34 | JANUARY 27 • 2022

S

ix million Jewish individuals
were killed during the Holocaust,
and many of the hundreds of
European communities where they lived
were essentially decimated. Afterward,
beginning in the 1950s and continuing
even today, some Jewish survivors of
European villages, cities and regions
began to publish books about their
communities. They wanted to document
the rich Jewish life of their hometowns,
often dating back hundreds of years, and
to pay tribute to the family members
who had died during the Holocaust.
In Yiddish, these books are known
as Yizkor Bikhur — memorial or
remembrance books. In a sense, they
serve as a form of Kaddish — the
memorial prayer said for deceased family
members — for Jewish communities
that were destroyed. Many volumes were
published in Israel and the U.S. after the
war in a range of formats and languages.
Sometimes members of
landsmannshaften (organizations of Jews
from the same European hometown)
published them. Some books, such as
the one published by the New Cracow
Friendship Society, include individual
family tribute pages that list deceased
relatives and helped pay for publication.
Some communities published more than
one memorial book.
With black and white photos of
rabbis, school children, family groups,
synagogues and homes, these books
create poignant images of the past. Some
include detailed histories of Jewish
communities dating back to the 1500s.

DAVID-HORODOK
The memorial book for David-Horodok,

a town in Byelorussia, includes photos
and descriptions of individual Jewish
partisan and resistance fighters. Detroit
is home to many descendants of this
town, about 60 miles from Pinsk.
Heart-breaking first-person accounts
document how the Nazis and some
cooperative locals first took away the
Jewish community’s rights and dignity,
then their property and finally their
lives. Many Jewish Horodokers were
murdered in or near the town in 1941 by
the SS and local non-Jewish citizens, as
described by survivors in the memorial
book.
Faiga Weiss, librarian and archivist
at the Zekelman Holocaust Center
(HC) in Farmington Hills, explains
that “memorial books have the capability
to give someone identity, a connection
to their roots. In Pirkei Avot, [Chapter
of the Fathers] Chapter 3, Verse 1, the
Mishnah says, ‘Know from where you
came, and where you are going…’” These
books, she explains “brings the history to
your face.”
The HC has more than 1,600 memorial
books — one of the largest collections
in the United States, according to
Memorial Books of Eastern European
Jewry, published in 2011. An estimated
2,000 memorial books have been
published worldwide. The Holocaust
has inspired a huge volume of literature,
but the memorial/remembrance book
designation is limited to volumes that
include lists of pre-war community
residents and those who died during the
Holocaust, Weiss explains.
When Rabbi Charles Rosenzveig
opened the West Bloomfield Holocaust
Memorial Center in 1984 (which later

Holocaust memorial books document
Jewish life and death.

Kaddish for Jewish
Communities

SHARI S. COHEN CONTRIBUTING WRITER

OUR COMMUNITY
HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY

Resources for
Those Interested in
Holocaust Memorial
Books
For those seeking a memorial book
for a particular town or region,
the Zekelman Holocaust Center
provides an online list at www.holo-
caustcenter.org/visit/library-archive/
memorial-book-collection/
Due to remodeling, the collection
is currently in storage, but individ-
uals interested in research or in
viewing specific books can contact
faiga.weiss@hmc.org for assistance.
In addition, the New York Public
Library offers some scanned
memorial books on its website:
https://libguides.nypl.org/yizkor-
books
The National Yiddish Book
Center sell reprints of some memo-
rial books: www.yiddishbookcenter.
org/collections/yizkor-books/how-
to-order
Translations of memorial books
are available through www.jewish-
gen.org/Yizkor/ybip.html or www.
amazon.com.
Source: Faiga Weiss

SHARI S. COHEN

Examples
of memorial
books from
the Zekelman
Holocaust
Center’s
collection.