A refugee crisis of huge proportions erupted as a result of the mid-seventeenth-century wars in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Tens of thousands of Jews fled their homes, or were captured and trafficked across Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. Rescue the Surviving Souls is the first book to examine this horrific moment of displacement and flight, and to assess its social, economic, religious, cultural, and psychological consequences. Drawing on a wealth of primary sources in twelve languages, Adam Teller traces the entire course of the crisis, shedding fresh light on the refugee experience and the various relief strategies developed by the major Jewish centers of the day.
Teller pays particular attention to those thousands of Jews sent for sale on the slave markets of Istanbul and the extensive transregional Jewish economic network that coalesced to ransom them. He also explores how Jewish communities rallied to support the refugees in central and western Europe, as well as in Poland-Lithuania, doing everything possible to help them overcome their traumatic experiences and rebuild their lives.
Rescue the Surviving Souls offers an intimate study of an international refugee crisis, from outbreak to resolution, that is profoundly relevant today.
Awards and Recognition
- Finalist for the National Jewish Book Award in History
- Honorable Mention for the Kulczycki Book Prize in Polish Studies, Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies
- Winner of the Rachel Feldhay Brenner Award, The Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America
"[A] richly detailed, fluent and innovative study."—Adam Sutcliffe, Times Literary Supplement
"Rescue the Surviving Souls throws us back to a decisive moment in the history of the Jewish people. . . . With exceptional erudition, penetrating intelligence, and sparkling prose, Adam Teller depicts this horrendous moment in all of its complexity: as a moment of death but also of new life; disruption and connection; and senseless violence but also precious moments of human sympathy. Based on research in dozens of archives and almost as many languages, Rescue the Surviving Souls is a tour de force of historical writing: it is at once compulsively readable and scholarly."—Judges' Remarks, National Jewish Book Award
"Overall, Teller’s sweeping and comprehensive treatment of the seventeenth century is an important and ground-breaking contribution to the field of Jewish history."—Rebecca Wartell, Mediterranean Historical Review
"Rescuing the Surviving Souls is a remarkable achievement, and should be read widely not only by scholars of early modern Jewry, but by all students of the early modern world as well as those interested in refugees regardless of time or place. The dynamism, interconnectedness, and rich emotional and spiritual depth of this historical account come to light at the hands of a master storyteller. . . . Teller's book exemplifies some of the best work being done by historians of refugees."—Jesse Spohnholz, Studia Rosenthaliana
"Teller’s valuable work moves us towards histories that foreground relations across and between early modern communities and enables us to contemplate broader narratives."—Nicholas Terpstra, Jewish History
"Highly detailed and compelling."—Joshua Picard, Religious Studies Review
"The destruction wreaked on individual Jews and entire communities in Poland, Ukraine, and Lithuania over a twenty-year period in the mid-seventeenth century has never been dispassionately analyzed by historians in terms of the larger scope of its effect on Jewish life. Carefully researched, thoroughly organized, and persuasively written, Rescue the Surviving Souls is the authoritative account of those pogroms and their aftermath."—Elisheva Carlebach, Columbia University
"This outstanding book, based on materials in twelve languages, analyzes the refugee crisis unleashed by the massacres of Ukrainian and Polish Jews following the 1648 Khmelnytsky Uprising. Focusing primarily on the survivors, Teller uncovers the complex and untold story of this tragic period’s considerable impact on Jewish communities across Europe."—Robert I. Frost, University of Aberdeen
"In this book, Teller recovers a crucially important chapter of Jewish history. He argues that the dislocation of Jews from Ukraine, Lithuania, and Poland in the mid-seventeenth century had diverse and significant effects for Jewish communities not only in the Ottoman Empire and Europe, but also in North Africa and Persia. Rescue the Surviving Souls will be consulted and cited for many years to come."—Gershon D. Hundert, McGill University
"War and violence assaulted eastern Europe's Jews in 1648, scattering tens of thousands of refugees, slaves, and migrants across Europe and around the Mediterranean. With gripping detail and individual stories, Teller retraces the steps of those forced to flee, and demonstrates how this catastrophic dislocation created—and galvanized—an international Jewish community."—Nicholas Terpstra, University of Toronto
"Moving with consummate skill through every aspect of the most devastating early modern Jewish catastrophe, Teller opens up the period with clarity and steady intelligence. A major contribution to the study of Jewish economic life, trauma, gender, philanthropy, migration, and politics, this is a work of extraordinary authority."—Steven J. Zipperstein, author of Pogrom: Kishinev and the Tilt of History
