Book summary

Konin, like most Polish towns, had a large Jewish community for centuries before the Holocaust. Theo Richmond is the descendant of Koniners, and this book is a reconstruction of the town's Jewish community, based on the recollections of the few Konin Jews left alive. It is not a book about the author's individual roots, but an evocation of the world Richmond's parents came from, and his efforts to find out about that world. The story of tracking down information about Konin is as important to the story as the portrait of Konin which emerges. Neither history nor memoir, this book is aptly called a quest.

Media reviews

"It is in the homely details of their narratives that the rich and complex lives of Jews in pre-1945 Konin come alive....This marvelous book revives, just in time, a way of life that, when another generation has passed, will be truly irretrievable."