I thought this article would be of interest here, because so many ancestors of Jews who came to the city lived on the Lower East Side and food — what they ate and the names of places they ate at — wou

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“Immediately after they took my father, which happened in the first weeks of the German occupation, hunger knocked at our door. My mother who worked and sewed her whole life was broken after losing fa

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The title “Our Child Saved Us” from the Yizkor book of Voronovo (Belarus) sums up what this week’s excerpt is about. It is Kay Lisorki’s story of how she and her husband survived the ghettos and later

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“The Tarnow El Capone” is a section of a long chapter titled “Memories, Personalities and Types” from the Yizkor book of Tarnow (Poland). I’m not sure how Al Capone became El Capone in this translatio

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“The Great Rescue” from the Yizkor book of Rokitno (Ukraine) is Baruch Goldman’s memory of how he and other children escaped death at the hands of the Banderovtzis — followers of Stepan Bandera whose

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“Reb Shabtai the Tavern Keeper” is part of a longer chapter titled “Characters and Personalities” from the Yizkor book of Rozhnyativ (Ukraine). But it is really two stories in one. The first part is a

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“Hundreds of Episodes, Curiosities and Happenings” in Kurow (Poland) is a long chapter in the Yizkor book of that town. But interwoven among all those tales is a character named Shmuel the shammes who

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This is the Yizkor book excerpt that was supposed to publish last Friday, but didn't because of difficulties with Facebook. At the end of each week, we have been featuring excerpts from Yizkor books i

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Unfortunately, today's excerpt did not publish because Facebook is requiring some people who post on high volume sites to confirm their identity. I started that process today, which is supposed to tak

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“My father told me there was an expression around town: ‘He left to close the shutters (most of the houses were low) and went to America.’” “The Jews of Makow in the New World” from the Yizkor book of

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“During the Years of the Holocaust” is a long chapter from the Yizkor book of Rozniatow (Ukraine) which recounts the expulsion in 1941 of the town’s Jewish population with the choice of going to any o

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“There had never before been a war such as this, just as there had never been an evil and malicious power such as this…” The chapter “Fortitude of Spirit” from the Yizkor book of Czestochowa (Poland)

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"We are commanded to get drunk on Purim so we can't be too pious!" The joyous — sometimes raucous — holiday of Purim begins Wednesday and this week’s Yizkor book offerings celebrate the occasion. The

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I don't know if this helps, but I saw the following: From 45aid society, founded by a group of child Holocaust survivors: On 21 April 1944 two ghettos were established outside the town. One in the ghe

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“And this is how time passed, day-by-day, week-by-week.” “The Nest of Need” from this remarkable chapter in the Yizkor book of Bilgoraj (Poland) were the words use to describe a courtyard with low, de

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In the “The Heroic Sixteen Year Old Partisan, Iziye Katzovitsh” from the Yizkor book of Dokshitz (Belarus) the brother of the title character tells the story of this young hero, starting with his a ch

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An article on Miriam Weiner’s Routes to Roots Foundation site notes that “One of the most dreaded aspects of Jewish life in Tzarist Russia was conscription into the army. For a Jew, service in the arm

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Life was not easy for the melamdim (teachers) who taught in the cheders. They were ill-paid and often had to work an array of side jobs to make ends meet. “Two Friends – One Father” from the Yizkor bo

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This heartbreaking passage, “The Great Tragedy of Three Small Orphans,” is part of a long section in the Yizkor book of Kovel (Ukraine) titled “Thus the City Was Destroyed” by Ben-Zion Sher. The chapt

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Sports had its place among the many aspects of life in the Jewish communities of eastern Europe. “Youth and Their Activities in Yurburg” from the Yizkor book of Jurbarkas in Lithuania tells the story

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