Zychlin Yizkor Book

Proposal
Zychlin Yizkor Book Translation

Project Name: Memorial Book of Zychlin

Project Coordinators: Lori Sandoval, David Goren, Leon Zamosc

JewishGen Yizkor Book Project Manager: Lance Ackerfeld

Project Description

This project will translate into English the Memorial Book of Zychlin, edited by Ami Shamir and published by the Zychliner Organization of Israel and America, Tel Aviv, 1974.

The original book, in Yiddish and Hebrew, is available online at the New York Public Library: https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/c1d5aed0-2328-0133-6337-58d385a7b928

Key Audiences

The primary audience for the material includes Jewish genealogists seeking to trace their roots in Zychlin, Jewish and Polish amateur researchers interested in the Jewish heritage of the town and its surrounding region, and specialized scholars investigating the history, life and destruction of the Jewish communities of Central Poland.

Project Importance

Zychlin is located 90 kilometers west of Warsaw. In 1921, there were 2,702 Jews living there, out of a total population of 7,098. By 1940, there were more than 3,000 Jews in the town's ghetto, including some 600 refugees from nearby towns. During 1941 the Germans dispatched several transports of Jewish workers to forced labor camps in the Poznan area. In March 1942, they rounded up all the remaining Jews, almost 3,200 people, and sent them to their death at Chelmno extermination camp. The Zychlin Yizkor book, written by émigrés and Shoah survivors, is a unique source of information on the town's vanished Jewish community. It contains narratives about the Jewish history of the town, details on the community's everyday social and cultural life, descriptions of political figures and movements, and testimonies on the oppression and destruction of the Jewish community during the German occupation. The names mentioned in the book and its memorial pages have crucial genealogical and historical value because many local personalities and individual Shoah victims are not documented elsewhere. The translation of the Zychlin memorial book into English will make available all this information to interested researchers and scholars all over the world.

Project Details

The Zychlin yizkor book is a bilingual volume in Hebrew and Yiddish. Its chapters are generally short. They can be classified as follows:

46 chapters were published in both languages: we will translate into English the Hebrew versions of these chapters. Total pages: 107.
15 chapters were only published in Yiddish: we will translate them into English. Total pages: 35.
3 chapters were only published in Hebrew: we will translate them into English. Total pages: 5.
2 chapters are Hebrew summaries of Yiddish chapters: we will translate into English the Hebrew versions, adding the Yiddish passages that were not included in the summary. Total pages: 10.

All in all, we will translate into English 157 pages. The expected cost per page is $30, for a total project cost of approximately $4,710.

The three coordinators of the project are affiliated to JewishGen and to the Association of Descendants of Jewish Central Poland (ADJCP).

The work will be completed following the standard guidelines of the JewishGen Yizkor Book Project. The project coordinators will select the order in which the chapters will be rendered, working closely with professional translators hired by JewishGen. In the final stage, they will proofread, edit, and prepare the definitive text for approval by the JewishGen Yizkor Book project and electronic publication on its website. A print-on-demand hardback edition of the book will be also published through JewishGen's Yizkor Books in Print program.

Estimated Cost

$4,710.

Donations will be welcome at any level. Donors at the level of $250 and above will receive a complimentary hardback copy of the translated Memorial Book of Zychlin. While the material will be available on the JewishGen website, we are sure that donors will treasure a professionally printed version they can hold in their hands and show to relatives and other Zychliner descendants.

Timeline:

Project start date is July 1st 2021 and completion will be within 6 months.

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