Chava Rosenfarb

This collection of stories by the great Yiddish novelist, Chava Rosenfarb (1923–2011), makes available in English for the first time all of Rosenfarb's short stories.

What the Critics Say

"Rosenfarb demonstrates that lasting trauma can never be confronted and expunged without a thorough interrogation of the past. Nothing substitutes for such necessary, brutal honesty. That holds true for finely drawn fictional characters and for entire nations as well."
—Jane Eisner, The Washington Post

"Rosenfarb’s stories often blend reality and ­fantasy to convey the profound depersonalization of survivors who live with grief and trauma, far from the burial ground of Europe....Indeed, the past — so palpable in the lives that Rosenfarb imagines — occludes the present and future. And even if Canada offers safety and stability, it cannot provide what her characters seek: oblivion and freedom from the torment of memory."
—Ruth Panofsky, Literary Review of Canada

"This aspect of Rosenfarb’s work – her urge to fictionalize what she could simply present as personal experience – is her distinctive contribution to Holocaust literature. The stories’ shared themes, rendered through rich character portraits, offer a detailed portrayal of the postwar scene."
—Norman Ravvin, Montreal Review of Books

"The land of the postscript is Canada, where Rosenfarb eventually settled; and “postscript” is the word, as much of the fiction describes figures who saw the remainder of their lives as an afterword to the war....Rosenfarb’s characters...embrace life, love, the contemporary world, even while fearing that such embraces are impossible."
—Jeremy Dauber, The Times Literary Supplement

"[These] are complex, layered stories about guilt and forgiveness, but above all, they are about memory and the impossibility of forgetting certain things — ever."
—Aviya Kushner, The Forward

"Now, with In the Land of the Postscript, the reader is fortunate to have in Morgentaler a double interpreter—both translator and daughter—someone who has had singular access to, and insight into, the author, her language, and the intense emotions and experiences it conveys."
—Shelley Pomerance, In geveb

"the musical rhythms of [Rosenfarb's] prose are captured by her daughter, Goldie Morgentaler, in pitch-perfect translations and a nuanced 'Introduction.' [...] Between blank and burnt pages, mother and daughter imprint meaning and memory in In the Land of the Postscript."
—Michael Greenstein, The Miramichi Reader

About the Author

Chava Rosenfarb was one of the most important Yiddish writers of the second part of the 20th century. She was born in the industrial city of Lodz, Poland in 1923 and began writing at the age of eight with the encouragement of her father. A survivor of the Lodz Ghetto, of Auschwitz and Bergen Belsen, Rosenfarb settled in Canada in 1950, where most of the stories in this collection are set. Rosenfarb’s novel, The Tree of Life: A Trilogy of Life in the Lodz Ghetto, was awarded the 1979 Manger Prize, Israel’s highest award for Yiddish literature. She was the recipient of numerous other literary awards, including a Canadian Jewish Book Award and the John Glassco Prize for Literary Translation. In 2006, the University of Lethbridge awarded her an honorary degree, the only such honor ever accorded a Yiddish writer in Canada. To mark the centennial of her birth, the City of Lodz declared the year 2023 to be The Year of Chava Rosenfarb. Rosenfarb died in 2011.

About the Translator

Goldie Morgentaler is Professor Emerita of English literature at the University of Lethbridge She has published numerous translations form Yiddish to English, including several stories by I. L. Peretz. She is the translator of most of Chava Rosenfarb’s work, including The Tree of Life and most of the stories in In the Land of the Postscript.