A01=Jane Ziegelman
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Author_Jane Ziegelman
Category=NHTB
Category=NHTZ1
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Hidden history
Historical narratives
Historical storytelling
Holocaust
Jewish history
Jewish literature
Record keeping
World War II
Writing
Yizkor Books
Product details
- ISBN 9781250284334
- Weight: 323g
- Dimensions: 146 x 220mm
- Publication Date: 16 Feb 2026
- Publisher: St Martin's Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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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 books, yizkor books, remembering all that had been destroyed. Jane Ziegelman’s Once There Was a Town takes readers on a journey through this largely uncharted body of writing and the vanished world it depicts.
Once There Was a Town resounds with the voices of rich and poor, shopkeepers and tradespeople, scholars and peddlers, Zionists and Communists, men and women telling stories of the towns that were their homes. Stops are made in the bustling market squares where Jewish merchants catered to local farmers; study houses where men recited Torah; kitchens where homemakers baked 20-pound loaves of bread; cemeteries where mourners conversed with departed loved ones and wooded groves where young couples met for the occasional moonlit tryst. Of the many towns on Ziegelman’s itinerary, she always circles back to Luboml, her family’s ancestral shtetl and the point of departure for her own journey of discovery.
In conversation with classics by IB Singer and Roman Vishniac, Once There Was a Town is a landmark of rediscovery, and a love song to a vanished world.
Jane Ziegelman is the author of the classic 97 Orchard, and coauthor of the James Beard Award winning A Square Meal. She lives with her husband in Brooklyn, New York.
