Today the word "shtetl" (Yiddish for "small town") summons only hazy associations: images of Chagall-like crooked streets and glowing Sabbath dinners on one hand, of pogroms and brutal Cossacks on the other. In the artful hands of Eva Hoffman, Shtetl brings this lost world back to life, mining the deep rifts in Polish-Jewish relations in the small town of Bransk. With penetrating intelligence and a compassionate eye, Hoffman describes the culture and conflicts that influenced Christian villagers' decisions to conceal or betray Jewish neighbors when the Nazis invaded.