Several new books about Jewish heritage in various countries have come out in recent months. We are pleased to highlight some of them — and Mazel Tov to the authors!

Spurensuche (Searching for Traces)

By Christiann Herrmann

reserv-art Verlag, 2015

The book showcases Herrmann’s black and white photographs of Jewish heritage sites (and their ruins) in parts of Ukraine: Galicia and Bukovina. Some of the photos have been posted on his blog, Vanished World. Christian has also allowed us to run some of his pictures on JHE.

During the German occupation, the Jewish population was almost completely wiped out. Western Ukraine is still a landscape after a genocide. Overgrown Jewish cemeteries, ruins of synagogues, study houses, schools, cultural institutions, and mass graves bear witness to Jewish life and its destruction. What survived the destruction of the Germans and their allies, has been misused by the Soviets or was finally erased.

Tracing Jewish Heritage: A Guidebook to Slovenia

By Janez Premk and Mihaela Hudelja

JAS Research & Documentation Center, Ljubljana 2014

A comprehensive and richly illustrated cultural guidebook — in English — to Jewish heritage and history in Slovenia; the first such publication in Slovenia by a Slovenian research team.

Co-author Janez Premk presented on this project at the Krakow conference on Managing Jewish Immovable Heritage in April 2013. (Click the link to see the session where he presented).

Przedwojenna Architektura Zydowska (Pre-War Jewish Architecture): The Most Beautiful Photographs

By Stanislaw Kryciński

Wydawnictwa RM, 2014

Part of a series of books on pre-war architecture in Poland, this mostly includes pictures of buildings that were destroyed in and after World War II and no longer exist.