Bridge Builder

Shimon Redlich, a child survivor of the Holocaust, was born in Lwow in 1935 and lived in nearby Brzezany until 1945, when he was repatriated to Lodz. He left Poland for Israel in 1950. He studied at the Hebrew University, Harvard, and New York University. He taught history at Ben-Gurion University for almost forty years. Redlich has written numerous books and articles on the history of the Jews in Eastern Europe and his memoirs, of which this book is the fourth and final volume.

“This moving, heartfelt and poignant memoir sketches the life of a pioneering historian of Soviet Jewry and interethnic relations and the Holocaust in Poland-Ukraine. Redlich interacted with some of the most important scholars of the post-World War II era, and by telling their stories, as well as recounting his own remarkable life, he captures a slice of the past that is quickly receding into history”.—Omer Bartov, the author of Israel: What Went Wrong? Forthcoming in April 2026 in the US & the UK, Genocide, the Holocaust, and Israel-Palestine: First-Person History in Times of Crisis, The Butterfly and the Axe. A Novel

• Prologue: Joanna Beata MichlicJerusalem, 1957–1962 America, 1962–1968Return to IsraelFriends and ColleaguesGermany and GermansIn Gorbachev’s RussiaUkraine and Ukrainians Sheptytsky’s Advocate Life with BooksPoland and PolesEpilogue. Aging in the Shadow of a Pandemic and War