Overview

What was it like to work as a Jewish district attorney in provincial Soviet Ukraine in the post-Stalinist eras? What role did antisemitism and Holocaust memories play in solving and investigating the criminal cases? How does a detective's mind work? The answers to these and many other fascinating questions are found in this book. Mikhail Goldis (1926-2020) worked as a detective and district attorney for 30 years in Ukraine and wrote his memoirs after immigrating to the US in 1993. Translated by Marat Grinberg, a prolific scholar of Russian and Jewish literature and cinema, the memoirs tell the rich and poignant story of Goldis's life and what it took for a Jew to navigate and survive in the halls of Soviet power.

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Reviews

“Mikhail Goldis'  memoirs, superbly translated by his grandson Marat Grinberg, provide a gripping account of the life of a Jewish prosecutor and detective in the former Soviet Ukraine. Goldis' many insights into the complexity of the Soviet Jewish experience make this book especially rewarding.” — Samuel D. Kassow, Professor of History, Trinity College “Seemingly straightforward and unpretentious, Mikhail Goldis’s memoir is packed with intriguing characters, psychological insights, and breathtaking narrative twists. Students of Soviet Ukrainian post-WWII history, Jewish and memory studies and all those who enjoy mystery and suspense won’t be able to put this book aside. Kudos to Marat Grinberg on this excellent translation which brings his grandfather’s captivating text to the English-speaking audience!” — Radislav Lapushin, Associate Professor of Russian at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill “Among the growing number of memoirs and documents of post-WWII Soviet Jewish life available in English, few approach the liveliness, nuance, and novelistic suspense of Mikhail Goldis’s Memoirs of a Jewish District Attorney from Soviet Ukraine. Elegantly translated, edited, and introduced by Marat Grinberg, Goldis’s grandson and one of the leading scholars of Soviet Jewry, the book offers not only sustained sensitive reflections on history, justice, and identity, but also a collection of true crime stories that ought to satisfy the most discerning fans of that genre. Readers will come away with a deeper appreciation of the richly varied, intertwined lives Jews and ethnic Ukrainians led under Soviet rule.” — Boris Dralyuk, translator of Isaac Babel, Andrey Kurkov, and other authors

Author Information

Mikhail Goldis (1926-2020) fought in the Red Army during World War II, graduated from the Law faculty of the Kyiv State University, and worked as a detective and district attorney for more than 30 years in Soviet Ukraine. He immigrated to the US in 1993. Marat Grinberg is Professor of Russian and Humanities at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, where he also teaches in the Comparative Literature and Film and Media Studies programs. A prolific author, among Grinberg's books are ""I am to Be Read not from Left to Right, but in Jewish: from Right to Left"": The Poetics of Boris Slutsky (2011), Aleksandr Askoldov: The Commissar (2016), and The Soviet Jewish Bookshelf: Jewish Culture and Identity Between the Lines (2023). Grinberg's essays have appeared in Tablet Magazine, Mosaic, Los Angeles Review of Books, and The Jewish Journal. He lectures widely on topics ranging from Shoah literature and film to Jewish-Russian poetry. Grinberg is currently working on a large study of Jewishness and the Holocaust in Russian, Ukrainian, and East European speculative fiction of the Soviet era.

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