Yizkor books (Hebrew: ספרי יזכור) are memorial books that commemorate a Jewish community destroyed during the Holocaust. These books are usually published by landsmanshaft societies as remembrances of homes, individuals and ways of life lost during World War II. Yizkor books usually focus on a town or city, but they may include sections on neighboring smaller communities as well.
In the Jewish tradition, Ashkenazi Jews recite the "Yizkor" prayer in memory of the soul of the deceased. The soul of a Jewish person is remembered on what is called in Hebrew "Day of Remembrance", which falls according to the Hebrew date of the day a person passed away. This is a special prayer, which is found in every siddur - religious and secular people alike say the "Yizkor" prayer to honor their family members. Among the Sephardim, the prayer of remembering souls is called "Ashkavah".
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History of Yizkor books
The first Yizkor books started to be recorded immediately after the Holocaust, to perpetuate the memory of the men, women, and children who were murdered, starved or killed in the Holocaust. These books of remembrance are community books based on the memories of those who wrote them. Community members known for their writing talent were the ones chosen to write the Yizkor books for their community. As many of the Jews who died in the Holocaust did not receive a burial and funeral according to religious tradition, the survivors saw the writing of the Yizkor books as a way to honor their memory and remember in a tangible way their tragic death.
The first Yizkor book was written in 1943 about the community of Łódź,[1] a very large community that existed in Poland before World War II. The rest of the Yizkor books were written mainly from the early 1950s until the end of the 1960s.[2] The survivors were busy trying to restart their new lives after the Holocaust, but they did not forget what their loved ones made them promise, to tell what happened to them, before they were taken to the extermination camps. The survivors in the first years of their integration into Israeli or American society decided to write the memorial books. This was the way they understood to immortalize the members of their families and the people of their city.
Publication of Yizkor books
While most of the Yizkor books were published in Israel by Holocaust survivors and were written in Hebrew and Yiddish,[1] many have also been published in New York, United States. These books were written in Hebrew, English and Yiddish and commissioned by landsmanshaftn. Yizkor books were also considered the registers of the community, for example פנקסי יהדות הונגריה ("The registers of Hungarian Jewry"). Generally, the number of printed copies was very small, because the funding came from the members of those communities; while they are difficult to find today, it is possible to find copies in second-hand stores.
Yizkor books and genealogy
Yizkor books usually included many pictures that were miraculously found, thus becoming a great source of genealogical information. Some of the information items that can be extracted from Yizkor books are:
- Brief history about the history of the community
- Number of Jewish residents versus the number of non-Jewish residents
- Details about the relations of the Jews with the other people of the city
- Professions that the Jews engaged in
- Names of the town's rabbis, the mohalim (ritual slaughterers) and educators
- Name of the head of the community and the rest of the city's synagogue administrators
- Names of members of the board of the Chevra kadisha and the location of the cemetery
- Who were the youth groups active in the town, like Bnei Akiva, Mizrachi, Hashomer HaTzair and others
In some cases, the survivors included a hand-drawn town map, indicating the names of the streets and where certain people lived. It should be noted that the names of many streets were changed under Communism in Central and Eastern Europe. In many Yizkor books, there is information not only about the specific community but also about the cities and villages nearby where Jews could be found. An additional and very useful piece of information that can be extracted from Yizkor books is the details entered about matchmaking and weddings.
Resources about Yizkor books
- Yizkor Book Name Index from JewishGen at MyHeritage
- Yizkor Book Collection at New York City Public Library
- Mordechai Anielevich Memorial Institute "Moreshet"
- אוצר החכמה (in Hebrew only)
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Lodzsher yizker-bukh. Yiddish Book Center
- ↑ The Częstochowa Yizkor Books Project