7/24/15

Translation of Yizkor Book

Some time ago you expressed interest about my project to translate into English, from Yiddish, a 1962 book about Sokolow-Podlaski, a Polish shetl close to Warsaw from where your, and my, ancestors lived before immigrating to America.

With the excellent support and help from the Jewish Genealogical Society (JewishGen), the first few sections have been translated.  You can now find and read them if you click on the following URL:

http://www.jewishgen.org/Yizkor/Sokolowa_podlaski/Sokolowa_podlaski.html

When you open the link, begin to slowly scroll down until you see the Table of Contents.  Click on the sections (hyper-inked in blue) and you can read, in English, the already completed translations.  If you are like me, the few translated sections vividly portray what hard, and often oppressive, lives our ancestors lived in the Old Country.  I count my blessings that at the age of 15, my father left Sokolow with a Visa and arrived in America on the steamship Vauban on February 14, 1921.

After you read the book’s prefaces and the first 3 sections under The Old Home, continue to scroll down the TOC past the Destruction heading to the ‘A memorial list of victims” section.  Click on the hyperlink and you may, as I did, find the names of some of your relatives on the list.

With initial donations to JewishGen, we have so far managed to translate less that 100 of the 816 page book.  For further translations to continue, our best estimates are that something like $20,000 will be needed to continue our translation efforts.  Unless there is a benefactor in our midst, we expect that it will take much time to raise this much money.

If you are so inclined and wish to support translating additional sections, please refer to the information above the “plaques” at the top of the URL.  Your donation will go directly to support The JewishGen Yizkor Book Project, specifically this translation, and will be tax deductible.

If you are so inclined and wish to support translating additional sections, please cut and paste the URL below to access the JewishGen web page directly and scroll down the list until you reach the Sokolow Podlaski, Poland Yizkor Book line.

http://www.jewishgen.org/JewishGen-erosity/v_projectslist.asp?project_cat=23

Your donation will go directly to support this translation project, and will be tax deductible.

Thank you for your interest and continued support and feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

Al Opengart

7/21/15

6/3/15

Sokolow Ghetto

circa 1941. Sokolow Ghetto (courtesy of Łukasz Biedka).
2015. Small Market Place (Mały Rynek).

Who Will Tell Our Stories?

Every man, woman and child has a story. For some it is found in the most unlikely of places, during one of the most horrific of times, where actions of a few meant life versus death. Mine is a story of survival: my own and my family's. A story that begins over seventy years ago when my world became engulfed by the evils of Nazism, my family torn apart, my life forever changed and my childhood and innocence ripped away as a 9-year-old boy hiding in a tiny, filthy attic in occupied Poland.
Read more http://www.huffingtonpost.com/aaron-elster/who-will-tell-our-stories_b_7153866.html

12/29/14

Treblinka

Treblinka. Our last stop in Poland. There is nothing to see here but memorials, which is more than fitting because it was where my grandparents' families lost their lives. Their last stop. Nothing to remember them by.

850,000 are murdered here. There was no selection - it was just straight to the gas.

It is isolate and forlorn and freezing and getting dark when we get there. The trees ringing the site are tall and thick. Our voices echo off them back to ourselves.

There is large memorial ringed by hundreds of upright stones - tombstones for entire villages and towns. Dov and I quickly find the one for our town - Sokolow Podlaski - large and prominent.

Dov decides we will pray Maariv next to the Sokolow stone. As we begin to pray, the words of the Shema catch in my throat. It is almost impossible to choke them out. So many people said those same last words right here at this spot in the cold Polish woods. So many it is inconceivable.

But here we are - Dov and I. Children of Sokolow. We are still here and we still cry out to Hashem standing on the site meant to exterminate us. They did not succeed.
In a few hours we will be flying to Israel. To be a free people in our land. להיות עם חופשי בארצנו

Orie Niedzviecki