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

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 Ziegelman's Once There Was a Town takes readers on a journey through this largely uncharted body of writing and the vanished world it depicts. Once There Was a Town resounds 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 Ziegelman's itinerary, she always circles back to Luboml, her family's 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 Town is a landmark of rediscovery, and a love song to a vanished world.

About the Author :
Jane Ziegelman is the author of the classic 97 Orchard, and coauthor of the James Beard Award winning A Square Meal. She lives with her husband in Brooklyn, New York.

Review :
"A story of what might be called a shtetl sublime...evoking a world of song and story, faith and belonging." --Kirkus "Demonstrate the importance of remembrance and storytelling in Jewish culture. Memories of love and family show the beauty that existed even under the most difficult circumstances." --Booklist "Masterfully weaving her own family's story through the aching nostalgia of Yizkor books, Ziegelman brings the interwar years alive.... a deeply moving read." --Gwen Strauss, author of Milena and Margarete "For the Jewish people, our books are our monuments. Once There Was A Town--like the yizkor books it chronicles--takes us on a phantom stroll through a landscape alive with stories, offering a window into a world lost but not forgotten." --Ilana Kurshan, author of If All the Seas Were Ink "Ziegelman's rich exploration of the nearly forgotten Yizkor books--arguably among the most essential European Jewish history ever collected--resurfaces generations of shtetl culture and Jewish life and tradition. With Once There Was a Town Ziegelman fulfills the mission of the Yizkor book authors and her own family, Holocaust survivors who came together after unspeakable loss to build a monument "of paper and ink", to ensure future generations would never forget what happened to Europe's Jews. This book could not arrive at a more critical moment." --Rebecca Frankel, author of Into the Forest "A loss is not an absence but layers and layers of missing presences, which can be recalled with words and with care. The memory books of east European Jews, scattered like surviving Jews themselves, can together reveal those presences. With grace and sensitivity, Jane Ziegelman takes us from the pages of one such book to the shape of a world." --Timothy Snyder, author of Bloodlands and On Freedom and more "Courageous, heartfelt history and storytelling. 'How did we get here?' at its finest." --Michael W. Twitty, James Beard award winning author of Koshersoul "In luminous, tender prose, Jane Ziegelman brings to life the lost world of the shtetl... This book is both an elegy and a celebration, a testament to the power of remembrance and the resilience of a people who refused to be forgotten." --Benyamin Cohen, author of The Einstein Effect, senior writer, The Forward