Botchki: When Doomsday Was Still Tomorrow

by David Zagier

With the humor and clearsightedness of one who loved the shtetl, but who worked hard to escape from it, Zagier records the rhythms and texture of everyday life in Botchki, a small town northeast of Warsaw, from the early years of the century until 1927.

The author glories in the details of growing up and explores every irony, every twist of fate, every historical fact, as history rushed past this shtetl, sometimes affecting it, sometimes just passing it by. Life was ruled by religion, and he recounts his growing rebelliousness against God, who gives his life meaning and yet allows so much suffering.

First set down on the eve of World War II, finished fifty years later, and now published for the first time, Botchki is a testament to a vanished world. This important and moving memoir is essential reading for everyone interested in issues of Jewish life, identity, and exile, as seen through the lens of life in an Eastern European shtetl in the early twentieth century.

224 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 2001

Reviews

[Meaghan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful and haunting story of a world now lost forever. The Holocaust permeates every page; every time a new character was introduced I wondered what his or her fate would be. Many of Botchki's Jews of the author's generation escaped through emigration, but the entire shtetl, including his parents and younger brother and his brother's family, was eaten by Treblinka in 1943.

The book is undeniably sentimental, but the author doesn't stoop from describing the hardships: the occupations by various foreign powers, the abject poverty and hunger his family was eventually cast in, the constant stresses and strains that nearly killed his mother and turned his once-doting father into an abusive, almost hateful man. Although World War II killed the Polish shtetls, they were already on their way out as Jewish youth, fleeing poverty and antisemitism, scattered to the winds. By the eve of World War II, David, his older brother and his sister were living with their respective families on three different continents.

For a more earthy (fictional) story about life in a shtetl before the Holocaust, try Yehoshue Perle's Everyday Jews: Scenes from a Vanished Life .

[Elisabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Magnificent, truly. A work great in both the clarity of its rememberings and the importance of its story.

[Vallerie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Honestly this wasnt the best book I have ever read but it really gave me an insight into a perspective that is far from my own. He said at the beginning that we would catch onto some words and what they meant and I would disagree that a glossary at the back of the book would have been nice.

[Marsha · Rating 4 out of 5]

A look into the life of shtetl life in pre WWII Luthuania. David Zagier was forced to leave his home town of Botchki as a young man after writing a short story that lampooned a local constable. As Jews, he like many other in the village were subject to periodic pogroms and the abuse of local government officals and townsfolks. When he left, he believed that his community would not survive and he wanted to make sure it was preserved and so he wrote. While life was not easy for him, his family or the community; Zagier wrote with love and without bitterness of his village and the people in it. Informative and well written, Zagier introduces us to a lost world and the characters who inhabited it.

[Posadafan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book took my breath away. It was so rich with detail that, right after finishing the last page, I re-read the entire book. I even photocopied the book cover, put it in a little frame, and stuck in in our dining room. It was that important to me. (My family thought I was a bit crazy, but...!)