NYPL Lion LogoYou are logged in to your accountNYPL Locator SVG IconNYPL Search SVG IconThe New York Public LibraryLocationsGet a Library CardDonateShopYizkor (Memorial) Books are some of the best sources for learning about Jewish communities in Eastern and Central Europe. Groups of former residents, or landsmanshaftn, have published these books as a tribute to their former homes and the people who were murdered during the Holocaust. The majority of these books were written in Hebrew or Yiddish, languages that many contemporary genealogists cannot read or understand. The JewishGen Yizkor Book Project was organized in 1994 by a group of JewishGen volunteers led by Leonard Markowitz and Martin Kessel. A translation project was developed by Susannah Juni and implemented byIt is our purpose to unlock the valuable information contained in Yizkor Books so that genealogists and others can learn moreFor more information, see the Yizkor Book
Those around her, at the May 18 talk in Livingston, nodded in agreement, sharing her horror at the questions he was reading aloud. They were queries addressed to the rabbi of the Ukrainian shtetl of Felshtin asking how to honor their dead. In February 1919, around 600 of Felshtin’s 1,800 Jews were massacred by Cossack mercenaries. The survivors were faced with dilemmas almost too gruesome to put into words — on how to deal with the dismembered remains of their spouses, their elderly, and their small children. “Our little town has drowned in blood,” one Felshtiner wrote in a massive memorial book written by the survivors and published in 1937 in New York. Shaievitz, who has been dealing with this material for more than 25 years, had a friend read out some of his material because it still brings him to tears. The Bloomfield-based lawyer first came across the 670-page book about the tragedy at his mother’s house back in 1989. Her father was among the victims, a loss she had never discussed with her son.
“She hadn’t even told me his name,” Shaievitz said. His mission since then has been to keep alive the memory of the town and the pogrom victims, and to make their story accessible to as many people as possible. On May 18, he addressed the League of Women Voters of Livingston. His late wife, Rhoda, was a longtime member — and he along with her — and he was invited to share this labor of love. Only two chapters of the original Felshtin Yizkor (commemorative) Book were in English; the rest is in Yiddish. Despite limited knowledge of the language, Shaievitz gradually found out what was contained in the passages written in Yiddish, in the essays and lists and reports. It was published in 1937 by the First Felshtiner Progressive Benevolent Society, a group of immigrants who, like so many others, had settled in the United States, in place of a monument to their dead. With the help of family members and fellow descendants of those Felshtin Jews, Shaievitz has been trying to complete and publish a full English translation.
In the process, he has brought together around 200 families with a link to Felshtin (now Hvardiyske), just about as many as belonged to the original society. “We have people in Canada, England, Israel, and Argentina, as well as this country,” he said. “One of my cousins thanked me. She said it had changed her life, finding out about our grandfather.” Memorial (Yizkor) Book of the Jewish Community of Novogrudok, Poland - Translation of Pinkas Navaredok Load up on these top titles for spring vacations and staycations. Publisher: JewishGen, Inc. (May 9, 2013) 6.7 x 1.6 x 9.6 inches Shipping Weight: 3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies) Average Customer Review: Be the first to review this item #2,037,994 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) in Books > History > World > Jewish > Holocaust in Books > History > EuropeJewish ShtetlJewish WaysJewish AncestryJewish HebrewJewish ThingsJewish HistoryJewish LifeLithuanian ShtetlYiddish ShtetlForwardJONAVA, Lithuanian SHTETL.
In the course of time the majority of Jews inhabited small towns (in Yiddish - shtetl). These little towns were like a unique universe where the Jewish way of life reproduced itself, thus enriching the culture. A "shtetl" was a cradle of Jewish cultureCreated by Holocaust survivors in memorial to the Jewish communities across Europe destroyed by the Shoah, Yizkor books try to capture a community destroyed almost in its entirety through photographs, lists of names of both survivors and the dead, descriptions of daily life and its institutions, and surviving documents. Often created from the memory of a single survivor, the Yizkor books are not errorless or perfect, but rather the attempt by the remnants of the community to remember and recreate what once was. Priceless for genealogists, historians, or descendants of that particular Jewish community, Yizkor books are rare, extremely limited in number (about 1000 in existence), and fragile. Many of these books were published in the early 1950s with low quality materials and are now in fragile condition.
They were acquired from survivors and rare booksellers worldwide and have become extremely difficult to obtain. As part of the Jay and Lonny Darwin Yizkor Book Collection, the Tauber Holocaust Library owns over 500 Yizkor Books, the fifth largest collection in the world. The Tauber Holocaust Library has created an online list of our Yizkor book collection for research purposes. To view any of our Yizkor books please make an appointment with our library and archive staff. View the Tauber Holocaust Library Yizkor collection. Yizkor book resources at the Tauber Holocaust Library include: Yizkor Books Online – a project of the New York Public Library– provides page-turner technology to read or consult crystal-clear digital images of complete Holocaust memorial books, exactly as issued. The Yiddish Book Center offers digitized, reprinted bound volumes of Yizkor books for sale. The Jewish Gen Yizkor Book Project provides access to English-language translations of some Yizkor books.