Luboml: The Memorial Book of a Vanished Shtetl Library binding - 1997

From the publisher

"Oh, Libivne! My hometown that lies in ruins! You shall live in my heart forever!" With these words, Chana Achtman some 25 years ago eulogized the Polish-Yiddish shtetl that had been her family's home for generations. By then, the town she knew--Libivne in Yiddish, Luboml in Polish--no longer existed. Its Jewish population of some 4,000, whose history dated back to the fourteenth century, had been exterminated by the occupying Germany forces and local collaborators in October, 1942. Today, a black marble monument stands on a hill overlooking a mass grave on the outskirts of the village, now in Ukraine. But that is not the only memorial. There is also this book, Like hundreds of such memorial tornes written by survivors and emigres. Luboml: The Memorial Book of a Vanished Shtetl illuminates a rich and varied world destroyed in the Holocaust. But unlike virtually all the other yizkor (memorial) books, Luboml's has been translated into English from cover to cover, making the world of yizkor books available to a new generation. Featuring a historical essay by the late distinguished scholar Berl Kagan, this book is not only the story of one Jewish community, but also a rich portrait of an entire way of life. Readers whose families come from other towns in Eastern Europe will recognize in the words and pictures of Luboml their own ancestral shtetlach. In this sense, Luboml is a kind of "every-shtetl," at once unique and universal. In these pages, one revisits a vibrant world through the voices of former inhabitants. They describe local traditions legends and characters, reveal daily life through personal struggles and triumphs. and give witness to the final years, days, and hours of anancient Jewish community. Their words are a lamentation, but they are also a celebration. Says Achtman, "To me, Luboml was and will forever remain--Libivne!"