The Last Bright Days: A Young Woman's Life in a Lithuanian Shtetl on the Eve of the Holocaust

The Last Bright Days is a moving portrait of Jewish life during the 1930's in the small Lithuanian shtetl of Kavarsk and the personal story of one of its inhabitants, Beile Delechky.In 1938, as Europe was about to plunge into the darkness of war and genocide, Beile emigrated to the United States, leaving her family behind but bringing with her hundreds of photographs and dozens of her notebooks. Over one hundred of these compelling photographs, reproduced in The Last Bright Days, give us a fascinating look back in time to a Jewish world that existed within Eastern Eruope and was destroyed forever in the Holocaust. Beile's journal entries and poetry give us a window into the emotional life of a young woman coming of age in a small town as the problems of the wider world close in around her.Beile left Lithuania for America excited to be going to a new home and determined to find happiness. But her hopes for happiness would always be tempered by the memories of the family in Lithuania she so tragically lost.Beile never returned to Kavarsk. Her photographs and journals helped preserve her memories of growing up in the Jewish world of Lithuania in the days before that culture was lost forever. They give the rest of us a poignant glimpse of those last bright days.