About This Project
Of the 108 chapters in the original Koło book, 18 were translated as part of a previous project. Those translated portions can be found here. This new JewishGen project will complete the work, rendering into English the 90 chapters that remain untranslated. The 323 pages to be translated include 167 pages in Yiddish and 156 in Hebrew. At current professional translation rates, the total cost of the project is estimated at $10,500. Taking into account that about 40% of the translation work will be done by volunteers on a pro bono basis, the amount required to complete the project will be $6,300.
The translation work will follow the standard guidelines of the JewishGen Yizkor Book Project. The project coordinator will select the order in which the chapters will be rendered, working closely with the hired and volunteer translators. In the final stage, he will proofread, edit, and prepare the definitive text for approval by the JewishGen Yizkor Book project and electronic publication on its website.
The project coordinator, Leon Zamosc, is a member of the Association of Descendants of Jewish Central Poland. He has recently completed the translation of the Gombin and Zychlin memorial books for the JewishGen Yizkor Book Project.
Historical Significance
On the eve of the Second World War, Koło was a city of about 13,000 inhabitants, 38% of whom were Jewish. The Koło Yizkor book, written by émigrés and Shoah survivors, is a unique source of information on the city's vanished Jewish community. It contains historical narratives, details of daily life, religious and political figures and movements, religious and secular education, and testimonies on the oppression and destruction of the Jewish community during the German occupation. The names mentioned in the book and its necrology chapters are of exceptional genealogical and historical value because many historical personalities and individual Shoah victims are not documented elsewhere. The complete translation of the Koło Yizkor book into English will make available all this information to interested researchers and scholars all over the world.
Project Details
This project will complete the English translation of the memorial book Sefer Koło; Finfhundert Yor Yiddish Koło [500 Years of Yiddish Koło], edited by M. Halter and published in Yiddish and Hebrew by the Former Residents of Koło in Israel and America in Tel Aviv, 1958. A few chapters, totalling 61 pages, have already been translated and appear online on JewishGen's Yizkor Book Translation site. The rest of the chapters, totalling 323 pages, still remain to be translated.
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