The Destruction of Dubova

Written by Yiddish writer Rokhl Faygnberg, The Destruction of Dubova is a powerful account of the elimination of the Jewish community of one shtetl during the pogroms of the Russian Civil War, 1918-1921. Based on her personal interviews with survivors, Faygnberg presents a detailed description of the evisceration of the vibrant Jewish community of Dubova, which was ultimately wiped off the map of Ukraine, during a period that is largely forgotten, overshadowed by the Holocaust that took place in these same lands some twenty years later. The biographical details of the Jewish community members of Dubova provide a moving portrait of the familiar and neighborly relations, as well as of the pettiness of everyday life on the eve of destruction, made of conflict, class tension, and intermarriage. Faygnberg's narrative also captures the perpetrators' actions and motivations, the intimacy of genocidal violence made of neighbors killing neighbors, and the life the Jewish community's desperate attempts to resist and survive the brutality.

By building on the most recent historiography on anti-Jewish violence, Elissa Bemporad expertly contextualizes the destruction of the shtetl Dubova within the political and military events of 1918-1921 in the volume's introduction. Bemporad also examines the original writing produced by Rokhl Faygnberg, whose genre straddles between a historical chronicle based on witness accounts, and a work of literature. Lastly, the introduction discusses the fascinating history of Faygnberg's text, uncovering the different political and cultural purposes it served at different times and what it can tell us about anti-Jewish violence today.