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This is the English translation of the Memorial book "The Jews of Czestochowa."  originally published in Yiddish in 1947.This book contains first-hand descriptions of the rich life of the Jewish community of  Czestochowa before the Shoah and eye- witness accounts of its destruction.May this book serve as a memory to those who perished and the community that was destroyed.

This is the Memorial Book of the destroyed Jewish community of Kobylnik  Belarus, also known as Narach. It contains the history of the community, first-hand accounts of survivors and emigres from the town who managed to survive the Shoah (Holocaust).We, the children in the Diaspora, who do not read Yiddish or Hebrew will benefit from these English translations. We might will find some stories contradicted or repeated, but remember the people that wrote them were not trained authors, but were eye-witnesses to the events and history, so read this book and others anyway. Find out how our grandparents lived and how they died. Read about their town, the rich Jewish culture, the history and especially about the destruction during Holocaust. With anti-Semitism rearing its ugly head again, let us remember and never forget those martyrs! Those destroyed communities were our foundation for love, compassion, learning, brotherhood and Tzedaka...use these Yizkor Books with pride and know the people you came from! Anita Frishman Gabbay, 2019 

If you visit Nowy Dwor Mazowiecki, nothing remains of a vital community which was exterminated on December 12, 1942 with the liquidation of the ghetto by the Nazi occupiers. My father returned to Nowy Dwor for just one day after the war looking for family members. He wandered the streets and recognized no one until he met one of the town's two Jewish survivors of that final deportation. My father left knowing with certainty the awful, dire fate of his family members. Now few remain who knew.The Nowy Dwor Mazowiecki Pinkus book recalls history and anecdotal evidence which fleshes out the factual skeleton of a town's history, stripped of its flesh by war and genocide, bleached by decades of fading memory. This Pinkus book tries to reconstitute Nowy Dwor's traditional record which each town and shetl maintained over generations. The book first bears witness to the development and growth of a small town sparked by economic innovations, new ideas, and possibilities; then it records the brutal demise and death of the Jewish citizenry of a town.Debra Michlewitz, Translation Project Coordinator and Author of Frayed Lives: A Family Memoir Stitched in Holocaust History

The Dobrzyn-Golub Yizkor Book evokes both pleasure and pain: pleasure from the nostalgic accounts by the Dobrzyn Jews who emigrated before World War II, and pain from the narratives describing the destruction of all traces of the town's rich Jewish culture. For beginning in 1939 its Jewish population was savagely expelled and murdered, all Jewish institutions were eradicated, and even the Jewish cemetery was obliterated.This book contains chilling accounts by a handful of survivors who experienced the trauma of the Nazi occupation of the town, the mass-murder of leading Jewish citizens, and the expulsion to ghettos, work camps and death camps. Other essays on prewar personalities describe dreamers, poets, community organizers, scholars and noted rabbis. They tell the story of a multi-faceted prewar Jewish culture: the ardor of religious life and the advent of secular studies, socialism, Zionism, sports, and theatre. The town was home to all the warring Jewish factions of the period: the pious Hasidim; the secular socialists; and the Zionists, both secular and religious. Despite their sharp differences they would join hands to provide charity to the needy, and they would be as unified as a close family in the face of anti-Semitism.The range of topics covered in these essays spans the entire gamut of Jewish experience in the town. There are the adventures of a Dobrzyn Jew in the Czar's army of 1910 and in a World-War I German work camp. There is a description of an election of town rabbi in which the two candidates are backed by vying Hasidic groups. A scholar living in New York who was raised in Dobrzyn writes how he still yearns for the simple life he led there. An ecstatic poem, written by an ascetic kabbalist who hailed from Dobrzyn, is filled with fury and religious awe. We meet a gabardine-clad Hasid who preaches Zionism to his pious fellow Hasidim as well as to sophisticated German Jews. And a Dobrzyner, recalling his childhood studies in cheder, tells of a prank played by the schoolchildren on their teacher, and the teacher's revenge. The essays also include postwar updates: descriptions and obituaries depicting the lives of those who settled in Israel; and accounts by American Dobrzyners of their landsmanshaft fundraising. There are photographs from Dobrzyn in the period 1910-1939, and others from Israel and the US up to the 1960s.The essays by the American Dobrzyners were nearly all written in Yiddish; those authored by their Israeli counterparts were mostly in Hebrew. The entire set of essays, as well as a map of the town, appear here in English translation, with footnotes by the translator and a Holocaust necrology that has been extracted from the essays.

Jews first settled in Dnipropetrovsk (Ukraine) after its foundation in 1778, and in 1804 the town was included in the Pale of Settlement. The community numbered 376 in 1805 and 1,699 in 1847. With the growth of the city in the second half of the 19th century Jews began to move there from other parts of Russia and played an important role in its commerce and industry. Pogroms occurred in Dnepropetrovsk and the vicinity on July 20-21, 1883, in which 350 homes and many Jewish shops were looted and destroyed. By 1897 the Jewish population had increased to 41,240. Most of the shops and houses in the city center were owned by Jews. There were three Talmud Torah schools with 500 pupils, 885 studied in the hadarim, and a yeshivah and 16 private schools were in operation. In 1860 a hospital was founded with 14 beds, growing to 29 in 1886. In 1880 an old age home was opened for the poor. Pogroms again broke out on October 21-23, 1905, and 74 Jews were killed, hundreds injured, and much property was looted and destroyed. Local self-defense was organized in 1904, comprising 600 members. It did much to protect the community. In World War I and the civil war in Russia, thousands of Jews took refuge in Dnepropetrovsk, which numbered 72,928 Jews in 1920. In the Civil War (1917-20) the city changed hands a number of times, suffering from tributes, looting, rape, and murder. In June 1919 the Denikin army raped about 1,000 women and in May 1919 the Grigoryev band killed 150 Jews. After the establishment of Soviet rule, Jewish community life ceased there as elsewhere in the Soviet Union. Zionist activity was forbidden, and on September 18-22, 1922 about 1,000 were arrested. The Jewish population numbered 62,073 in 1926 Dnepropetrovsk was occupied by the Germans on August 25, 1941. Thanks to evacuation and flight, only about 17,000 Jews remained. In September 179 were killed. On October 13-14, 13,000-15,000 Jews were assembled and led to the botanical gardens, where they were murdered. The remaining 2,000 Jews were executed at the end of 1941 and the beginning of 1942. At the end of summer 1943 a unit of Operation Group 1005 opened the mass graves, burned the bodies, and dispersed the ashes. The city was liberated on October 25, 1943, and many Jews returned. According to the 1959 census there were 53,400 Jews living in Dnepropetrovsk. In 1970 there was one synagogue still functioning in the city. Subsequent census figures put the Jewish population at 45,622 in 1979 and 17,869 in 1989. Immigration to Israel diminished the number significantly during the 1990s.

This is the third Edition of this book. It now includes new material at the end about the new Synagogue Square Memorial (July 2019) and renovations at the Yurburg Jewish Cemetery. English translation of the Memorial Book for the Jewish Community of Yurburg, Lithuania. Contains the history of this vibrant community from before the Holocaust, eye-witness accounts of the Shoah, as told by its former residents. Yurburg is situated on the shores of the Nieman River, near the border of Germany. Traces of the neighboring German culture were evident in the style of houses and in the mode of life of its residents. Yurburg was an important commercial and communication center due to its geographical location.The life style of this Jewish community was filled with vibrant social and spiritual activities. There were two parks in Yurburg. One of them was called "Tel Aviv" where the Hebrew high school named Herzl was located. The community supported public organizations for aiding the indigent. There were active political parties, primarily Zionist and Zionist youth organizations. The old synagogue was distinguished by its artistic woodcarvings.Jews lived happily in Yurburg. Then one day, in June 1941, the Nazi armed forces invaded the town. Within the next three months the Nazis and their Lithuanian helpers tortured, murdered and destroyed what was a vibrant Jewish community.

This is a reprint of and English translation of the Memorial Book of the destroyed Jewish Community of Riteve, Lithuania, also called by these names: Rietavas [Lithuanian], Riteve [Yiddish], Retovo [Russian], Reto╠üw [Polish], Retowo, Rietevas, Riteva, Ritova.Once a living and thriving place of community, family, education, work, hardship, love, and joy, Ritavas and its people were wiped from the face of the earth during the Holocaust. But with the memories of the survivors, we can all remember what once made this Shtetl a home to so many of the lost.This book contains memories and first-hand accounts of Shoah survivors and those who left the town before the destruction.  Though not great literature, it provides eye-witness accounts of the vitality of the community before the war and also disturbing and factual accounts of the treatment of the Jews of the town during the war.  It also provides insight into the lives and environment of the ancestors of people who can trace their lineage back to the town, providing another dimension to our own personal history.This Yizkor Book serves as a memorial to this now extinct Jewish Community.

This is the Memorial (or Yizkor) Book for the destroyed Jewish Community of Roman, Romania. It was written by emigrees and survivors of the Shoah who gathered in their new homes and wrote their memories of their destroyed community.The Romanian city of Roman is situated in the northeastern part of the country, at the confluence of the Moldova and Siret rivers, on the great road of the Siret, which long ago connected the north of Moldova with the Danube ports. The Jewish population in the city is believed to date from as early as the beginning of 15thcentury. It is believed that a wooden synagogue existed in Roman at that time, on the same lot where the Main Synagogue was standing later (in the 20th century). It was but the first of what would become 18 synagogues serving a population of more than 6,000 Jews by the beginning of the 1940s, which along with a wide range of social, educational, and cultural institutions was a measure of the vitality of the community.In this scholarly volume, the rich portrait of the Jewish community in Roman that was about to be annihilated is painted in meticulous detail, covering every aspect of life over the centuries of its existence. This is a translation of: Obstea evreiascaä din Roman, originally published by Editura Hasefer, in Bucuress¿ti, Romania in 2001.

Often when we study the Holocaust the focus is on how Jewish life ended - the restrictions, the round ups, the ghettoizations, the transports, the deaths. But how much do we know about how these communities lived? Who were their members, their leaders? How were they organized? How did they understand their place in the world? What were their stories, passed from generation to generation?On December 8, 1941 the Nazis expelled the last Jews from Chorzel, a small town near what had been the Polish-Prussian border along the Orzyc River. On that day Jewish life in Chorzel came to an end. Fortunately, however, we now have a readily accessible window into the life of this community before the war. This complete English translation of theYizkor Book of the Community of Chorzel (Chorzele), formerly only available partly in Yiddish and partly in Hebrew, allows us to meet its personalities, its institutions and its livelihood both through memoir and photographs.For the descendants of the Chorzel Jewish community, December 8, 1941 was the beginning of their end. And yet, new family branches were already sprouting in the United States and Israel. For the Jewish descendants of Chorzel around the world, this book serves as a memorial to all that was lost.

The Germans invaded Poland on Friday, the 1st of September 1939 and entered Czenstochow on Sunday, the 3rd. This invasion was the beginning of the end of the Jewish community, which had existed in Czenstochow for hundreds of years. The Jewish population of approximately 30,000 men, women and children enjoyed an active economic, political, cultural and religious life. All of it was erased.Resistance and Death in the Czenstochow Ghetto tells the story of the brave but mostly unsuccessful fight for life by the Czenstochower Jews and of their tragic death, of the annihilation of a vibrant community. Their story is important as a historical tale of their existence and as first-hand evidence of what happened to them and to Jewish Czenstochow.

The Zbaraz Memorial BookYears ago, a small group of people, émigrés from Zbarazh, had the idea of establishing a memorial for this ancient community, whose generations and influence spread beyond its limited borders. They wanted to commemorate their community, this glorious community, whose Jews were lost in the Holocaust.It was difficult to attain the historical material needed to give an impression of the city, material that would testify to the cultural life of this community and its inhabitants. We know that this is the last chance to find and save documents and papers. We gathered very little, but we put together stories, descriptions, pictures and memories that will give some idea about our community.We had to search for all material possible to reconstruct Jewish and Zionist Zbarazh, to find documents that describe the destruction of the city and the extermination of its Jewish residents by Hitler's soldiers, and gather material about the deeds of blood and acts of might as related by the people who personally experienced the terror of those days and who were saved miraculously and who live today in Israel, Europe, the United States, Argentina and Australia.With the passage of time, people are passing away, and the survivors of Zbarazh and its environs who live in Israel are growing fewer. Our recognition of this fact intensified our feeling of urgency and inspired us to record what people have to tell. If we have succeeded in completing this mission, even if we have gathered little, we have done a great service for ourselves and for our children.We will tell our youth about our holy community, and that will be a small consolation for us: that we have established a memorial of all of our holy martyrs who were annihilated in the Holocaust, and whom we loved.May their memory be blessed.Moshe Sommerstein

Stryj was first populated by Jews in the middle 16thcentury. The permit to build the first synagogue was given in 1689. Since the beginning of their settlement in Stryj the Jews made their living by selling spirits, wholesale and retail merchandising, providing tax and customs services and banking for the nobles. After Poland was partitioned in 1772, Stryj became part of the Austrian Empire. At the time there were about 440 Jewish families in the town and its suburbs. After World War I, Stryj briefly became a part of the West Ukrainian People's Republic (a short-lived republic that existed from November 1918 to July 1919 in eastern Galicia). In 1919, the area became a part of free and sovereign Poland. The town had a Jewish population of 10,988 in 1921 and about 12,000 in 1939. Jews were merchants, craftsmen and many were professionals: doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc. The Germans occupied Stryj on July 2nd, 1941 after breaking the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and hundreds of Jews were immediately killed. Murders and deportations followed and in August of 1943 the Stryj ghetto and labor camps around town were liquidated. When the Soviet army occupied Stryj in August 1944 there were only a few Jewish survivors. No Jewish community was re-established.This book tells the story of Stryj's Jews during a period of 400 years of the existence of their community: their struggles and achievements, their dreams and hopes, the institutions they established and the many great and famous personalities from town. This book serves to commemorate the once vital and flourishing community of Stryj that no longer exists.

This book tells about Brody's Jews during a period of 400 years of the existence of their community: about the changes they went through, the days of flourishing and glory and the days of lowliness and poverty, and the way Brody came to be called "Jerusalem of Galitzia", until its destruction during the Holocaust. The book begins with the history of the community from its establishment until its destruction (1588 - 1943). Then the description of the community between the two World Wars, including its destruction during the Shoah is presented, including a list of the "Righteous of the Nations of the World", who saved a few of our Brody's community Jews. The Yizkor chapter, containing the list of our community martyrs who were killed during the Holocaust at the hands of evil gentiles "For the sanctification of the Name," is actually a realization of the idea of the publication of a memorial book for those who were buried in mass graves in foreign soil, those who were not given a Jewish burial and those whose burial location is unknown. At the end of the book are: a list of Brody's young people who fought against the Nazis and were killed during the years 1939 - 1945; a list of Brody's natives who passed away in Israel; a list of Brody's natives and their descendants who were killed during the wars to establish and protect Israel; and finally an appendix containing the article "We the Polish Jews" by Julian Tuvim. This book serves as a fitting memorial (Yizkor) for the destroyed Jewish community of Brody, Ukraine.

Radzivilov was once a prosperous Russian frontier town connecting the Russian and Austrian Empires. Because of its location, it was a center for trade, and had a thriving Jewish community. During the first World War it became a front line for different warring armies, and was nearly destroyed. Later it became an arena for the war between Ukrainian Nationalists and Bolsheviks, until a new Polish government was established. With it came a rebirth of Jewish life, including a robust Zionist movement. By 1935, the town was home to 12,000, more than half of whom were Jews. The community supported three Jewish schools, a Talmud Torah, several private cheders, two synagogues, 14 houses of prayer, a Jewish hospital, and a home for invalids. Most of the Jews worked in commerce. They also owned several factories, a Jewish printing press, a brewery, a lime furnace, and a flour mill. After the Germans occupied the town in July 1941, the Nazis and their Ukrainian helpers began a program of repression and murder, culminating in the 1942 massacre of an estimated 4,000 Jews. When Radzivilov was liberated in March 1944, only about 50 Jews had survived. During the 1960s, a group of survivors and former residents met in Israel, determined to re-create in book form, their town that had been destroyed. This book, newly translated from Hebrew, is their tribute to the Jewish Radzivilov that was. 

Memorial or Yizkor or Book of the Jewish Community of Dusiat, Lithuania. Translation of Ayara Hayeta B'Lita: Dusiat B'Rei Hazichronot, compiled and edited by Sara Weiss-Slep, ©1989 Tel AvivAlternate names of the town are: Dusetos [Lithuanian]; Dusiat/Dusyat [Yiddish]; Dusiaty [Russian, Polish]Compiled by Sara Weiss-Slep. Edited and produced by Hedva Scop and Olga Zabludoff

This extraordinary book is a collection of memories from child survivors of the Minsk Ghetto, Belarus. These are rare and moving personal testimonies, and this is a book of some significance for it opens a window on the rarely told story of the Holocaust in Belarus, in particular the Minsk Ghetto. Between 1941 and 1943 approximately 80,000 Jews lived in or pass through that place of terror; as a result of starvation and repeated brutal pogroms most did not survive. A few were helped by brave Byelorussian locals who risked their own lives to save them. Others, many of them mere children like the narrators of these stories, managed to escape to the partisans living in the nearby forests. Having reached the relative safety of partisan camps, some even returned to Minsk to rescue their families and neighbours. Several of their dangerous missions are described within the pages of this powerful book. These stories which recount the memories of the Minsk Ghetto survivors are a testimony to the extraordinary power and resilience of the human spirit.

The Korelichi  (Korelitz, Karelichi) Memorial Book is the English translation of the Yizkor (Memorial) Book published in 1973 by survivors and former residents of this town, situated in present-day Belarus. Written originally in Yiddish and Hebrew and with some abridged English summaries, it commemorates their beloved families and town and provides a vivid portrayal of Jewish life in Korelitz before and during World War II. In addition, there is a section on the Korelitzer Society of America, which was very active from the early 20th century until the late decades.The book details in personal and authentic accounts, the history of the town and its people, the way of life, institutions, Zionist organizations, cultural activities, townspeople and leading personalities. The horrendous events during the Holocaust, when most of the Jewish population was brutally murdered in mass killings in the town are described, and lists of the victims are given. The remaining Jews were enclosed in the ghetto of the nearby city of Novogrudek. Some escaped to forests in the vicinity and joined the partisans.Descendants of Korelitzers who emigrated to the USA, South Africa, New Zealand, France and Israel have all contributed additional new information in this book. There are stories of Korelitzers who came to the United States at the beginning of the 20th century and joined the Korelitzer Society in New York, as well as a newly discovered list of its members. There is a detailed story of a partisan who joined the Bielski Brigade (made famous in the film "Defiance"). New family relationships were also uncovered during preparation of the book.This publication by the “Yizkor-Books-in-Print Project” of JewishGen, Inc., provides the English-speaking community and descendants of the Korelitzers with these first-hand accounts in book format as a primary resource for research and for individuals seeking information about the town where their families had lived.

Yeshayahu Drucker devoted a good part of his life to rescuing Jewish children from non-Jewish homes. Many parents had given their children to Polish neighbors for safekeeping during the war. Unfortunately most of the parents did not survive the Shoah. At the end of the war, there was no one to claim the children and they remained with the "adopted" Polish families. Following his discharge from the Polish army, Yeshayahu Drucker devoted himself to rescuing Jewish children from these homes and restoring them to their Jewish families or placing them in Jewish orphanages. He was a one-man operation but saved hundreds of Jewish children. This is the amazing story of one man's mission to save Jewish children and return them to their people.

Jews began settling in Rokiškis in the late 17th Century. During the 19th Century, the town’s importance as a regional commercial center increased with the completion of a railway line that connected it to the Baltic ports of Riga and Libau / Liepaja and to the interior of the Russian Empire. By 1897, the Jewish population had grown to 2,067, 75% of the town’s population. There was a strong Chasidic presence in the Rokiškis area, which was unique to Lithuania. Prior to the Holocaust, about 3,500 Jews lived in Rokiškis. By the end of August 1941 nearly all were murdered.In 1952, Jews from the area who had emigrated to South Africa before the war published a collection of Yiddish-language articles and related images under the title Yisker-bukh fun Rakishok un umgegnt (Memorial Book for Rokiskis and Environs). Countless hours of volunteer effort have been devoted to translating that work into English and recently to gathering additional materials that were not available when the original book was published. Together, these translations, images, and new material provide English-speaking readers a composite picture of the history, culture, institutions, and daily lives of the Jews of the Rokiškis area and will be a lasting memorial to them.

In the 19th century, Kishinev was the economic and cultural capital of Russian Bessarabia By mid-century, Jews made up almost half the population, the community supporting a synagogue, a Jewish hospital, and numerous schools. The Haskelah, Hasidic, Zionist, and revolutionary movements contributed to its lively intellectual ferment. In April 1903 and October 1905, two anti-Jewish riots took place that would forever link Kishinev with the word “pogrom.” The first was preceded by a series of vicious newspaper articles accusing Jews of a lengthy series of crimes. A violent mob attacked the community, killing 49 people, maiming 586, and destroying 1,350 Jewish houses and 588 shops. In the second pogrom, 19 Jews were murdered and 56 wounded.  The pogroms focused worldwide attention on the persecution of Jews in Russia, and started a major wave of emigration. Following the German-Romanian occupation of Bessarabia in July 1941, thousands of Jews were killed in mass shootings, deportations, ghettos and concentration camps. The Jewish community of Kishinev was nearly annihilated. Jewish religious and cultural life has slowly begun to rebuild in modern Chisinau. But in 1950, the writers of this book hadΓÇ¿ no way of knowing it would. In these ΓÇ¿pages, they tried to recreate the Jewish community they had known.