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

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 yizkor books to recall the particulars of towns, the names of families, and the material culture of a vanished world. Jane Ziegelman's Once There Was a Town takes readers on a journey through this largely uncharted body of writing.