Title: Memorial Books of Jewish Communities, 1943-2003
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Languages: English [eng], Hebrew [heb], Yiddish [yid], French [fre]
Memorial books of Jewish Communities that vanished in the Holocaust are also known as the Yizkor Books. They were published by the postwar Jewish associations of the descendants and survivors of the vanished in the Holocaust communities. These Jewish organizations are commonly regarded as Jewish Landsmanschaften. A memorial book dedicated to a given community is often a collective writing. Overall, such a synthetic work comprises a historical survey beginning with the time when the community was first mentioned, through its formative years and further to their prewar history, ending with the narration of the Holocaust and its aftermath. Personalia and commemorative advertisements often complement the memorial books.
Although not authored by professional historians or scholars, these volumes may serve as primary sources, especially with regard to the micro-history and family history. Largely, the majority of memorial books are written in Yiddish, however some are in Hebrew. Sometimes publications would also have an introductory article in English or Polish.
Jewish communities during in Diaspora and in Israel commenced the project on memorialization in the postwar years, continuing this work well into the 1960s and 1970s. Many of the memorial books were published in Israel, while it is not uncommon to see publications compiled and printed in North and South America, South Africa, and occasionally in European countries.
Memorial books as narratives took primary focus on anti-Jewish upheavals. Some publication may start as early as the 17th Century, the turbulent time in Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth when the very foundation of the Republic of Nobles was at stake owing to the multiple wars with the neighboring countries and even more to the extent of the anti-Polish and anti-Jewish rebellion on the part of Ukrainian-cossacks population. Jewish pogroms of enormous scale and mass killing were common occurrences for the Right-bank Ukraine (then Poland and later the Russian Empire) in the duration of the 17th and 18th Centuries.
The memorial books may turn attention to another boundary situation, namely the period of the First World War and its aftermath. Given the fact of dealing with the Polish and Ukrainian Jewish communities, the very time after the First World War, that is, the period of Russian Civil War, the War for Ukrainian and Polish independence and the local borderland conflicts spurred multiple anti-Jewish atrocities, often resulted in massacres and pogroms. Not all, but a number of the memorial publications documented the pogroms in Poland and Ukraine in 1971 – 1921.
The interwar period (1918 – 1939), largely represented by merchant and religious activities as well as with notification of social and political events taking place in a given locality.
The Holocaust in a given community is documented by the testimonies, recollections and other memorialistic literature deposited by survivors. The documents of the Nazi-German agencies and postwar investigations of the Nazi-German crimes do not constitute the core of the narratives. Evidently, the authors in postwar years living in Israel or Diaspora did not have at their disposal German documents, they may have had the results of the State investigation of the Nazi-German crimes in the given territories. For the large Polish-Jewish communities the later well might have been a plausible source.
RG-32.09, Lodzer Yiskor Book or The Lodz Memorial Book. Published by the United Emergency Relief Committee for the City of Łódż, New York, 1943. Printed in Paterson, N.J. Editorial Staff: Z. Zylbercweig, R. Feldon, M. S. Grossman, PH. Lassman, L. I. Leibowitz, L. Opert, M. Pincus, J. Rafsky, M. Pfeffer, G. Rafsky. S. Shely, L. Shribnick, B. Troy, Mrs. M. Try. Text is primarily in Yiddish with small portions in English.
This memorial book honors the memory of the Jewish community in Lodz, Poland that perished during the Holocaust. The publication is divided into five parts, each highlighting a particular portion of Lodz’s history. Topics include the city’s history from its establishment in 1332 to the onset of war in 1939, the destruction of the city and the establishment of the Lodz ghetto, the suffering of the Jews under Hitler’s regime, a brief history of the United Emergency Relief Committee for the City of Lodz, memorial pages and photographs dedicated to those who died during the Holocaust, and photographs of Jewish community members who served in the United States’ Army during the Second World War.