The discovery of rich oil and mineral wax deposits in the Drohobycz-Boryslaw area in the 1850s turned it into an industrial and economic powerhouse-"the California of Galicia." Jewish-owned industries started up: refineries, mining, spinning, weaving, and factories producing candles and soap. Bythe early 1900s, Drohobycz alone had two synagogues, four study houses, two banks, a Jewish cultural center, a hospital, labor unions, Zionist, drama, and sports clubs, several schools, and several brilliant writers, artists, educators, and political activists. But after the First World War, Jews were caught in the struggle between Ukrainians and Poles for control of Galicia. Jewish trade rights were revoked, skilled jobs given to Gentiles, businessesnationalized, and commerce destroyed. In June 1941, the German army entered Drohobycz and Boryslaw. Under Nazi occupation, Jews were forced out of their homes, taken for slave labor, and murdered in a series of pogroms and aktions over the next three years. In April, 1944, the last Jewish survivors of the labor camps in Drohobycz were deported to the Plaszów camp, where they died.Written by former residents and survivors, the Memorial Book of Drohobycz, Boryslaw, and Surroundings tells what these communities were like, and the full story of their rise and destruction. Now available for the first time in an English translation.
"Translation of Sefer zikaron le-kehila kedosha Cieszanow"--
Tarnopol is a city in western Ukraine roughly 80 miles east of Lviv. During its history, it changed hands several times. It was annexed to Austria in 1772 as part of Galicia and remained under Austrian rule until 1918 when the empire collapsed. During World War I the city passed from German and Austrian forces to Russia several times. For a brief time at the end of 1918, it was part of the Western Ukrainian Republic and afterwards came under the flag of the newly reconstituted Poland. Poland ceased to exist after the Nazi Germany invaded the country in 1939 and, as with so many other Jewish communities there, Tarnopol was absorbed into the Soviet Union as part of Ukraine. Following the Soviet Union's fall emerged as part of an independent Ukraine. The turmoil of World War I and the changes it wrought in are well-documented in this Yizkor book with chapters chronicling the Russian conquest of 1914-1915, the disintegration of Austria and the days of Ukrainian rule. The book features an extensive history of Tarnopol written specifically for it by the well-known Jewish historian N.M. Gelber that drew on previously unpublished archival material shedding new light on Ternopil's history, particularly the Enlightenment period. A central part of the book are the several chapters devoted to the rise of the Zionist movement and its politics, personalities and competing philosophies. All of this came to an end with the eruption of World War II. The Germans occupied the city in 1941. A section of the book titled "The Ternopil Ghetto and its Destruction" recounts the aftermath. First there were pogroms that claimed about 5,000 lives. Later, a ghetto was established into which 12,500 people were crammed. Some were murdered there, and others were sent to the Belżec camp in 1942. Out of the eighteen thousand Jews residing in Ternopil when the Germans arrived, only 139 survived.
Tarnow had a rich and vibrant history during its best years, but like many Polish towns, a tragic end. Its Yizkor book vividly describes both: the era of prosperity and the cultural and intellectual contributions of its people, and its destruction at the hands of the Nazis during World War II.Located in southern Poland about 45 miles east of Krakow, the Jewish community was established there in 1582. Its Jewish population grew steadily from the 18th century to the period just before the war in 1931 when it numbered about 25,000 people, about half the town's population. In the period between the first partition of Poland in 1772 until 1918, Tarnow was part of the Austrian-Hungarian empire.It was a town where Hasidism, Zionism and Enlightenment thrived side by side. It was home to several prominent Jewish writers, poets, and intellectuals who contributed significantly to Yiddish literature and Jewish thought. Just as important, there were its simple hardworking men and women whose labors helped make it an important trade center, particularly for garment and hat manufacturing. The book consists of two volumes. The first, published in 1954, described the many facets of life in the town but does not touch at length on the Holocaust. The second, published in 1968, is a fuller account of the destruction and devastation of Tarnow's Jewish institutions and synagogues, and the deportation and death of most of its Jewish people.The "Road of Pain and Suffering" in the Holocaust section of Volume 2 chronicles the horrific turn of events, starting in 1939 when a first Nazi edict ordered all Jews to wear a white armband and describes the tightening German grip on the town during the years up to 1942 when, on June 10th, announcements about the deportation of the Jewish population of Tarnow began to appear on the walls of the houses. By the end of 1943, the town had been liquidated.Few returned to Tarnow after the liberation. For those that did "The terrible destruction... the deserted, dead, empty streets brought dread with their emptiness."
The ghetto in Kovno has its own tragic place in history because of the cruelty of conditions there and the revolt of Jews towards the end of its days. The dire circumstances of the ghetto became more widely known after World War II with the discovery of secret archives, diaries, drawings, and photographs that had been buried in the ground when the ghetto was destroyed. These told the story of Jewish community's defiance, oppression, resistance, and death.Between 1920 and 1939, Kovno, located in central Lithuania, was the country's capital and largest city. From a small provincial city, it grew into a modern city, and became heir to the best traditions of the historically famous Lithuanian Jewry, with traditions from the nucleus of Jewishness, culture, learning, modern social-political movements, and people of Israel. Kovno had a Jewish population of approximately 32,000, about one-fourth of the city's total population, before the Germans and their Lithuanian auxiliaries began their systematic massacres in 1941. This book was written in the years just after the war and drew on interviews with Kovno survivors after their liberation, many of them in Displaced Persons camps. The Preface says that This is the first book laying out a detailed account of what happened in the Ghetto.At its peak, the ghetto held an estimated 29,000 people, most of whom were later sent to concentration and extermination camps or were shot after being rounded up and crowded into the notorious "9th Fort," one of several that had been constructed under the Russian Empire in the late nineteenth century for the defense of the city. The book describes the fort as one of the most horrible Nazi mass annihilation sites in Lithuania. Kovno was liberated by the Red Army on August 1, 1944. A few days later, little by little, the few miraculously surviving Jews started to return to the city. Everyone's first job was to run and see what the destruction of the Ghetto looked like.The images that they saw on the site of the former Ghetto were horrific. In the Ghetto not a single house was left intact. All the wooden houses were completely burned. The large, massive walls of the walled block of houses were lying in ruins, like after an earthquake. Throughout entire areas of the Ghetto the monstrous skeletons of dead and burned Jews were seen.One of the last chapters in the book ends this way: On the seventh day of mourning, we bow our heads in great awe to the scattered holy ashes of our murdered and burned men and women, from elderly to babies, we whisper the ancient Jewish prayer: "That their souls should be wrapped in bundles of life."
Traditional and genetic genealogy research are combined to produce an easy-to-read description of an extensive Jewish family tree, bringing it to life.eadline: Traditional and genetic genealogy research are combined to produce an easy-to-read description of an extensive Jewish family tree, bringing i to life.The family tree is documented with both facts and "feel," conveyed by photos and family stories from living descendants. The subject is the Westreich family, a Jewish family from Galicia, Austria dating back to the early 1700's. A Y-DNA surname study is used to connect seemingly unrelated branches, including a 7-generation rabbinical line. The content runs the gamut from first-hand stories of Holocaust concentration camps to photos of world-famous mathematicians and musicians.
Firstly, it tells the story of one of the largest, but least well documented, episodes of the Holocaust, bearing witness to the death of 100,000 people from across Belarus and beyond who were held, humiliated, and murdered in Minsk by Nazi Germany and its collaborators. From Anna's experience of being present during the events swirling around her, it clearly captures the shock and confusion of the early days of the ghetto, the development of the processes of control and repression of the population, and of the disbelief of its victims.Secondly, there is a personal quality which is novel about Anna Machiz's account. It was this factor which made me immediately accept the invitation to help bring this text to a wider audience. As a volunteer with the Together Plan, which works to enhance understanding of Jewish history and culture in Belarus and its communities, and as a descendent of a Jewish family who fled this territory in a previous generation, a stand-out aspect of Anna's text is the way it captures the stories and character of real, everyday people - men, women and children - caught up in dangerous events beyond their control. It gives them names, addresses, and occupations. It reaches into their roles and relationships before the War as doctors, teachers, workers and even as criminals. It brings to life their daily existence in the new and terrible context of the ghetto. It details the many ways that these lives were ended, of how people were taken from their homes and forced into the ghetto, how families and friendships were shattered, and the progressive reality of confusion, fear, disconnection and ultimately death.
Zgierz is one of the oldest cities in central Poland, with the earliest known mention dating back to 1231. Jews first settled there in the mid-18th century. The town is about 73 miles from Warsaw and nine miles from Lodz. In the years prior to the Second World War, Zgierz was a city of about 40,000 people, of which 5,000 were Jews. About 80% of the Jewish population were employed in the textile industry. The others were involved with trade and business. The pages of this book, Volume II, are a supplement to the first Yizkor book of Zgierz that was published eleven years earlier in 1975. The editors of the first book announced their intention at the time to find a home for the large amount of material that remained unused in their hands. Its chapters brim with memories, stories, and personal testimonies regarding communal life, the town's glorious past, and the horrors of the Holocaust. The book begins with "Chapters of History" followed by an exploration of "Orthodox Zgierz," strongly dominated by Hassidic traditions and culture. Memories abound in the sections that include "Sketches of Personalities and Characters" and "Folklore." The accounts in the section on "Holocaust and Destruction" are a continuation of that section in the first book.
June 1941: German troops occupy Bialystok, abruptly overwhelming the city, terrorizing its largely Jewish population and threatening them with annihilation. A young man, Srolke Kot reads a note taped to the outside of the Judenrat door - "RESIST!" With the courage of desperation, 25-year-old Srolke joins the Jewish underground and fights, alongside Jewish partisans and the Red Army, against the Nazis and their collaborators.Khurbn Bialystok - The Destruction of Bialystok is the inspiring story of Jewish defiance and survival in the face of incredible odds.
Text in English; translated from Hebrew and Yiddish.
In the dreadful summer months of the year 1942, when the Germanmass-murderers were each day shooting, burning and gassingthousands of Polish Jews; in the fateful days - after the Yuden actionin Kittev - when I myself wasn't sure about the next day, I resolvedthat as long as I still lived, to record the appalling events. I began towrite the record, the daily events and experiences of Kittev and thesurrounding cities and towns, according to the authentic reports wereceived from those places.One of the main reasons that moved me to record all these bloodyevents was my then naïve belief that the great democratic world hadno idea of what was happening, because if they did know what theGermans were doing, they would surely employ all means to stopthe horrible destruction-work of the Nazis, their murderous actionsagainst the innocent Jews. All Polish Jews shared this belief, as did theJews of our city, Kittev.Since nobody believed that any Jew could be saved from the bloodytalons of the Nazi evil beast and the Ukrainian murderers, that hemight be able, after the war, to appear as a living witness and accusethe mass-murderers before the world tribunal, I resolved to make mymodest contribution to the history of the German murder-actionsthat they should not be forgotten. I employed every free minuteand wrote down every day what we experienced until the completedestruction of Kittev and her Jews.Eisig HusenApril 10, 1958
"Translation of the Memorial Book of Zychlin"--
The story of the life of our late father Yitzhak Weizman was only revealed to us, his three children, when we were already parents to our own children.We always knew that he was a Holocaust survivor. He had the number 145227 tattooed on his arm.But he told us very little about his Holocaust experiences. "It was a long time ago," he used to say, and "Polanyah" (as we called Poland at the time) seemed very far away. We studied in school and read books about it, but the Holocaust was not present in our home. Unlike other children of survivors, we were not pressured to eat everything on our plates and were even allowed to waste food. "It will not help the children of Africa if you eat everything," used to say our mother, who came from a family that had been living in Israel for six generations. Our father smiled.What we did know was that our father's grandfather had been an important figure in his life. He was a successful industrialist and trader, one of the richest Jews in the town of Gombin. He introduced our father to the secrets of the family business, but he also wanted him to learn Judaism in the heder, the traditional school where Jewish boys received basic religious instruction. We also knew that our father participated on the youth movement Hashomer Hatzair, that he loved to play soccer, and that the horses in Gombin were fast - he used to say that the carts in Gombin, even when loaded with grain, were faster than the lazy soccer players in Israel.We were aware that our father was the only survivor of his family. His father Menachem, his mother Hannah, and his sister Helcia had all been murdered during the Holocaust. But we did not really know how he had survived. He kept us ignorant about it. The shadows of the past remained outside the door.Things changed when the grandchildren arrived. The new generation did not like to be kept ignorant about anything. They asked questions and wanted to receive answers. Our father could not resist them. Without the pressure of the grandchildren's questions, it is doubtful that this book would have ever been written.Yitzhak WeizmanviWe have read our father's story over and over again. He writes things as they were, almost like an objective bystander - avoiding hyperbole or emotional excess. With characteristic modesty, he writes: "I am not a hero and I never wanted to be a hero."We emphasize this fact because the figure of speech "like cattle to the slaughter" burned our father's soul. In the times of the establishment of the State of Israel, that expression was often used to describe the way in which the Jews had perished during the Holocaust. When the country formally adopted the wording "Shoah veGvurah" (Holocaust and Heroism) to commemorate the tragedy, the relationship between the two concepts created difficult dilemmas for the construction of a new ethos in the Jewish state.Our father's story is a story of coping. It is also a story about his disposition to discern points of light in the midst of darkness and preserve them in his mind.As the readers will see in the book, the permanent effort to cope was our father's daily reality. We believe that some of the choices he made were truly heroic. One example is the story about his involvement in what he describes as an "interesting incident" in the Jędrzejów camp. Despite his lack of experience, he volunteered to replace the damaged wheel of a German officer's vehicle. In the process, he saved his life and that of his mates. Then, when he was given extra food as a reward for replacing the wheel, he chose to share it with his friends rather than keeping it for himself.
Kraków; Sources of Information for Jewish Genealogy and History, by British researcher Geoffrey Weisgard, will be of interest to readers who are researching their ancestors from Kraków and the surrounding area. The book covers Kraków between 1790 and 1939 as well as locations throughout Western Galicia. Information is included about towns, villages and shtetlach within 20 miles of the city, some of which had virtually no Jewish population before the Holocaust, but were nevertheless places of temporary refuge during the Holocaust itself.This is a reference book for Genealogists researching the Krakow area.
This Yizkor Book memorializes the Jews of Kamenetz‐Litowsk-a shtetl in an area that changed hands overthe centuries, from Lithuania to Poland to Belarus. It was situated on the banks of the Leshna River, in theshadow of the "Sloop", a 14th‐century fortress tower. The Jews of the town took great pride in theKamenetz Yeshiva, a center of advanced Talmudic learning. Young men from all over the world flockedthere to study and to bask in the presence of the renowned Boruch‐Ber Leibowitz, the prodigious head ofthe yeshiva.The Jewish presence was obliterated by the Nazis during World War II. The Jews of the town were firstconfined to a ghetto, then expelled and transported to death camps. Only one Jew, Dora Galperin, washidden by local Christians and survived in and around the town-traumatized by her experience for therest of her life. A few others who had been expelled survived the brutal conditions of work camps. Thesmall number who returned after the war could not bear their neighbors' animosity and emigrated toIsrael and other countries. Nothing remains in Kamenetz of the centuries‐long Jewish presence-no livingJew, not even a trace of the Jewish cemetery.The essays in this Yizkor Book also describe the thriving pre‐war Jewish community. There are biographiesof mid‐19th century Kamenetz adventurers (Menachem‐Mendel of Kamenetz, Yisrael Ashkenazi) whosettled in Israel in the trying conditions of those times. One essay tells us about the 19th‐century career ofa fiery orator, the Maggid of Kamenetz, who emigrated to London in 1890. Two writers (Yeḥezkel Kotik, Falek Zolf) contribute colorful autobiographical pieces on life in the town in the late 19th and early 20thcenturies. We learn about Kamenetz's travails during World War I: the influx of refugees, the Germanoccupation, the epidemics, the blaze that destroyed much of the shtetl, and the bandits-escapedprisoners‐of‐war who hid out in nearby forests.Other essays describe Zionist organizations, the hard‐working communal volunteers, a successful amateurtheatre, a self‐trained orchestra that performed when the Kamenetz Yeshiva was dedicated, and theexperiences of Jewish pupils attending the Polish elementary school in the 1920s. Several articles tell usabout the last Chief Rabbi of the town, the charismatic Reuven Burstein, who perished in Auschwitz; hewas an enlightened, tolerant leader with a profound religious interpretation of Jewish history. Anothertells the story of a brilliant PhD mathematician from Kamenetz, Ayzik Gorny, for whom "Gorny's Theorem"was named; he was teaching in a French university in 1940, yet shared the fate of his fellowKamenetzers-sent from France to his death in Auschwitz. And we are told about the achievements ofthose who had left: the proud, new lives of the immigrants to Israel; and the philanthropicaccomplishments of the immigrants to America. Both groups joined hands to memorialize the town andto write the Yizkor Book. Finally, a detailed necrology, authored by Meir Bobrowski, lists all theKamenetzers, more than 1,700 in number, who perished at the hand of the Nazis.
Kraków; Sources of Information for Jewish Genealogy and History, by British researcher Geoffrey Weisgard, will be of interest to readers who are researching their ancestors from Kraków and the surrounding area. The book covers Kraków between 1790 and 1939 as well as locations throughout Western Galicia. Information is included about towns, villages and shtetlach within 20 miles of the city, some of which had virtually no Jewish population before the Holocaust, but were nevertheless places of temporary refuge during the Holocaust itself.This is a reference book for genealogists researching Jewish history in Krakow, Poland and the area.
In postwar Budapest, Aldó, a 42 year-old doctor who survived the concentration camp but lost his wife and children, slowly sinks into despair. One day a new patient arrives, 16- year-old Klára, who has lost her parents and siblings. The doctor soon discovers, behind Klára's silence and rage, a great love and determination to fight despair. The two become each other's new family, learning to live and love again after the horrors of the Holocaust. But the irunusual intimacy is threatened by Stalinist purges, revolution, and invasion.
Oskar Schindler was a naive optimist, a chronic alcoholic, a lover of women outside his marriage to Emily Pelzl. The Jews he saved used to say, "Thank God he was more faithful to us than to his wife." Will the enigma ever be solved? Schindler is not here to tell us, and the survivors are uncertain and differ in their opinions. The establishment and Schindler's business associates in Krakow had opposing views of his ethics and would have preferred to sit on the fence and hope the Schindler story would retreat into the archives. Schindler's friends and enemies accept that he was a very unusual man. A few of the Jews that he saved maintain, after all these years, that they still consider him a Nazi and exploiter of Jewish slave labor. Others swear their love for the man. That he used Jewish slave labor to enrich himself is not questioned, nor are his endeavors to eventually save his Jewish laborers. The author forensically re-examines the life and times of Oskar Schindler with surprising results.
We know Bilgoraj's river and forest from the stories of I.B. Singer, who spent his early adulthood here.Jews lived here since the late 14th century, and before the First World War, made up half its population. They owned grain and lumber mills, and worked as merchants, shoemakers, smiths, tailors, bakers, sieve makers, and printers. (The Kronenberg Press was known throughout Europe for its Hebrew books.) During the early 20th century, the communitysupported a synagogue, dozens of schools, a public kitchen, an orphanage, a labor union, four Zionist parties, six theatregroups, and two libraries.In October 1939 Nazi soldiers entered the town and began a program of beatings, killings, and forced labor. In June 1940 aghetto was created; deportations to the camps began in spring 1942. With the liquidation of the ghetto and its last residentsin January 1943, Jewish Bilgoraj ceased to exist.But not to the creators of this book. On their behalf, editor Abraham Kronenberg wrote: "We worked hard and produced a picture of our city and its dear Jews, its parties, institutions, and personalities. May we not forget what we had, and what will never again be."
Elymelech Fainzilber''s book, "The Destruction of Siedlce" has, understandably, not been able to embrace and draw out all the precious fabric of the city of Siedlce. But it is a significant (important) and earnest work about the past and the present, where the precious threads of life are braided together after generations of people, who have fought stubbornly for a better and more beautiful life.With great perfection (completion) this writer describes the ideas and people, who lived and fought in this particular city, which considers itself as one of the avenged cities in Jewish Poland. With enthusiasm and that fire of life of youth, the Jews of Siedlce threw themselves into the rows of the Zionist builders and fighters, exactly as the Jewish workers of Siedlce threw themselves with all of their fire of enthusiasm, into the Revolutionary lines in 1905, which had a very strong effect on the general environment.In distinct colors it was successful for Feinzilber to show the character of people and personalities. We see people with peculiar characteristics, quite different from other cities. With this, Feinzilber successfully shows us the character (personality) and peculiarity (originality) of generations of Jews, who lived in Siedlce.Understandably, it was possible to add to this book even more interesting episodes of Siedlce of the past. Feinzilber only heard about the past, and described it in a proper tone, but most importantly A. Feinzilber brings out the terrible Hitler years of destruction and devastation.It is understandable that in this book, there are also merely - some descriptions which are simply long and some have been taken from people who do not say very much. But in general, this book has an important value, not only just for people who lived in the city, but also for the entire world, who will learn a great deal from the past of the spirited city Siedlce.
If you're reading this it's because you want to learn about the now extinct Jewish village of Zhetl, known today as Dyatlovo, Belarus. Unfortunately, you can't read it in Yiddish. Sixty-Five years after this Zhetl Yizkor book was originally published, I am honored to make it available to the English-speaking world. Why do you care about Zhetl? If you're like me, it's probably because your parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, uncles, aunts or cousins were born and lived in Zhetl. A few of them survived, all of them tried to, but most of them were savagely murdered during humanity's lowest point in modern history: the Holocaust of World War II.If you're like me, you've heard bits and pieces of your family's Zhetl's stories over the years. Some of them get repeated to the point where you no longer hear them. Then one day you wake up and want to know more. You want to ask the questions which your youthful self didn't have the time, nor interest, to ask. But alas, our Zhetl is gone. Therein lies the wisdom of our dear Zhetl relatives. They knew this day would come. We all owe a debt of gratitude to all the authors who made the time to tell their stories, as painful as it was. To Baruch Kaplinski (z"l) for editing the original 1957 version and to Mordecai (Motl) Dunetz (z"l), for passionately gathering and editing materials from former Zhetl residents and survivors the world over for nearly a decade in order to drive the project through to its completion.
The Jewish residents of Ustilug lived in peace for many generations, raising their children to continue their forefathers'' traditions. Igor Stravinsky, the famed composer of "The Firebird" and "The Rite of Spring", maintained a country estate for many years in Ustilug where he worked on a number of his compositions. Stravinsky himself described Ustilug in his book, "Expositions and Developments" as a mistyechko, "a little place", out of Isaac Babel or Chagall, the coziest and most affectionate community imaginable".World War I however, and the aftereffects of the war, were terribly destructive to the Jewish community of Ustilug, whose fortunes plummeted. As a result, many were forced to move away. But over time the situation improved and the town thrived, until by 1935, Ustilug''s mostly Jewish population had reached approximately 4000. There were two libraries, one for Hebrew and one for Yiddish, a number of wood mills, several craftsman, cattle dealers, an orphanage, an expanded Jewish school, and 12 shuls, one for each of the Tribes of Israel.And then on the morning of June 22, 1941, everything changed. On that day, the Germans bombarded Ustilug heavily as war broke out between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. By October of that same year, 900 residents had been killed, and by September 1942, all of the Jews of Ustilug were gone.This book is a memorial to the people and the town of Ustilug written by former residents who either escaped or left before the war began. Originally compiled and published in Israel in 1961, in Yiddish and in Hebrew. Edited by Aryeh Avinadav.
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