Lvov Ghetto Diary

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

To Holocaust history, Tel Aviv rabbi Kahane here adds his witness, condemning Ukrainians for complicity with their Nazi captors in exterminating Jews. Only the Uniate Catholic Church is exempt from his rancor, for Metropolitan Archbishop Andrei Sheptytskyi; his brother, Abbot Kliment; and the monks sheltered the author during the Occupation, while his wife and three-year-old daughter found harbor in a convent. Kahane provides a virtual day-by-day account of conditions under which his coreligionists lived and perished in Lvov, from the July 194l capture of the city by the Germans to the July 1944 liberation by the Red Army. In recalling those war years, Kahane's anguish is manifest: ``Today . . . my heart still trembles with terror.'' So does the reader's. (Dec.)

Library Journal

This memoir covers the period from July 1941 to July 1944, during which the German army occupied the Ukrainian city of Lvov and murdered 135,000 Jews. The author, who went on to become chief rabbi in the Israeli Air Force, survived because the archbishop of the Uniate Catholic Church protected him, while Catholic convents hid his wife and daughter. Before he reached that shelter, however, Kahane suffered in a forced labor camp. He describes that experience, as well as the lonely period of hiding when he felt that he was the last Jew left alive, in a book notable for its intellectual and theological probing, its sensitive portraits of fellow Jews and the decent Ukrainians who sheltered him. Recommended for libraries with strong Holocaust collections.-- Paul Kaplan, Highland Park P.L., Ill.

Booknews

This Holocaust memoir covers the period from July 1941 when the Germans first occupied the Ukrainian city of Lvov, to July 1944, when the city was liberated. The author, a rabbi, escaped death because he was hidden by the Ukrainian archbishop of the Uniate Catholic Church. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)