I have not written anything for a while. For the past few months, I’ve been working on my plan to visit Poland. The tickets for my wife and I have been purchased, and we leave in eight days. We will be arriving and staying in Warsaw, then traveling to Krakow for Shabbat, then moving on …
Treblinka or Auschwitz?
One of the biggest mysteries surrounding my Zambrow family’s fate is where they died. Actually, it only became a mystery to me when I started researching the Zambrow Yizkor book, whose translation into English I oversaw. The book states that the Jews of Zambrow met their end on January 16, 1943, in Auschwitz. This contradicts …
A Yahrzeit observed
Last sunday, the 12th day of the Hebrew month of Shvat, I observed the yahrzeit of my Zambrow family. This was that date that, in 1943, 72 years ago, my great grandmother Sheindl, my Zeidy’s mother, and three of his sisters and their families, were murdered by the Nazis. At least I believe this was …
Board meeting
Last Sunday, the board of the Zambrow Landsmanschaft met at a deli in Manhattan. We came together to discuss the various projects in which the organization is involved. Our connection with each other is through our ancestors, parents and grandparents, who lived in Zambrow. We represent different religious outlooks and live in various places in …
The Yizkor Book project
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 …
Lost connections
Exploring the past, especially one’s European Jewish past, necessarily means trying to reach across generation and continents to connect with the pain they must have felt. And here I’m not even attempting to imagine the last days of my great grandmother and my great aunts, whose lives were taken in the most horrific manner possible, …
Roots and Identity
I would like to try to clarify how my exploration of family roots relates to my Jewish identity. Before the massive emigration of Jews from Europe in the latter half of the 19th and first quarter of the 20th centuries, Jews identified themselves not only as Jews, but as Jews from a particular location. Of …
Myself as a latter day landsman
The connection to my ancestral roots took an unexpected turn about six or seven years ago. I picked up the copy of the Jewish Week, a weekly Jewish newspaper published in New York where I live. Usually this paper has marginal interest to me, and I get through it in about five to ten minutes. …
Zambrow: real and imagined
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 …
Introduction to the blog
I am writing this blog to chronicle my experience in finding out more about my ancestors and to connect with others who are engaging in a similar search. At this point, I am focusing mostly on my mother’s family, about whom I know the most. I am calling this blog Zambrow: A Jewish Roots Journey …