There was, as long as I can remember, a special book on my parent’s bookcase. I knew it was special because of the reverence in which my parents held it. I rarely pulled it off the bookcase and looked at it, nor do I remember my parents ever reading it. All I knew was that the book had the aura of holiness. That book was “Sefer Zambrow.” Sefer Zambrow, or the Book of Zambrow, is a Yizkor (remembrance) book about Jewish life in Zambrow before the Second World War and its destruction during the war. It is one of the many such books that Jews wrote after the war to commemorate their places of origin and honor those who perished. Here is the evocative front cover of this book:

Growing up, Zambrow came to represent the mythic place, a place that my Zaide (grandfather) came from but to which I could never go, a place at once so real and yet so illusory. I know there still exists a town in Poland named Zambrow and it it my intent as part of my roots journey to visit it. But even then it is and will never be the same place to which I trace my origins, as a result of the destruction of its Jewish inhabitants and the culture they created.

My hope is that through this journey, I can bridge, as much as is possible, the vast gulf between the real and the imaged Zambrow.