New Zambrow, Poland Yizkor Book Translations Now Available for Viewing

The United Zembrover Society, the lone remaining landsmanshaft society for the town of Zambrow, Poland, has now put online within the Museum of Family History the next installment of its ongoing Yizkor Book Yiddish/Hebrew to English translation project.

Twenty new original pages have now been translated into English and are available for viewing. You can find the Museum's Zambrow Yizkor Book translation project here. The link to the new material can be found at the Project's Table of Contents page here.

Then to read the very latest translation, please click on the link "pp. 90-111."

The Yizkor Book of Zambrów, Poland: The English Language Version

The United Zembrover Society would like to welcome you to its English translation of the Zambrów Yizkor Book, or Book of Remembrance. The UZS is one of a dwindling number of still-active landsmanshaftn (mutual aid societies), more than one hundred and thirty members strong. Most all of its current members are proud descendants of Zembrovers. They each feel a need to stay connected to their heritage, and because of this meet twice per year in New York City to share their common bond, to do what they can to preserve the memory of their beloved family members and "ancestral town." The UZS is still going strong, more than one hundred years after it was first established.

The Zambrów Yizkor Book was first published in 1963 by the combined societies of those who were descended from the Jewish community of Zambrów, Poland. Zambrów was a once-vibrant community which, like so many Jewish communities that once existed in Europe, was wiped out by those who once sought their complete annihilation. These descendants of Zembrovers-- both those who were born and once lived in Zambrów, as well as those who were their progeny -- at the time of publication lived in various parts of the world such as the United States, Israel and Argentina.

This Yizkor Book does an excellent job in preserving the memory of the past history of Zambrów town, from its origin and the first sign of Jews in the community (at least in the early seventeenth century), to its presentation of a plethora of accounts of various aspects of Jewish life there. Colorful descriptions of many personages of Jewish faith who once populated Zambrów make for excellent reading.

This English translation project is projected to take from three to as many as five years and is fully funded and driven by the United Zembrover Society. After each translated section has been read, proofed, edited and proofed once again, it will be added to the current translation. When finished, the Society hopes to create hard copies, bound books available by purchase by its members or anyone else who wishes to learn more about the history of Jewish Zambrów.

The Yizkor Book translation is just one aspect of the Museum's World Jewish Communities permanent exhibition. You can learn more about what other material of interest exists at the Museum about Zambrów by visiting the World Jewish Communities Zambrów at www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/wjc-zambrow.htm .

You can read the Zembrover Yizkor Book in English, i.e. what has been translated to the present day, by visiting www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/z/zyb-01.htm , or simply use the link provided on the World Jewish Communities Zambrów page.

Take a Virtual Tour of the Museum's "World Jewish Communities"

Some months back, the Museum of Family History created its very own, unique "World Jewish Communities" exhibition. The purpose of this permanent exhibition is not merely to create a page about a shtetl, town or city, but to "paint a picture" of the town--not how it is today of course, but how it might have been when once there existed a strong and vibrant Jewish population.

The one requirement for becoming one of the Museum's "World Jewish Communities" had been the inclusion of some multimedia aspect, i.e. some audio or video, as opposed to just text and photographs. However, with the availability of so much more material, e.g. that which exists in such resources as the Yizkor book and other books and memoirs, much more is possible and required.

Much of what has been put together to date has been for three Jewish communities: Czernowitz, Ukraine; Ozarow, Poland; and Zambrow, Poland.

Visit any of these World Jewish Communities at the Museum and take a "virtual tour." When you do, just imagine that each web page is a station or stop along the tour if you were taking this audio walking tour on your own within a "real" museum, while you're wearing a headset and carrying around some sort of IPod or infrared device.

You will be sent from room to room or station to station, and as you go, you will be learning as about each town. As you do, a picture will be painted of the town.

This exhibition is ongoing and ever evolving; more content will be added to each Community in the near future, and more communities will be added.

All the town links can be found at www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/wjc.htm .

Do You Know of Any Active Landsmanshaftn?

First, some definition of terms. A landsman is typically someone who comes from one's hometown, most often a town or city somewhere in Europe. A landsmanshaft (pl: landsmanshaftn) society is usually defined as a mutual aid society, formed by landsleit (plural, non-gender specific form of landsman) when they came over to the United States, Canada and elsewhere. They would often help any landsleit that would immigrate, sometimes finding them a place to stay and a job, offering them a way of meeting their landsleit socially or within their own synagogue. Sometimes they would even have a society doctor who would tend to their health needs--this was in the days before Medicare and Social Security, so the landsmanshaft played many important roles during these years. Perhaps the function that the landsmanshaft society is most known for today is that of offering its members a plot in a burial ground that the society owned. This is often the last remaining function of a landsmanshaft society.

While there were very many landsmanshaftn that were active from before the turn of the twentieth century to the 1950s, there are a relatively small amount left. Most of those societies who become "inactive" send out the deeds of burial plots to their remaining members before the society liquidates. The society's papers are then sent to the New York State Liquidation Bureau and the society becomes defunct. The final role then of a landsmanshaft is most often that of a "burial society."

Saying that, there are still some societies that are still quite active; one such society is the one which I belong to. I am First Vice-President and Cemetery Liaison for the United Zembrower Society (Zambrow, Poland). Because my paternal grandfather Michael Laski--who was born in Zambrow--passed away before I was born, I know nothing of his life there. However, I wish to know more about the town in which he was born and lived at least part of his life before his immigration to the United States in 1902.

Our Zembrover society still exists and is "going strong." Our society today has more than one hundred and thirty paid members. Those who can attend our meetings do so once or twice a year when we may lunch together, listen to the occasional speaker, and conduct society business. Though our membership is comprised of few landsleit per se, the descendants of Zembrovers genuinely seek the comraderie that their parents and grandparents once found in large numbers decades before, e.g. in Eretz Israel or on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. They seek to learn more about their "ancestral" town and wish to work to preserve the memory of not only their own family's life in Europe, but the history of the town and its Jewish population as well.

In this vein, the Museum is actively gathering information about whatever landsmanshaftn remain, everywhere in the world. This list will be put online within the Museum's website at some point in the near future, in the hope that it will spur some to join a society of interest to them.

If you know of such a landsmanshaft society, please write to me at steve@museumoffamilyhistory.com . Please answer the following questions:

--name of society, name of contact person, address/email address, phone number (this is not necessary if privacy is a concern)
--year society was established
--number of current members
--range of activities/functions
--how often do the members meet?
--do they have a website? do they publish a newsletter?
--do they own one or more society burial plots? Where are they located?
--any other pertinent information

Hopefully this list will be ever-evolving. When the list is put online, an announcement will be made on this blog.

Lastly, if you have any landsmanshaft material that you believe would be of interest to others, that can be put online within the Museum's website, please contact me at the above email address.