Omer Bartov Interview Episode 7

Matt Crawford speaks with professor, historian and author Omer Bartov about his novel, The Butterfly and the Axe. Inspired by his own tragic family history Bartov takes us back to a Ukrainian village in the spring of 1944. A Jewish family is murdered but who were they, who were their killers and why did this take place? Three generation an unnamed narrator, an Israeli woman and a British man of Ukrainian origins set out to find out how their families were implicated and intertwined by this horrible event. This is a work of fiction that looks at the holocaust through a different lens that few have viewed before. We all think of the gas chambers when we think of extermination, but many Jews were killed where they lived and by their neighbors. I hope you will all give this powerful book a read.