"Anna Spector was born in 1905 in Korsun, a Ukrainian town on the Ros River, eighty miles south of Kiev. Held by Poland until 1768 and annexed by the Tsar in 1793, Korsun and its fluid ethnic population were typical of the Pale of Settlement where Russian Jews were obliged to live: Ukrainians, Cossacks, Jews and other groups living uneasily together in relationships punctuated by violence." "Anna's father left Korsun in 1912 to immigrate to America, and Anna left in 1919, having lived through the Great War, the Bolshevik Revolution, and part of the ensuing civil war, as well as several pogroms - deadly anti-Jewish riots begun by various invading military detachments during the Russian Civil War and joined by some of Korsun's peasants." "In the early 1990s Anna met Lawrence A. Coben, an American-born doctor seeking information about the shtetls (Jewish neighborhoods or villages) to recapture a sense of his own heritage. Even in her 90s, Anna had remarkable recall of her life as a girl and young woman in one of those historic communities. Although the Jews in Eastern Europe are virtually all gone now, less than 100 years ago their population was in the millions. Anna's rare account, the product of some 300 interviews, is valuable because it is one of the very few personal memoirs of shtetl life told from a woman's point of view. Also, very often, Christian neighbors appear in such accounts as an undifferentiated peasant mass assembled on market days, as destructive mobs, or as an arrogant and distant collection of government officials and nobility. Her story is exceptionally rich in a sense of the Korsun Christians and Jews alike as friends, neighbors, and individuals. Anna's intelligent curiosity and her powerful memory provide a fascinating window into how shtetl life was lived and how the outside was encountered."--BOOK JACKET. (Blackwell). Born in 1905 in a Jewish shtetl (neigborhood or village) in Ukraine some eighty miles south of Kiev, Anna Spector emigrated in 1919 after having lived through World War I, the Bolshevik Revolution, and numerous anti-Semitic pogroms. Years later, she would recount her memories of life in the shtetl over the course of 300 interviews with American-born doctor Lawrence Cohen, who had been seeking information about his own family background. Cohen has synthesized those memories into this work, thus providing a window into both momentous historical events and the day-to-day life of what is now in many ways a lost world. Annotation 2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).

The two Shevchenkos -- The town -- Grandmother Beyla -- Grandfather Avrum -- Aaron and Leya -- The surprise (1914-1916) -- The marketplace -- Nobility and obscurity -- At Alta's house (1916-1917) -- Anna's prize (1916-1917) -- Between gentile and Jew -- Cousin Zavl -- Leya the smuggler (1917-1919) -- The first pogrom (March 1-8, 1918) -- The aftermath (March 1918) -- The Germans occupy Korsun (1918) -- Fall and winter in prewar Korsun -- The worst winter (1918-1919) -- Spring and summer in prewar Korsun -- Spring and summer (1919) -- The third pogrom (August 13-26, 1919) -- How to tell a sollop -- The two Korsuns -- Moscow (1919-1921) -- Petrograd (1921) -- Epilogue -- Appendix A. Shtetl influences -- Appendix B. The shtetl memoir -- Appendix C. How true to reality is Anna's shtetl? -- Appendix D. Material from sources other than Anna.