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The fourth and final volume of the highly-acclaimed autobiographical cycle of Jewish memoir and history.
Bridge Builder: My Life Since the Holocaust is the fourth and final volume of Shimon Redlich’s autobiographical cycle, which began with Together and Apart in Brezany (2002), a description of relations among Poles, Ukrainians and Jews in his native town and his survival during the Holocaust. It continued with Life in Transit (2010), an account of his family’s resettlement in postwar Lodz and a new life in Israel. A New Life in Israel (2018) portrayed his adjustment to life on a kibbutz and service in the Israel Defense Forces. In Bridge Builder, Redlich recounts his life since the late fifties. It features his academic journey from student in Jerusalem and the US to professor at Ben-Gurion University, his friendships, his encounters with Jews and non-Jews in Eastern Europe, and his unconventional approach to controversial topics. As in previous volumes, in Bridge Builder Redlich’s own memories are supported and enriched by meticulous historical research.
“This moving, heartfelt and poignant memoir sketches the life of a pioneering historian of Soviet Jewry and interethnic relations and the Holocaust in Poland-Ukraine. Redlich interacted with some of the most important scholars of the post-World War II era, and by telling their stories, as well as recounting his own remarkable life, he captures a slice of the past that is quickly receding into history”.
—Omer Bartov, the author of Israel: What Went Wrong? Forthcoming in April 2026 in the US & the UK, Genocide, the Holocaust, and Israel-Palestine: First-Person History in Times of Crisis, The Butterfly and the Axe. A Novel
Shimon Redlich, a child survivor of the Holocaust, was born in Lwow in 1935 and lived in nearby Brzezany until 1945, when he was repatriated to Lodz. He left Poland for Israel in 1950. He studied at the Hebrew University, Harvard, and New York University. He taught history at Ben-Gurion University for almost forty years. Redlich has written numerous books and articles on the history of the Jews in Eastern Europe and his memoirs, of which this book is the fourth and final volume.
Prologue: Joanna Beata Michlic
Jerusalem, 1957–1962
America, 1962–1968
Return to Israel
Friends and Colleagues
Germany and Germans
In Gorbachev’s Russia
Ukraine and Ukrainians
Sheptytsky’s Advocate
Life with Books
Poland and Poles
Epilogue. Aging in the Shadow of a Pandemic and War