Books published by Jewishgen.Inc

The history of the Jewish community of Kremenets ad its destruction in the holocaust

If history is made by ordinary people then this book is history at its core. There is a refreshing honesty in these writings, portraying town-folk, foibles and all, in their humility and worldly-wisdom. Everyday acts of kindness and humor abound. One town resident, Tsvi Krizovski, became fascinated with photography in the early 20th Century, assuming the role of unofficial town photographer. Krizovski's photographs capture the spirit of Divenishok in a way that mere words cannot. Over 100 photos accompany the articles, in many instances depicting the persons mentioned in the text, allowing us to witness the cultural, religious, sporting, economic, and social life of the town as it was in those days. The combined word-and-picture effect is a treasurable cinematic memorial to an extinguished Jewish-Lithuanian community. This is the Memorial or Yizkor Book of the Jewish Community of Divenishok, Lithuania -Adam Cherson (Translation Editor)

Jews of Kaiserstrasse vividly details the fate of the Jewish residents of single street in Mainz, Germany from 1939-45. This book is the culmination of Michael Phillips'' meticulous research into the lives of approximately 300 individuals that at one point during the period covered lived on the impressive boulevard. It catalogues the destruction of the wealthy Jewish community, which, before the rise of German National Socialism and the implementation of viciously anti-Semitic legislation from 1933 until the end of the Second World War and the defeat of Germany in September 1945, had been active in the Rhineland town''s commercial, social and municipal life.Jews of Kaiserstrasse draws from numerous academic, popular and genealogical sources.

This is Part I (LIfe) of the translation of the Memorial book of the twenty - three destroyed Jewish communities of the Sventzian region of Lithuania. Jews had lived in Svencionys (now Lithuania) since the 14th century.Between the two world wars, as part of independent Poland, it was the head of a district of 23 towns with sizeable Jewish communities—including Nowo Svencionys, Ignalino, Davgielski, Dukszty, Oduciski, Lingmiany, Lyntupy, Mielegiany, Sojaciszki, Podbrodzie, Koltynany, Kiemieliszki, and Cekinie.These communities were very active. Svencionys alone had five synagogues, two “seven-year” schools with Yiddish and Hebrew lectures, a Jewish junior high school, a Jewish culture and education association, a library, a theater, a football team and several Zionist groups.In 1941 the area was occupied by the Germans, and squads of the SS began a systematic campaign of slaughter. On September 27,1941, some 8000 Jews from the entire region were taken to a deserted military camp in the woods of Polygon and murdered, among them 3726 from the Sventzian area. A ghetto was established in Svencionys in July 1941; at its peak, it housed some 1,500 Jewish prisoners. In 1943 the Nazis liquidated the ghettos and labor camps in the area. About 4000 Jews from ghettos in Svenciony, Michaliszki and Oszmiana were transported to Ponary near Vilna, where almost all were shot.There were 23 communities, and they are no more. These two books document in Part I, the lives and in Part II,  the deaths of the Jews who lived there, and finally, their heroic struggle to stay alive.

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. “

This book shows history in the making with the German and Soviet forces of World War II cooperating and then competing  in the invasion and occupation of  Sokoly Poland. The reader can understand the stages through which the Nazi rule turns the Jewish population into slaves who work in tasks designed to break their spirit and their bodies. Short of food, clothing, and shelter, the town's Jewish refugees seek refuge among their neighbors, but all doors are shut to them. Only a small number dare to help the Jews. Fear is everywhere. Thus many Jews, including Michael and Moshe Maik, flee into the forests and hide in bunkers underground. Much of the Diary tells the almost unbelievable stories of survival under such conditions which are very hard to believe today when so many of our needs are easily met and there are no shortages of food, light and air. But in the dark, damp and sometimes flooded bunkers, life is never easy . Every day is another crisis and every footstep nearby causes tremors in the hearts of those hiding. Robbers, both Jewish and non-Jewish, are as much a threat to Jewish lives as German soldiers who shoot to kill anyone found hiding in the forests. Life is anything but normal. The surprise in the book is how Jewish youth in this town manage to succeed in devising and carrying out daring acts of sabotage and revenge in order to fight the enemy and thwart their plans in any way they can with very little means of support and almost no weapons. There are times when Moshe, Michael's only son, has to choose between dividing his time to help his aging father or joining his friends in raids on the Germans and so, perhaps, to obstruct their cruel plans to expel the Jews, to send them to certain death. Even dead Jews lying in the cemetery are not free to rest in peace. When Moshe and his friends learn that the Germans are planning to uproot and destroy the Jewish cemetery, action has to be taken. Plans are made but it will take a miracle to stop the Germans. So Moshe and his friends have to do anything that might work and failure or success could be at a high price. Today, with the viral resurgence of anti-semitism, it is worth reading Michael's Diary to remind ourselves, where all this might lead to. We dare not ignore the lessons of history revealed in this eye-witness account of the lives of ordinary Jews and their Gentile neighbors and how racial and religious bigotry can destroy not just people and towns, but the very fabric of human society which must be based on trust, and faith in the goodness of man.

This is the translation of the Memorial or Yizkor Book of the Jewish Community of Wyszków, Poland.  The town of Wyszko╠üw, about 35 miles northeast of Warsaw, lies along the Bug River. Jewish people started to inhabit the town in the late 1700s and were en- gaged as merchants and craftsmen. In the 19th and 20th centuries, they began to engage with small trade. Before World War I, Jews owned various businesses such soda water factories, ice cream parlors, and a railway carriage production factory. Also, they were involved in processing forest products and established wood tar factories.In the 19th century, the Hassidim began to play a greater role in the community and dominated it in the second half of the 19th century. The establishment of Yeshiva “Beis Yosef” in 1908 was an example of the influences of orthodox socie- ty.After the town was invaded and occupied by the Germans in September 1939, the town commandant evicted all the Jews. Nearly 80 Jews and eight Poles were forced into a barn which was then set on fire. Everyone perished. During the first days of the occupation, the Germans rounded-up and killed approximately 1,000 Jews. As the war ensued, others were sent to death camps. Some Jew- ish residents of Wyszko╠üw managed to escape. Some reached Polish territory which had been occupied by the Russians. Those who managed to survive relo- cated to many countries around the globe, mostly the United States of America and the State of Israel.This Yizkor Book serves as a memorial to all the victims of the Shoah from Wyszko╠üw and nearby towns.

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.