The Lost Shtetl

The Lost Shtetl by Max Gross is the book my Jewish book selected as our July book. As we were discussing options, the question was repeated, "Are. we sure this isn't a Holocaust novel?" We don't want to be a Holocaust book club, limiting a Holocaust novel to just once per year, in April, in conjunction with our observance of Yom Ha'Shoah. "No," we were told, "this mentions the Holocaust but it's not a Holocaust novel at all." And it isn't.

I guess you'd call this speculative fiction. What if. What if Hitler missed a small village in Poland as he was plundering all the Jewish villages and eliminating all the Jews? And then what if, 70 years later, through an odd set of circumstances, Poland discovers this village still exists? And then what if, 70 years later, through an odd set of circumstances, these villagers learn that the there was a second World War, that life went on without them, and there's a whole big modern world that they can't even imagine out there. What if? What could this mean for the shtetl of Kreskol?

Max Gross writes in a style that is both humorous and biting. He tells the tale of Yankel who is thrust out into the modern world after Pesha, and the husband she just asked for a divorce, go missing. The village elders suspect foul play and want this potential crime reported to the Polish authorities. Yankel is someone that no one will miss if he goes missing. But rather than going missing, he brings the 21st century back to Kreskol.

The plot reminds me of the 1999 movie, "Blast From the Past" where a kid goes into a nuclear fallout shelter and emerges decades later into modern Los Angeles. But with a totally Jewish bend.

I recommend it if you're looking for some really different Judaic fiction. There's lots of Yiddish sprinkled in, some which I know from my many months of studying on Duolingo, some which are common knowledge, and several that I had to check the very extensive glossary to see exactly what they meant.

The book was probably a little bit longer than I would have preferred. But the story did keep me going.