'Krakowiec' - the place we came from, the place we went back to ... Bernard Wasserstein's family originated in 'a little place, you won't have heard of it' Krakowiec (Krah-KOV-yets), forty-three miles west of Lviv. Decades ago, he set out to uncover its hidden past, and in this book he recounts a dramatic and traumatic history. 'I want to observe and understand how some of the great forces that determined the shape or our times affected ordinary people'. Wasserstein traces the arc of history across centuries of religious and political conflict, as armies of Cossacks, Turks, Swedes and Muscovites rampaged through the region, a shetl with a jostling population of Poles, Ukrainians and Jews grew, and was eventually destroyed during the Second World War. Today, the storm of history once again rains down on Krakowiec as hordes of refugees flee for their lives from Ukraine to Poland. Framing the book is Wasserstein's own family, especially his grandfather Berl. Here the people of Krakowiec become a prism through which we can feel the shocking immediacy of history. 'A small town in Ukraine' is a masterpiece of recovery and insight.
