Life in Transit is the long-awaited sequel to Shimon Redlich's widely acclaimed Together and Apart in Brzezany, in which he discussed his childhood during the War and the Holocaust. Life in Transit tells the story of his adolescence in the city of Lodz in postwar Poland. Redlich's personal memories are placed within the wider historical context of Jewish life in Poland and in Lodz during the immediate postwar years. Lodz in the years 1945-1950 was the second-largest city in the country and the major urban center of the Jewish population. Redlich's research based on conventional sources and numerous interviews indicates that although the survivors still lived in the shadow of the Holocaust, postwar Jewish Lodz was permeated with a sense of vitality and hope.

A New Life in Israel, 1950-1954 is the last book in the trilogy about Shimon Redlich's childhood and adolescence. In Together and Apart in Brzezany he discussed his childhood in prewar and wartime Brzezany. Life in Transit told the story of his adolescence in the city of Lodz in postwar Poland. A New Life in Israel focuses on his first years in the Jewish state. The book bears witness to the adjustment of one young immigrant-one among thousands-to the realities of a new life in Israel.

A New Life in Israel, 1950-1954 is the last book in the trilogy about Shimon Redlich's childhood and adolescence. In Together and Apart in Brzezany he discussed his childhood in prewar and wartime Brzezany. Life in Transit told the story of his adolescence in the city of Lodz in postwar Poland. A New Life in Israel focuses on his first years in the Jewish state. The book bears witness to the adjustment of one young immigrant-one among thousands-to the realities of a new life in Israel.

"Life in Transit" is the long-awaited sequel to Shimon Redlich's widely acclaimed "Together and Apart in Brzezany," in which he discussed his childhood during the War and the Holocaust. "Life in Transit" tells the story of his adolescence in the city of Lodz in postwar Poland. Redlich's personal memories are placed within the wider historical context of Jewish life in Poland and in Lodz during the immediate postwar years. Lodz in the years 1945-1950 was the second-largest city in the country and the major urban center of the Jewish population. Redlich's research based on conventional sources and numerous interviews indicates that although the survivors still lived in the shadow of the Holocaust, postwar Jewish Lodz was permeated with a sense of vitality and hope.

Based on interviews with Poles, Jews, and Ukrainians who lived in the small eastern Polish town of Brzezany before, during, and after World War II, together with extensive research into the historical record and his own childhood memories, historian Shimon Redlich reconstructs the changing relationships among Brzezany's three ethnic groups. The book details the history of Brzezany from the pre-war decades when members of the three communities remember living relatively amicably together and apart when Brzezany was part of independent Poland, through the tensions of Soviet rule from 1939 to 1941 and the trauma of the Nazi occupation from 1941 to 1944, to the recapture of the town by the Red Army in 1945. Each chronological chapter is introduced by Redlich's recollections, continues with an examination of the events as documented in local sources, and concludes with the observations of his interviewees. Historical and contemporary photographs of Brzezany and its inhabitants add immediacy to this fascinating excursion into history brought to life by those who lived through it, showing how events are remembered and interpreted often in very different ways.