As I mentioned in a previous post, I now serve as a board member of the Zambrow Landsmanschaft. Once a year we have a membership meeting. A few years back, the president asked for someone to volunteer to assume responsibility for overseeing the translation of the Zambrow Yizkor Book into English. I’d worked as an editor at a publishing company for a number of years, and the book always meant a lot to me, so I said to myself, “hmm, I might be a good person for this job.” Despite my normal reluctance to accept new responsibilities outside of work and family, I raised my hand. The offer of my services was readily accepted.
Here’s the background about this project. The Yizkor book was published in 1963. Most of the book is written in Yiddish, though substantial portions have a Hebrew version side-by-side the Yiddish. In his Foreword the book, its editor, Mr. Yom Tov Lewinsky, writes (as translated into English):
We have written this book in both languages, as our traditional literature had been written at one time: ‘The Holy Tongue’ (Hebrew) and ‘Ivrit-Teitch’ (Yiddish), together. The reader will have to make an effort to find the translation on the second side – but in this way we have done justice to our two languages: The Mother-language (Yiddish) and the Father-language (Hebrew). We are providing a short overview in English – let the grandchildren of those from Zambrow come to know something about their grandfathers and grandmothers… In a few places, we shortened the text in one of the languages, or made use of only one of the two languages. We took care to preserve the Zambrow Yiddish idiom as far as possible.
The English section of the book is relatively brief and does not come close to capturing the drama and depth of the Yiddish and Hebrew.
A few years before I joined the organization, the board decided to undertake the project of translating the entirety of the Yizkor book into English. It hired Mr. Jack Berger, who had experience translating other Yizkor books into English. The translation is near complete and will be published, God willing, this year. It can also be found online on the website maintained by one of our board members, Steve Lasky, at http://www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/z/zyb-02.htm
For the past few years, I have been living with this book, and through it, the lives of those who lived in my Zaidy’s hometown. Now that the book is in my mother tongue, the world it depicts passes before my eyes and, once it is published, will hopefully find a place in the homes and hearts of the descendants of Zambrow, and maybe even others who want a window into a vanished world. It is an incredibly moving document, which I hope to present through this blog.
Here, again, is Mr. Lewinsky, explaining the book’s intent:
Our ‘old home,’ Zambrow is no more. The sacred bones, and remains of our townsfolk have not been given a proper Jewish burial. Their remains lie in the great mass graves in the forests of Szumowo and [Rutki]-Kosaki, and in the ash heaps at Oswiecim. In the town, only Christian peasants go about, who have seized Jewish assets, and no one remains to take it back from their hands. Only a few faded headstones remain in the cemetery, among the overgrowth and thorns, that indicate, at one time, there was a Jewish life and a sizable Jewish city. This book is, and will remain for generations to come, the truest memorial for Jewish Zambrow. In it, we have preserved the memory of the lives and the echo of the suffering of the Jews that no longer exist. It is here that we have put a ‘Place and a Name’ to their light and their memory.
My hope is that, in some small way, through the publication of this book in English, I can carry on the work of those who helped publish the original Yizkor book, so that the memory of the Jews of Zambrow may continue to live on.