Tales from the Borderlands: Making and Unmaking the Galician Past

by Omer Bartov

The story of the diverse communities of Eastern Europe’s borderlands in the centuries prior to World War II.

Focusing on the former province of Galicia, this book tells the story of Europe’s eastern borderlands, stretching from the Baltic to the Balkans, through the eyes of the diverse communities of migrants who settled there for centuries and were murdered or forcibly removed from the borderlands in the course of World War II and its aftermath. Omer Bartov explores the fates and hopes, dreams and disillusionment of the people who lived there, and, through the stories they told about themselves, reconstructs who they were, where they came from, and where they were heading. It was on the borderlands that the expanding great empires—German, Austro-Hungarian, Russian, and Ottoman—overlapped, clashed, and disintegrated. The civilization of these borderlands was a mix of multiple cultures, languages, ethnic groups, religions, and nations that similarly overlapped and clashed. The borderlands became the cradle of modernity. Looking back at it tells us where we came from.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

392 pages, Hardcover

First published July 19, 2022

About the author

Omer Bartov is an Israeli-born historian. He is the Samuel Pisar Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Brown University, where he has taught since 2000. Bartov is a noted historian of the Holocaust and is considered one of the world's leading authorities on the subject of genocide.

Reviews

[Terri · Rating 2 out of 5]

The subtitle is “Making and Unmaking the Galacian Past.” Galicia is often referenced in the other books I’ve been reading—it is the regional ball tossed around among Austria, Poland, and Russia. The region is in modern-day Ukraine. Rather than the general history I hoped for, this was a family history (with digressions into the plots of various novels) focused on an eastern border town called Buczacz. The family is Jewish, and the author’s four sets of grandparents immigrated to Palestine before 1939–their remaining relatives were murdered in the Holocaust.

What I’m learning from this recent set of books is that Hitler and the Nazis,were at the end of centuries of antisemitism. The Holocaust was the climax.

[Matthew Molinaro · Rating 2 out of 5]

also for dts seminar lol. bartov is such a fascinating figure and storyteller, but the leaps of 400 years of history and his takes on contemporary politics (leftist politics BOO!) are genuinely so disappointing—his ability to capture the affective and material life dispossession would be more astonishing if he didn't actually practice it with his narration of Palestinians, Arab Jews, or other Jewish diaspora communities. I am all for insights into diasporic/national tensions, but I imagine he felt constrained by questions of audience.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'd give the early part of this book (the longer part) a 3* and the later part, more autobiographical a 4+. I found the early history of "the borderlands," sometimes Galicia, sometimes Poland, Austria, Galicia not very interesting. As even picking up the book I knew I most interested in the time of my great-grandparents and grandparents. The family history and the author's attempts to root it out was of great interest to me.

[Dickie · Rating 1 out of 5]

Unreadable. Poorly written. Life's tio short to waste on a book I cannot follow.

[helio · Rating 3 out of 5]

interesting but confusing