There once was a world - Yaffa Eliach

Two million visitors a year enter the US Holocaust Musuem, where 1600 photographs from the shtetl of Eishyshok constitute what many consider to be the most moving exhibit in the musuem - The Tower Of Life. In this soaring, three storey space we see the people of Eishyshok at their weddings and bar mitzvahs, their social clubs and literary gatherings, their winter sports and summer camps. Now Professor Yaffa Eliach, whose haunting collection of photographs gave faces to a murdered people, has written the history of that people.
Eliach's nine century saga of East European Jewish life is richer and fuller than any other written. Her research took her from family attics on six continents to State Archives no scholar has seen since the start of The Cold War.
Eliach's own roots in Eishyshok, as a descendant of one of the five founding families and herself one of only 29 survivors of the Nazi massacre of the 3500 inhabitants of the shtetl give this book its depth and passion.

Published to coincide with Jewish Book Week ( 7-14th March 1999)
Publisher's Weekly selected this title as one of only five ' Books of The Year' whilst The New York Times put it in their 'Top 10 Books of The Year