Synopsis
Certain to become a timeless classic, the book is at once a breathtakingly poignant memorial album of a vanished world and a superlative travel guide to Jewish sites in Poland. It also offers a thorough inventory of surviving Jewish records in Poland - presented here in a single authoritative source for the first time - meant to assist Jews around the world in tracing their Polish-Jewish ancestry back many generations into the past. This unprecedented publication contains the first officially-sanctioned lists of Jewish-related documents within Polish archives at both the state and town (local) levels, and within archives in the formerly Polish areas of Ukraine and Belarus. It provides updated information on the holdings of Warsaw's famous Jewish Historical Institute and the concentration camp archives at Majdanek and Auschwitz-Birkenau. Additionally, it offers succinct entries on more than two dozen Polish cities where major Jewish communities once thrived, and features several specific chapters contributed by foremost experts. Produced by an American genealogist renowned for her expertise with Eastern European archives, it is lavishly illustrated with hundreds of full-color photographs, both new and old, detailed color maps and examples of archival documents, and beguiling antique postcards from the author's personal collection. Seven years in the making, this book is much more than an essential aid for genealogists or - with its thorough 30-page bibliography - Holocaust scholars and historians. In a more general way, it is must reading for everyone who understands the importance of remembering the three million Polish Jews who perished in the Holocaust. Never before has there been a book about the Jews of Poland like this one. A major monument to their memory, it is a work that belongs in every Jewish home. If you have Jewish roots in Poland, this book is for you.
Review
Jewish Roots in Poland: Pages from the Past and Archival Inventories, by Miriam Weiner, is a big and beautiful book, in more ways than one. It is illustrated with hundreds of antique and contemporary photographs of Polish cities and towns; and the depth and scope of its genealogical resource lists will help many Jews find amazing truths about their heritage. It's estimated that upwards of 75 percent of American Jews can trace at least one grandparent to Poland as it was defined before the Nazi invasion of 1939. Their search for roots will be inestimably assisted by Weiner's guide to extant documents such as tax rolls and Jewish community records. This book makes no pretense to being a literary triumph, but its practical usefulness makes Jewish Roots in Poland a poignant tribute to the ancestors of today's Diaspora--which means it is also, effectively, an invaluable tool for charting Jewish people's future. --Michael Joseph Gross
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