Czernowitz at 100 represents a collection based on the proceedings of a 2008 international conference convened at York University in Toronto. Each chapter looks back at a portion over a long century, one marked with the mass migration of Ashkenazi Jews across the globe, two world wars, the Holocaust, the birth of Israel, and the rise and fall of the Soviet bloc. They assess the achievements and fate of those who participated in the 1908 Yiddish Language Conference that was held at Czernowitz, now known as Chernivtsi, Ukraine. Featuring contributions from a new generation of scholars re-examining eastern European Jewish life, the successes and failures of the Yiddishist movement are examined. The contributors discuss how Yiddishism-a fascinating example of language-based nationalism-shaped the political and cultural landscape of territorially dispersed Jews across Eastern Europe and the world during the twentieth century.

"When we reflect on the Holocaust, we think of Auschwitz and Dachau; and when we think of justice for this terrible chapter in history, we think of Nuremberg. Not Russia or the Ukraine, and certainly not the town of Kharkov (Kharkiv in Ukrainian). But in reality, the first war-crimes trial against the Nazis was in this Ukrainian city, where in a sense the Holocaust itself began. Eighteen months before the end of World War II, three Nazi officers and a Ukrainian collaborator were tried and convicted of war crimes in a Soviet court and hanged in Kharkov's public square. Revealing a lost chapter in Holocaust historiography, journalist Greg Dawson tells of his journey to this place, and the rediscovery of the forgotten trial which began the process of avenging the murder of his grandparents, great-grandparents, and tens of thousands of fellow Ukrainians consumed at the dawn of the Shoah"--Provided by publisher.