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This remarkable work is the outcome of a loving and determined effort by Leah Sherry to learn and record her father's story of amazing courage strength and resilience in the face of unspeakable cruelty. She also recounts her mother's own terrible wartime experiences, in a supposedly civilized Europe. On a more heartwarming note, Leah describes the rewarding life her parents, Maier and Otilia, went on to make in Israel. This is set against an account of the endless struggles of the new Jewish state, including the wars in which Maier fought. But this book is much more than that. Leah has also labored to comprehend the undying evil that so blighted her parents' young lives - antisemitism. After a successful career as an engineer and a lawyer, Leah has thrown herself with characteristic energy into learning new subjects, such as history and genetics, to understand all she could of the ancient prejudice against Jews and of the pseudoscience used in modern times to try to justify it, and to learn about the technological means to persecute Jews in the name of science. With impressive thoroughness, Leah has broadened her account to describe the many, many places and times, to this day, where humanity has given way to intolerance and bigotry. She completes her story with a heart-felt plea for us all to learn history's terrible lessons.

When Grandpa Flaschner retired in the 1960s, his daughter, thinking of ways to keep him busy, came up with the idea that he should write out the stories he told about his childhood. She typed his handwritten stories, and his grandson wove the stories into a semblance of order. Grandpa Flaschner's stories, translated from Yiddish, provide a colorful history of life in a small town in Galicia. Being thoughtful of other generations, he left these memories for their sharing. His voice speaks out to you in his declarative and straightforward way, with a mild Yiddish accent. If you listen well, you also hear a gentle and lyrical, sometimes sardonic, soul."We have here an authentic voice, telling in detail what life in a Galician shtetl (Mikulince) was like around the turn of the 19th to 20th century. Every detail feels important, from the description of mud to the tailors who sewed clothes for a young married woman to last her lifetime." Joan Moscovitch Webb

Starachowice, on the Kamienna River, became an important mining and industrial center during the 19th and 20th centuries. In the interwar period, it annexed its ancient neighbor, Wierzbnik, forming the town ot Wierzbnik-Starachowice. Jews, who began settling here in the early 19th century, by 1935 made up 31% of a population of about 8000. During the 1930s, Jewish-owned factories produced flour, glass, ceramics, farm tools, iron, lumber, plywood, and building materials. There were more than 130 Jewish shops and stores. The Jewish community supported 3 cheders, a public school, a Tarbut school, a yeshiva, a synagogue, a mikveh, several Hassidic shtiblech, and a cemetery. On September 9, 1939, the city was occupied by the Germans. In February 1941, they established a ghetto in Wierzbnik, to which Jews from various towns were sent. The ghetto was liquidated on October 27, 1942, and many of its prisoners sent to the Treblinka death camp. The Jews who remained were sent to labor camps in the area and, finally, to Auschwitz. The Jewish community of Wierzbnik-Starachowice is no more. This book, originally written in Hebrew and Yiddish by emmigrees and survivors, shows what it was like and bears witness to its destruction.

My mother began to write her memoirs at the age of eighty six. It all began when I told her about Grandma Moses' painting career and challenged her to do likewise. Never one to pass up a challenge, but not being able to paint, she decided to try her hand at writing. And so, every day, for a period of almost two years, after her household chores were completed (this included cooking for her family, house cleaning and gardening), she would set aside an hour or two for her writing. I can see her now so clearly, sitting at the kitchen table, bent over her white-lined paper, writing away in her round, even, measured handwriting, and proudly showing me each neatly written page, and then with her ever-ready humor, looking up at me, her face broadening into a grin, a twinkle in her light blue eyes, and laughing: "I am now indeed a writer."And as she kept at her writing and finally finished the book, I never ceased to marvel at her self-discipline, her singleness of purpose, her drive. And it seemed to me that in this respect she was representative of a type that is fast disappearing from American Jewish life - the Jewish immigrant woman who at the turn of the century, came out of the East European ghetto to the ghetto of America, and by sheer grit and perseverance, undeterred by poverty or hard work, opened up for her children opportunities for the highest education and self development. The grit and perseverance exemplified by my mother was nurtured by the colonyeh. The Jewish colonyeh of Czarist times was an agrarian settlement about which little has been written. The Jews who lived there farmed the land and raised livestock and were authentic peasants. I am sure that many readers of this book will see in it not only my mother, but their mothers as well, and will remember proudly their origins, back-ground, and the strength and courage of their forebears.Gertrude Reed 1977

"On September 1, 1939, the dark clouds descending on Jews everywhere, especially on the Jews of Poland, quickly enveloped the Jews of Tishevits (as Jews called Tyszowce in Yiddish). Every Tishevits Jew was consumed with deathly fear by the question: Where to run to?"So it is recorded in this Yizkor book. At the outbreak of World War II, there were about 3,800 Jews in Tyszowce. The German army occupied the town at the beginning of October 1939. In May 1942, about 1,000 Jews were deported to the Belzec death camp. The Jewish community was liquidated in November 1942, when the remaining Jews were sent to the same camp. After the war the Jewish community of Tyszowce was not reconstituted.The history of Tyszowce dates back to the Middle Ages. Located in "Lesser Poland" for close to 500 years it was in the Lublin province near the crossroads of Volhynia and Ukraine. The town was surrounded by rushing rivers, dark forests, swampy peat bogs, and sun-dazzled sands. Throughout the generations, the town was occupied by Cossacks, Russians and Tatars, and also burnt to the ground several times. Its craftsmen were renowned for their boot-making. Tyszowce old-timers said that the name Tishevits came from the Polish words "Tu szewcow" which means, "Here are shoemakers." They produced a special kind of boot known as Tishavanes. The boots were sewn together by hand using only soft leather, even for the soles. There was no difference between the left or right boot. Every farmer knew how to make such boots, and in the winter when there was no outdoor fieldwork, they used to make the boots for their own use, as well as for sale.In peaceful times, the book describes Tishevits as a shtetl that lived without commotion, without clamor. Everyone worked hard to earn enough for bread and challah for Shabbat. With their last pennies, they sent their children to cheder, yeshivah, and did hard physical labor to be able to marry their children off with proper respect."But everything was annihilated all at once," it laments, "killed off violently, and from the whole shtetl, nothing was left but a mass grave somewhere in the forests..." May this book serve as a memorial to the Jewish town, its people can the Jewish community that was so brutally destroyed.

Kurenets and nearby Vileika are situated at a road junction and a railway that leads deep into Russia. Because of this significant location on a noteworthy geographic artery, the area has suffered from many foreign army invasions. According to local testimony, the Jewish community in Kurenets started in the late 17th century. The founders were Jews who fled the Spanish Inquisition and escaped to western Europe. After the Spanish Inquisition, which required Jews to convert to Catholicism or die, survivors fled to neighboring countries such as France and Holland and discovered that they were physically safer but still could not live authentically as Jews. Many Jewish people subsequently moved to the Polish-Lithuanian kingdom, as the rulers invited them to immigrate there. The rulers sought an educated middle class to be between the noblemen, who owned most of the land but lived far away in major cities, and the local serfs who worked the land for them. It was appealing for Jewish people that they could be the majority of the population of newly established small towns in the Polish-Lithuanian kingdom. They were able to live an autonomous life there, leading their own communities and openly practicing Judaism. In addition to Kurenets, there were many other small towns (shtetls) with large Jewish populations in the area between Minsk and Vilnius (Vilna). Vileika, which is located 7 kilometers from Kurenets, was founded by Catherine the Great's regime in the 1790s, about a century after the founding of Kurenets. The rumor according to Jewish locals was that Catherine the Great personally chose the name Vileika.

This book illustrates that the Jewish Community of Ottawa forms a tight web of interconnections, in which all the main families link to each other within two or three 'jumps'.Aside from adding to the knowledge base of the history of Jewish Ottawa, this publication presents a novel way of considering a genealogical web of interconnectivity, and can serve as a paradigm for other Jewish communities - and perhaps even other communities of similar size throughout the world.The text is augmented with a rich collection of pictures, primarily but not exclusively courtesy of The Ottawa Jewish Archives.Jerrold Landau

Remarkable records and coincidences help tell and correct the story of a Balkan Sephardic family split between Ottoman Monastir (now Bitola, North Macedonia) and New York City. A son witnesses murder, seeks refuge at a French-Jewish school in Tunisia, emigrates to Canada, vanishes, and appears in New York. The father, a secular leader of a Jewish neighborhood under the Ottomans, remains in Macedonia, remarries, and raises a second family, while witnessing the Illinden Uprising, the Balkan Wars, World War One, and finally the destruction of his community during World War Two and the Holocaust.

Yosl's childhood in Krynki wasn't idyllic. His family endured bitter poverty and forced and loveless marriages; his father was often absent.In this memoir of his childhood, Yosl describes everyday life in the shtetl, its inhabitants and their idiosyncrasies. Young, impressionable and headstrong, Yosl witnessed pivotal events within Judaism and the Russian Empire at the end of the 19th century. His first-hand accounts of the rise of the anti-tsarist and labor movements, and the often-harsh conflicts between different Jewish belief systems, are detailed and riveting. Set within his own family, Yosl's narrative describes their unique and sometimes conflicting personalities, their struggles, and their whole-hearted and life-threatening participation in the anti-tsarist and Jewish labor movements. This remarkable book is now available in English translation by Beate Schützmann-Krebs.

The book follows two families, one a family of Italkim (Italian Jews) back to the 17th century and perhaps earlier; the other an Austro-Hungarian family dating back to 1875. It is a story of deep-rooted traditions, perseverance and rebirth. The author says that the book was written because, although her parents lived through horrific times, they never spoke of them. Growing up in Israel in the late fifties and early sixties, she learned at school about the Jewish partisans and their heroic operations, but very little about the atrocities of the Shoah. She now feels strongly about it and wants her grandchildren to know what being Jewish meant in other times and places. Chapters cover the Levantine connection, Kalonimus, the Spanish connection, the Italian Shoah, Switzerland, and the family in Israel and Montreal. The book uses archival documents to shed light on the family stories, and includes family heirlooms, information about traditions and holidays, and family recipes. It is illustrated throughout.

What I Remember About StavishtThe name of the town was spelled Stavisht. In Russian that means ponds, because the town was surrounded by ponds on three sides. More accurately, we should call them lakes, large wide lakes which teemed with delicious fish. There were carp, perch, and other kinds of fish which provided tasty meals for the holy Sabbath feasts. I shall never forget the Friday and Sabbath nights.Even though the town was quite small, it had a number of small prayer houses and the large old wooden synagogue. The school boys would shiver when they walked past it on dark winter nights, carrying their lanterns, for they feared the dead who would arise in the night to pray.The Makarov Kloyz and the big Bet Hamidrash were where the elite went to pray. Nevertheless, if someone did not get the honors he felt due him, there could be quarreling and even candelabra flying from the pulpit towards the heads of the offenders.People did not use surnames in Stavisht. Everyone was called by a father's or grandfather's or wife's name. Sometimes a nickname was given for the color of one's beard. Thus, for example, there were two Yoeliks, both fine men, owners of dry goods stores. One was called Yoelik the black because he had a fine respectable black beard and the other was called Yoelik the red because of his red beard. My grandfather was called Arye Meir Dina's for both his grandfather and grandmother. My mother's brother was called Fishl Moshe Yosi's and my mother was called Shifra Moshe Yosi's. My uncle Pesah Hersh Salganik was called Pesah Hersh Trayne's for his wife's name was Trayne.On Tisha B'Av and Rosh Hodesh all the inhabitants of the town would come to visit the graves, to ask for help for the living. Meanwhile, the boys would collect burrs which they would then throw at one another in the synagogue during the reading of Kines.At the border of the Count's estate stood the Russian Orthodox church. After prayer services the gentile families would come to the market place and go shopping in the Jewish stores, which stood in two long rows, built of wooden weather-beaten boards. Sunday was market day, almost a fair. The gentiles would buy everything and the Jews earned a living from the gentiles. In general, the local gentiles and the Jews got along on a friendly basis.There were frequent fights after the men had drunk a great deal in the Monopol near the whiskey shop, but the old town policeman, Sergei, would quickly make peace. He would cuss the Russian Orthodox people who laughed at him and beat some of them with his club. Then they would once more crowd into the Jewish inns to drink and eat some good food, and Jews would again, thank God, earn some money.The weekly fair took place on Tuesdays. Thousands of gentiles would come in their wagons to wheel and deal. They would bring their produce to sell to the Jews and they would buy their household goods, material for a dress or a kerchief, a pair of pants and boots for themselves and their children.On Jewish holidays the peasants would bring their Jewish friends gifts of produce from their orchards and gardens, and fat fish from the river for the Sabbath. In the wintertime, for Christmas, they would come in the greatest frost and snow to bless their Jewish friends, pouring wheat and barley over them, as was the custom, and receiving in return halot.Excerpt (edited) from Meir Spektor's article

An epic record of the rise and eventual ruin of the Jewish Community of Biala Podlaska, this sweeping Yizkor Memorial Book traces the town's chaotic journey through history. Founded at the end of the 15th century in the Lithuanian state, it subsequently moved between Poland and Austria in the early 19th century, and finally shuttled between Russia, Germany and back to Poland in the years surrounding the World Wars. As early as 1621, there was evidence of a well-established Jewish settlement of about 30 families in Biala. From the beginning there were conflicts between the Christian and Jewish populations regarding dwelling rights, trade, employment and taxation, battles that would last for generations. Restricted by profession, the Biala Jewish income earners were tradesmen, primarily tailors and cap-makers but also lace makers, goldsmiths, bookbinders, metal workers and butchers. They had no influence on the administration of the town. Their lives were centered around the Rabbi's courtyard, in Chassidic prayer houses and in trading businesses with the surrounding landowners. By the end of the 19th century, changes in Jewish life began to be noticeable. A sector of Jewish youth began to secretly study worldly subjects and a dispute with the religious circle began. During the German occupation of the first World War, though the economy was in ruin and the Jewish masses impoverished, groups like the Zionists and the Bund - a Jewish socialist party that promoted the autonomy of Jewish workers - helped to foster an upturn in cultural, political and social aspects. Several new institutions were created, among them a Hebrew school, Children's Home and library. Many religious Jews lost their zeal to fight the trend toward enlightenment as they became increasingly defeated by poverty. With the advent of World War II and the arrival of the Gestapo, the Jews of Biala struggled for daily existence. The products of hatred and war wrought forced labor, economic strangulation, deportation, camps and ultimate annihilation. When liberation by the Russian army came in July of 1944, the entire Jewish community of Biala Podlaska had been erased. Thanks to the historians, researchers, authors and eyewitnesses whose years of painstaking work live within these pages, their lives will never be forgotten.

In the northeast of Mazovia, once Greater-Poland, the town of Makow-Mazowiecki, county seat of Powiat, is set on the banks of the Orzysz river.A Jewish community was established in Maków in the middle of the 16th century and was subordinate to the kehilla in Ciechanów. The community owned a ritual bath, a synagogue and an old people's house, as well as a cemetery. In 1753, the Jewish community of Maków became independent.In the 19th century, Maków Jews began to establish small industrial enterprises such as weaving plants, tanneries and mills. At the end of the 19th century and in the early 20th century, supporters of Zionism and left-wing ideology emerged from the Jewish population of the town. The first branches of the Lovers of Zion and the "Mizrachi" Zionist Orthodox Organization were established at the time. The future leader of the Zionist movement, Nachum Soköów, moved to Maków in 1876. In 1930, a district convention of the Zionist Organization was held in Maków.Just as many other Jewish communities, Maków boasted an active branch of the Linat Hatsedek, Keren Kayemet Le'Israel, libraries, Talmud Torah, Mikvah, "Tarbut" Jewish Cultural and Educational center, and more. The wave of anti-Semitism sweeping Poland in the 1930s soon reached Maków, where Jewish shops were boycotted, shop windows broken, and owners harassed. Germans seized the town in September 1939. They established a ghetto and forced labor camps. The surviving Jews were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau.As the editor of the book writes: "It seemed to me, I walked alongside the youth of Maków in the "pine-forest", reflected in the waters of the Ozycz, attended their assemblies, marched with the children through the Makover streets on the days of Lag B'Omer celebrations, participated in the Zionist manifestations, flower-day, bazaars. I was in awe of the devoted Jewish members of philanthropic institutions and its members, who worked with devotion for a common goal without seeking personal reward."..."I became acquainted with the history of Maków since the 16th century, with her Torah scholars, Rabbis and Gaonim, educated ones, yeshivahs, teachers, tutors, writers and poets."May this book serve a memorial to the Jewish community of Makow Mazowiecki that was so brutally destroyed.

Yedinitz, Bessarabia, compared to where we live today, was a small shtetl. Yet for us, it was a city. I can still see the streets and small lanes. Here is the small marketplace, the Torhovitse as we used to call it, where the peasants' fair used to take place. In the center was the church, whose bells, whenever they rang, would strike a feeling of fear in me. A few streets further away was the 'Patchova', a street where one simply took walks, where you could have a conversation with your friends, where one discussed and argued with those of opposing views, and where the meetings of young couples in love took place. This main street, more than a kilometer in length, had everything. Here could be found both small and large grain merchants. Here were displayed the workshops of blacksmiths, barrel makers, carpenters, furriers, and other workers.Here one could find little stalls, and all kinds of stores and shops. It had a bathhouse, a poorhouse, a large synagogue, and the main street going in front of and behind the marketplace. Gates. A tailor street and a Gypsy Street. Yedinitz had prestigious Jews, merchants, shopkeepers, artisans, and menial laborers. Jewish merchants and Jews in the marketplace who would sell cheese, whey, and honey. There were grain merchants, moneylenders, business owners, and numerous poor people. There were doctors and feldshers (paramedics) in the shtetl.(Excerpt from In Our Shtetl We Had... by Gedalye Gruzman).Compiled over a period of 20 years, this is the Memorial Book of Yedinitz, written by survivors and landsmen, finally available in an English translation. These voices speak to us from the past, vividly recounting the life and destruction of a once vibrant Jewish community.

In 1920, Jezierna (modern Ozerna, Ukraine), located between Ternopil' and Lviv, became part of the new Republic of Poland. Most Jews in the town made their living as merchants, artisans, and tradesmen: bakers, carpenters, locksmiths, and orchard keepers. Some sold flax, honey, or wheat. Many of the grain mills and oil presses were Jewish-owned. The community supported a large synagogue, study house, cheder, and a four-grade secular Jewish public school. Three Zionist organizations emerged by the mid-1920s. A Jewish National house-Hatikvah House-was bought and renovated, eventually housing a library of Yiddish and world literature, pioneer training, and a drama club. Jezierna was occupied by the Nazis in July 1941, and entered a reign of terror and murder. Jews were often simply grabbed off the street and shot. A forced labor campwas set up, with Jews brought in from many neighboring towns. When the last Jews were expelled to Zborow in July 1942, only about 1,000 were left; Jewish Jezierna had ceased to exist. This book is our memorial to our village and its martyrs.

The pictures of gravestones in this book have been put together from pictures of the fragments, recovered since the 1980s by the municipality of Kutno. Seven hundred fragments were recovered in the surroundings walls and pavement, during years of tireless work. The fragments have been cleaned, numbered, photographed and stored in a storage room in Kutno, awaiting a proper moment.That moment came, in mid-2008, when a new group of descendants of Jews from Kutno was formed. Usingcomputer-scanned pictures of the fragments, it was possible to put together nearly half of them into 159 more orless complete gravestones (matzevot). Among these, only a small part displayed a family name, as was usual onmatzevot of that time (family names were enforced on Polish Jews at the beginning of the 19th century). For themost part, they displayed only the name of the deceased, that of his or her father, and the date of death. Comparingthe matzeva data with that of our genealogical database, it was possible to recover some of the missing informationand especially the family names. This data was added in this book.

On May 11, 1942, German military police and local auxiliaries entered Voronova, gathering all Jewish residents in the Market Square. SS Commandant Vindish pronounced the Reichstag's verdict of 1938: all Jews were responsible for the troubles of the German people and of all humanity, and were condemned to death, and now was the time to carry out that verdict. Some 2,300 were massacred that day: while they breathed their last air they were piled into layers, and between layers their executioners spilled chlorine and whitewash for disinfection. Among those brutally buried some were only wounded, covered by the bodies of the next layer, choking underneath them. Some townsfolk hid and joined the Partisans in nearby forests, later exacting revenge against their tormentors. Those who remained as necessary laborers in town were eventually taken to the Lida Ghetto, and finally to Majdanek, where they were killed. Towards the end of the War, some prisoners from Majdenek were returned to Voronova to exhume and burn bodies-- so as to hide evidence of the massacre from the advancing Allied troops.Though there is no more Jewish community of Voronova, it lives in these pages and in our collective memory. -Adam Cherson (Translation Editor)

Strzyzow (also known as Strizev in Yiddish and Strezow in German) is today a major town in southern Poland (it was in Galicia, an Imperial Province of Austria Hungary, from 1776 to 1919). The earliest known Jewish community appeared in the 16th century, but it was not until the 18th century that the synagogue was built. Strzyzow is located in the Rzeszowregion at latitude 49 52', longitude 21 48', 40 km south of Rzeszow, 75 km west of Przemysl. Today there are no Jews in Strzyzow.¿May the merciful Father who dwells on high, in his infinite mercy, remember those saintly, upright and blameless souls, the holy communities who offered their lives for the sanctification of the Divine Name. They were lovely and amiable in their life and were not parted in their death. They were swifter than eagles and stronger than lions to do the will of their Master and the desire of their stronghold. May our G-d remember them favourably among the other righteous of the world; may he avenge the blood of his servants which has been shed as it is written in the Torah of Moses, the man of G-d: "O nations make his people joyful! He avenges the blood of His servants, renders retribution to His foes and provides atonement for His land and people". And by Thy servants, the Prophets, it is written: "I will avenge their blood which I have not yet avenged; the Lord dwells in Zion". And in the holy writing, it is said: "Why should the nations say 'where then is their G-d? Let the vengeance for Thy servants' blood that is shed be made known among the nations in our sight". And it is said: "The avenger of bloodshed remembers them. He does not forget the cry of the humble". And it is further said: "He will execute judgment upon the nations and fill (the battle-field) with corpses: He will shatter the (enemies) head over all the wide earth. From the brook by the wayside he will drink, and then he will lift up his head triumphantly".