Memorial Book of Suwalk

Memorial Book of Suwalk
Author: Berl Kagan
Publisher:
Total Pages: 882
Release: 2020-06-06
Genre:
ISBN: 9781939561909

The editors of the Suwalki Memorial Book write: "In our memorial book we give expression to the last breath and cry of pain of our holy martyrs, our parents, our brothers and sisters, our dearest and most beloved, who were thrown into the gas chambers, into the deep pits, burned, shot, smothered, their last prayers and screams cut off and silenced by the Nazi executioners. We want this memorial book to perpetuate their unfinished prayers. Their lives were cut short by the murderers before they could complete their calls: Hear Oh Israel. All of us will say the kaddish by means of this memorial book. However, the Suwalk memorial book is not only a monument for our murdered parents, brothers and sisters, it is also a holy obligation to perpetuate all that distinguished Suwalk and all of the vanished Jewish towns: vibrant Jewishness, faith, creativity, lifestyle, and language. "

The Book of Klezmer

The Book of Klezmer
Author: Yale Strom
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
Total Pages: 426
Release: 2011
Genre: History
ISBN: 1613740638

Originally published in hardcover in 2002.

From a Ruined Garden, Second Expanded Edition

From a Ruined Garden, Second Expanded Edition
Author: Zachary M. Baker
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 396
Release: 1998-07-22
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780253211873

"An indispensable sourcebook... Emphasis falls on the variegated, often joyful, culture of the Polish Jews, on what existed before the garden was ruined." --Geoffrey Hartmann, The New Republic "From these marvelous selections, one can see an entire culture unfolding." --Curt Leviant, New York Times Book Review "This newly revised version of the classic study... is a pleasure for the eye and the soul One of the seminal studies of the impact of the Shoah on European Jewry, it is even more moving in its new incarnation than in its original version. More than a collection of studies of books of remembrance and mourning, this volume asks how one can mourn for a world lost and still live in the present and the future." --Sander L. Gilman "Kugelmass and Boyarin have done a splendid job of combing the vast memorial book literature to select the most revealing accounts of Jewish life in interbellum Poland. Ordinary people speak in this volume with an immediacy and poignancy that cannot help but touch the reader. In the time since it first appeared, From a Ruined Garden has become a classic. Its reappearance in an updated and expanded form is most welcome." --Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett "In this magnificent collection, the editors combine a profound 'feel' for the vanished world of Polish Jewry, the anthologist's skill at selecting the telling example, and the anthropologist's sophisticated understanding of how these testimonies should be read. A marvelous introduction to this rich literature." --Peter Novick Polish Jewish survivors of the Holocaust compiled memorial books to preserve the memory of their destroyed communities. They describe daily life in the shtetl as well as everyday life during the Holocaust and the experiences of returning survivors. These memories paint a haunting picture of a way of life lost forever.

The Last Consolation Vanished

The Last Consolation Vanished
Author: Zalmen Gradowski
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 239
Release: 2022-11-15
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 022666032X

A unique and haunting first-person Holocaust account by Zalmen Gradowski, a Sonderkommando prisoner killed in Auschwitz. On October 7, 1944, a group of Jewish prisoners in Auschwitz obtained explosives and rebelled against their Nazi murderers. It was a desperate uprising that was defeated by the end of the day. More than four hundred prisoners were killed. Filling a gap in history, The Last Consolation Vanished is the first complete English translation and critical edition of one prisoner’s powerful account of life and death in Auschwitz, written in Yiddish and buried in the ashes near Crematorium III. Zalmen Gradowski was in the Sonderkommando (special squad) at Auschwitz, a Jewish prisoner given the unthinkable task of ushering Jewish deportees into the gas chambers, removing their bodies, salvaging any valuables, transporting their corpses to the crematoria, and destroying all evidence of their murders. Sonderkommandos were forcibly recruited by SS soldiers; when they discovered the horror of their assignment, some of them committed suicide or tried to induce the SS to kill them. Despite their impossible situation, many Sonderkommandos chose to resist in two interlaced ways: planning an uprising and testifying. Gradowski did both, by helping to lead a rebellion and by documenting his experiences. Within 120 scrawled notebook pages, his accounts describe the process of the Holocaust, the relentless brutality of the Nazi regime, the assassination of Czech Jews, the relationships among the community of men forced to assist in this nightmare, and the unbearable separation and death of entire families, including his own. Amid daily unimaginable atrocities, he somehow wrote pages that were literary, sometimes even lyrical—hidden where and when one would least expect to find them. The October 7th rebellion was completely crushed and Gradowski was killed in the process, but his testimony lives on. His extraordinary and moving account, accompanied by a foreword and afterword by Philippe Mesnard and Arnold I. Davidson, is a voice speaking to us from the past on behalf of millions who were silenced. Their story must be shared.

The Beauty and the Sorrow

The Beauty and the Sorrow
Author: Peter Englund
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 594
Release: 2012-09-04
Genre: History
ISBN: 0307739287

An intimate narrative history of World War I told through the stories of twenty men and women from around the globe--a powerful, illuminating, heart-rending picture of what the war was really like. In this masterful book, renowned historian Peter Englund describes this epoch-defining event by weaving together accounts of the average man or woman who experienced it. Drawing on the diaries, journals, and letters of twenty individuals from Belgium, Denmark, France, Great Britain, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Italy, Australia, New Zealand, Russia, Venezuela, and the United States, Englund’s collection of these varied perspectives describes not a course of events but "a world of feeling." Composed in short chapters that move between the home front and the front lines, The Beauty and Sorrow brings to life these twenty particular people and lets them speak for all who were shaped in some way by the War, but whose voices have remained unheard.

The Memorial Book for the Jewish Community of Yurburg, Lithuania

The Memorial Book for the Jewish Community of Yurburg, Lithuania
Author: Joel Alpert
Publisher: Jewishgen.Incorporated
Total Pages: 748
Release: 2003
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780974126203

This is the English translation of the Memorial or Yizkor Book of the Jewish Community of Yurburg, Lithuania, originally published in 1991 in Hebrew and Yiddish. It also has an additional new 150-page appendix containing new material collected since the publication of the original book. Contains many new photographs to enhance the original book.

Memorial Books of Eastern European Jewry

Memorial Books of Eastern European Jewry
Author: Rosemary Horowitz
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 303
Release: 2014-01-10
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0786480068

From the Russian civil wars through the Nazi years, the Jews of Eastern Europe were targets of violence during the first half of the twentieth century. During the Holocaust especially, entire communities were wiped out. In response, survivors sometimes compiled memorial books, or Yizker books, in an attempt to preserve historical, biographical, and cultural information about their shtetls. This multipart collection provides a concise history of the memorial books and their cultural contexts; eight analytical essays on or using Yizker books; key reviews, in some cases translated from the Yiddish, from the 1950s and later; and a bibliographic overview of secondary sources and collections.

Points of Passage

Points of Passage
Author: Tobias Brinkmann
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 185
Release: 2013-10-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1782380302

Between 1880 and 1914 several million Eastern Europeans migrated West. Much is known about the immigration experience of Jews, Poles, Greeks, and others, notably in the United States. Yet, little is known about the paths of mass migration across “green borders” via European railway stations and ports to destinations in other continents. Ellis Island, literally a point of passage into America, has a much higher symbolic significance than the often inconspicuous departure stations, makeshift facilities for migrant masses at European railway stations and port cities, and former control posts along borders that were redrawn several times during the twentieth century. This volume focuses on the journeys of Jews from Eastern Europe through Germany, Britain, and Scandinavia between 1880 and 1914. The authors investigate various aspects of transmigration including medical controls, travel conditions, and the role of the steamship lines; and also review the rise of migration restrictions around the globe in the decades before 1914.

Lithuanian Jewish Communities

Lithuanian Jewish Communities
Author: Nancy Schoenburg
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 516
Release: 1996
Genre: Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)
ISBN: 1568219938

This volume lists, in alphabetical order, the major Jewish communities that existed in Lithuania before World War II. The name of each community is accompanied by information about it: when it was founded, the Jewish population in different years, shops and synagogues, and the names of citizens. An appendix locates each town on a map of Lithuania. Since most of the Jewish communities in Lithuania were destroyed in the Holocaust, this volume will be a valuable tool in recreating a picture of Lithuanian Jewry.