Copyright
Maurice WolfthalPublished On
2020-12-03ISBN
Paperback978-1-80064-077-1
Hardback978-1-80064-078-8
PDF978-1-80064-079-5
HTML978-1-80064-636-0
XML978-1-80064-082-5
EPUB978-1-80064-080-1
MOBI978-1-80064-081-8
Language
- English
Print Length
248 pages (viii+240)Dimensions
Paperback156 x 17 x 234 mm(6.14" x 0.68" x 9.21")
Hardback156 x 21 x 234 mm(6.14" x 0.81" x 9.21")
Weight
Paperback1053g (37.14oz)
Hardback1439g (50.76oz)
Media
Illustrations3
OCLC Number
1227388521BIC
- JFC
- HBLW
- JFSR1
- 1DFG
BISAC
- HIS022000
- HIS010010
- HIS037070
Keywords
- autobiography
- fiction
- Jewish
- Red Army
- Poland
- Nazis
- USSR
- Yiddish
- anti-Semitism
- Berlin
- patriotism
- Stalinism
- Second World War
- Jewish history
- World War II
- Yiddish language
- Eastern Europe
Mendl Mann’s 'The Fall of Berlin'
Mendl Mann’s autobiographical novel The Fall of Berlin tells the painful yet compelling story of life as a Jewish soldier in the Red Army. Menakhem Isaacovich is a Polish Jew who, after fleeing the Nazis, finds refuge in the USSR. Translated into English from the original Yiddish by Maurice Wolfthal, the narrative follows Menakhem as he fights on the front line in Stalin’s Red Army against Hitler and the Nazis who are destroying his homeland of Poland and exterminating the Jews.
Menakhem encounters anti-Semitism on various occasions throughout the novel, and struggles to comprehend how seemingly normal people could hold such appalling views. As Mann writes, it is odd that "vicious, insidious anti-Semitism could reside in a person with elevated feelings, an average person, a decent person”. The Fall of Berlin is both a striking and timelylook at the struggle that many Jewish soldiers faced.
An affecting and unique book, which eloquently explores a variety of themes – such as anti-Semitism, patriotism, Stalinism and life as a Jewish soldier in the Second World War – this is essential reading for anyone interested in the Yiddish language, Jewish history, and the history of World War II.
Reviews
'Maurice Wolfthal has done a service to the fields of Yiddish and Polish studies by making The Fall of Berlin newly available in English translation. As one of the few accounts of this wartime experience written in Yiddish, it speaks both to the hunger for new literature in Yiddish after the war as well as to the presence of these Jewish voices within the Red Army. The Fall of Berlin would not only be a welcome addition to a syllabus on Holocaust literature, but it would also be an important reading for a variety of courses, including those that address the multi-ethnic dimensions of the Red Army, the tumultuous immediate postwar era, or, more broadly, the dilemmas facing victors at the end of war.'
Rachelle Grossman
The Polish Review,
Additional Resources
Contents
The Fall of Berlin
(pp. 25–232)- Mendl Mann
Introduction
(pp. 1–8)- Maurice Wolfthal
At the Gates of Moscow
(pp. 9–16)- Maurice Wolfthal
At the Vistula
(pp. 17–24)- Maurice Wolfthal