The Lost Shtetl (a parable for our time) by Max Gross
Imagine a Polish Village that Somehow Escaped the Holocaust
The tiny village of Kreskol has managed to avoid progress this far, and its inhabitants live as though still in the 19th century. They raise their animals, grow their crops, barter horses and cows, and marry off their young.
But an emergency arises when a young woman divorces her husband and runs into the surrounding forest. The town sends an orphan to find her. He wasn’t a good marriage prospect anyway, so unlike the other men, he was expendable.
He can’t find the missing wife, and suddenly finds himself in modern-day Poland. He can’t fathom how it is possible that the Jews of Poland and most of Europe were murdered. He refuses to believe anyone. Officials toss him in a mental institution and study him for months until a Yiddish translator is found. It was tricky, because the Yiddish speakers are mostly dead.
Although the town never heard of electricity or running water, never advanced in science or medicine, and never even heard of sliced bread, it’s not clear that progress is going to be good for everyone in Kreskol.
The Lost Shtetl is about love, family, community, religion, class, government, politics, antisemitism, assimilation, and history itself. What a disarmingly delightful novel!
I had the pleasure of interviewing Max Gross, the author, for a New Books Network podcast here.
