The History of a Small Town in an Extinguished World
Charting the ebbs and flows of repression and tolerance, uprisings and occupation, migration and assimilation of Poland's history, 'Shtetl' provides a rare and valuable analysis of the troubled relationship between Poles and Jews over the centuries.
For the Jews, Poland is the symbol of murder, where the Nazis set up their killing fields and where the Polish post-war response was further brutality, followed by amnesia; for the Poles there remains a feeling of unfairness that their own wartime sufferings are overlooked. Hoffman's interest lies in rescuing the past from the evasions, concealments and half-truths demanded by the post-war politics and national pride - as well as from the additions of the imagination, which all memory to some extent involves.
