Heavens Are Empty

March 28, 2011
Bendavid-Val, a specialist in economic development and environmental management, revisits the site of a lost town, Trochenbrod, and celebrates its vigor before Nazi oppression. The author recalls his father's stories of Trochenbrod, Ukraine, a thriving center for commerce and academics before being diminished by world wars, forced labor, and slaughter. Most disturbing are Bendavid-Val's account of a proud Jewish community brought to their knees through humiliation, brutality, and betrayal by their neighbors. Finally razed to the ground by the Nazis, the town, home to more than 6,000 people, effectively vanished, leaving only 60 survivors. Thoroughly researched, this book brings the mythical town to life, wonderfully preserving a memorable segment of Jewish lore.

Starred review from November 1, 2010

Bendavid-Val, a retired economic development expert whose father grew up in this "lost town," provides a vividly told and culturally relevant history of the place popularly introduced in Jonathan Safran Foer's novel Everything Is Illuminated. (Foer provides the preface here.) The town of Trochenbrod, in western Ukraine (then a republic of the U.S.S.R.), was during its existence from the early 1800s to its destruction in the Holocaust in 1944 a medium-sized farming and craftsman town that has had the distinction of being the only Jewish town in a region fearful of Jews. Little physically remains today beyond a monument to those who were massacred there. Intertwining his own research with the meticulously documented, gripping personal histories of Trochenbrod's survivors, Bendavid-Val crafts a well-researched, detailed, and eminently readable work. VERDICT This is an essential read for anyone interested in religious history, the culture and history of World War II, or Jewish history, as Bendavid-Val shares not only the culture and customs of Slavic Jews before the 1930s but also the long-lasting and deeply felt impact of the Holocaust on the survivors.--Elizabeth Zeitz, Otterbein Univ. Lib., Westerville, OH

Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2010

A methodical chronicle of a once-thriving farming town in western Ukraine that was obliterated by the Nazis and resurrected by witnesses' testimonies.

Bendavid-Val's father grew up in Trochenbrod and emigrated as a young man, skirting the Holocaust, but the author craved to know more about the small town's history. In 1997, he visited the area and spoke extensively to early survivors. While viewing the mass grave site, he encountered an elder who "had been waiting over fifty years for someone to ask him about it." Bendavid-Val embarks on a journey through the history of the town, the setting for Jonathan Safran Foer's novel Everything Is Illuminated (2002). Trochenbrod was essentially a vibrant Jewish town, with a turn-of-the-century population of 1,600. Farming in the marshland was difficult, and the Czarist army demanded conscription. Many youths emigrated elsewhere, especially to America, although there was also a Zionist movement, and even a Catholic church built in the late '20s, thanks to Polish Prince Radziwill. The town endured domination by the Polish, Soviets and Nazis, respectively, though since the last great war the villagers believed, naively, that the Germans presented a more tractable authority than the Russians. By June 1941, the Nazis had put in place a system of occupation, terror and murder. The anti-Jewish Ukrainian Nationalists working with the Germans assured the Jews' destruction, and during a few days in August 1942, most of the 4,500 Jewish inhabitants were shot and tossed in pits. The author ends this heartfelt account with three testimonies by people who somehow escaped that fate (only 60 survived).

A well-organized resurrection of yet another lost memory of the Holocaust era.

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