collection of extraordinary poems, essays, and letters by Yisrael Beider, a son of Trochenbrod and a descendant of generations of rabbis tracing back to the MAHARAL. Beider perished in the Holocaust, but these writings survived to become rare documents to emerge from Trochenbrod. Although Beider published portions of his work in prominent Hebrew and Yiddish papers, most of his work remains unknown. This translation assembled the entire surviving collection to shed light on Beider’s literary and historical work, and to provide an eyewitness account of life in Trochenbrod and western Ukraine between the two world wars.

The destruction of Trochenbrod, the only exclusively Jewish town outside of Israel, is a mostly overlooked Holocaust tragedy. This book pulls together a collection of extraordinary poems, essays, and letters by Yisrael Beider, a son of Trochenbrod and a descendant of generations of rabbis tracing back to the MAHARAL. Beider perished in the Holocaust, but these writings survived to become rare documents to emerge from Trochenbrod. Although Beider published portions of his work in prominent Hebrew and Yiddish papers, most of his work remains unknown. This translation assembled the entire surviving collection to shed light on Beider’s literary and historical work, and to provide an eyewitness account of life in Trochenbrod and western Ukraine between the two world wars.

The destruction of Trochenbrod, the only exclusively Jewish town outside of Israel, is a mostly overlooked Holocaust tragedy. This book pulls together a collection of extraordinary poems, essays, and letters by Yisrael Beider, a son of Trochenbrod and a descendant of generations of rabbis tracing back to the MAHARAL. Beider perished in the Holocaust, but these writings survived to become rare documents to emerge from Trochenbrod. Although Beider published portions of his work in prominent Hebrew and Yiddish papers, most of his work remains unknown. This translation assembled the entire surviving collection to shed light on Beider’s literary and historical work, and to provide an eyewitness account of life in Trochenbrod and western Ukraine between the two world wars.