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.

