omer bartov

I saw Omer Bartov give a talk the other day--it was underwhelming. He was talking about his new book, which, based on what I gathered from the talk, looks at public memory of the second world war in Gallacia (Western Present-day Ukraine) in the form of plaques on buildings, memorials, graveyards, and so forth. His point, over and over, seems to be that the testaments of memory are primarily to "Ukrainian" victims of the war, to the exclusion of Jewish memory. Fair enough, but (and he might do this in the book, I don't know) pointing out lingering traces of antisemitism isn't very interesting unless you explain it, which he didn't. The whole evening progressed like a city tour through that part of the world: I went to Lvuv, and they hid the Jewish past, and then I went to the next town, and they built a shopping mall where the synagogue used to be, and then...
...you get the idea. Lots of accusations, no effort to understand or explain. Needless to say, I won't be buying the book.

The night wasn't a total wash, though. As has often happened to me here at Princeton, I met someone whose work I'm completely in awe of, completely unexpectedly, without going out of my way at all. The post "girlcotting herstory" below, inspired by the book 14-18--one of the authors was there. She was lovely.