The Last Jews of Rădăuți

ISBN-10: 038527808x

$75.00 with free shipping

This book is no longer in print.

In the late 1930s, 8,000 Jews lived in Rădăuţi (RA-da-uts), a small town in the Bukovina region of Romania. They were shopkeepers and tradesmen-shoemakers, barbers, hat makers, tailors, jewelers-a vital community spanning several generations. They considered themselves Jews first and Romanians second. Six thousand Romanian Jews perished during World War II; some died in concentration camps in Transnistria, but most did not survive the initial hardships of deportation. At the end of the war, a few returned, only to find their homes gone and the life they had known swept away.



During the period 1974-76, the American photographer Laurence Salzmann lived in Radauti to document this diminishing community's way of life. The Last Jews of Radauti makes a powerfully enduring statement about a vanishing culture by illuminating the lives of the small number of Eastern European Jews who survived the Holocaust and went home. Photographer Cornell Capa hails the photographs as "a unique record...of great historical significance."



The poem 'The Souvenir' was written by Israeli poet Dan Pagis, whom was born in Rădăuţi.