Once There Was a Town: The Memory Books of a Lost Jewish World [Hardcover]

A powerful exploration of the books created by Jewish Holocaust survivors to honor their lost world

An animated tapestry. Wall Street Journal

By the close of World War II, six million Jews had been erased from the face of the earth. Those who eluded death had lost their homes, families, and entire way of life. Their response was quintessentially Jewish. From a people with a long-history of self-narration, survivors gathered in groups and wrote books, yizkor books, remembering all that had been destroyed. Jane ZiegelmansOnce There Was a Towntakes readers on a journey through this largely uncharted body of writing and the vanished world it depicts.

Once There Was a Townresounds with the voices of rich and poor, shopkeepers and tradespeople, scholars and peddlers, Zionists and Communists, men and women telling stories of the towns that were their homes. Stops are made in the bustling market squares where Jewish merchants catered to local farmers; study houses where men recited Torah; kitchens where homemakers baked 20-pound loaves of bread; cemeteries where mourners conversed with departed loved ones and wooded groves where young couples met for the occasional moonlit tryst. Of the many towns on Ziegelmans itinerary, she always circles back to Luboml, her familys ancestral shtetl and the point of departure for her own journey of discovery.

In conversation with classics by IB Singer and Roman Vishniac,Once There Was a Townis a landmark of rediscovery, and a love song to a vanished world.

From the varied threads of the Luboml and other memory books, Ms. Ziegelman weaves an animated tapestry of the daily routines, religious rituals and changing communal interactions among Jews and Christians...In sealing thlS'