About

SCOPE AND CONTENT

Project Zikaron, a project of Touro University Libraries (New York), aims to change the body of world knowledge by making accessible thousands of books, articles, manuscripts, and documents, many of which are rare and unique, in addition to serving as an information gateway for the study of the local history of thousands of Jewish communities worldwide, with a concentration on those destroyed in Europe under Nazi aggression. Project Zikaron (zikaron means “memory” in Hebrew) is making these materials easily accessible for the first time, with the goal of reviving the memory of these communities and the people who inhabited them. Most of the material is in Hebrew, Yiddish, English, German, French, and Russian with some in Spanish, Czech, Persian, Ladino, Judeo-Arabic, Marathi, etc. Development began on Project Zikaron in 2010, and it was launched in 2021. 

Our historical resources are categorized by the current town name. Use the Town Search feature to search for the current, former, or Yiddish name of a city, town, or village to access full-text content. For the first time, thousands of books, articles, and documents have been indexed by their town name to facilitate easy access, thereby eliminating the need to search full-text for alternative town names or to compensate for OCR errors.

Project Zikaron lists the current name first, followed by former or Yiddish names in parentheses, which is followed by the current country of which it is a part. For the most authentic Yiddish names, we have used Yiddishland, Berel Kagan’s Sefer ha-Prenumerantn and other sources. Town names highlighted in yellow indicate that it is not certain that the correct locality was identified, as was done here. When a town cannot be identified, which is sometimes due to there being more than one town by that name in the region, it does not have its webpage, as is the case with Tshipilivits here. In general, cities, towns, and villages are listed, though there are some countries and regions mentioned, particularly when a Yizkor book is dedicated to that area. The number appearing to the left of each current town name represents the number of resources available for that town, excluding external links.

Our interactive Map, which links directly to full-text content, is also the first of its kind. Using this map, users can enhance their research by easily navigating to material relating to nearby localities.  For a listing of entries which are not cities, towns, or villages, click here.

We are proud to include a growing number of unpublished memoirs transcribed from the original manuscripts: the third volume of Avraham Shlomoh Melamed’s Hebrew memoirs of life in the Crimea from 1914 until 1920; the second volume of Rabbi Shimen Eisenberg’s Yiddish memoirs of the horrors of Jewish life in Belarus after World War I (see our English-language introduction);  the autobiography of Yitskhok Tzvi Frank, a Gerer Hasid who immigrated to America in 1904; a hand-drawn map and description of Veisiejai, Lithuania in 1920, as recollected by Ruth Aberson; and Raya Kagan’s reminisces of her childhood in a Jewish agricultural colony in the Ukraine in the early 1900s. 

CATEGORIES: 

The historical materials in Project Zikaron are divided into the following categories:

Pinkasim: Project Zikaron is the first website to provide digital images of pinkasim (Jewish communal registers), summaries, and their transcription. Once kept by every Jewish community, the relatively few surviving pinkasim (pinkas in the singular) are some of the only internal Jewish documents to describe Jewish daily life. Digitized images of dozens of pinkasim from the 18th and 19th centuries were obtained via a cooperative agreement between the Russian National Library and Touro College & University System’s Project Zikaron. (Published pinkasim are listed under Communal Histories.)

Autobiographies: Project Zikaron has digitized and indexed hundreds of Jewish autobiographies and memoirs-- a largely overlooked source of some of the richest information about Jewish communities-- some of which consisting of hundreds of pages. These accounts are often the only extensive accounts of these communities, such as Kalman Marmor’s memoirs, where he briefly describes most of the 100 Jewish families of his native shtetl of Meyshegole (now Maišiagala), Lithuania. We have indexed the primary places of focus with a concentration on smaller localities. Included is a listing of autobiographies sorted in alphabetical order by the author’s surname. Only Jewish autobiographies which discuss Jewish life have been included.

Yizkor Books: Yizkor books memorialize Jewish communities destroyed during the Holocaust. Project Zikaron has digitized and made fully searchable over 1,200 yizkor books, including 166 yizkor journals, and has indexed over 3,700 localities mentioned in them. This includes the digitization of over 500 yizkor books not previously freely available on the internet. Yizkor journals are primarily for Bialystok, Krements, and Zhelekhov. Included are some 20 yizkor books published in the interwar period, which primarily memorialize Jewish communities devasted during the Russian Civil War (1917-1921). Also included are publications of landsmanshaftn (hometown societies), primarily published in the United States, and memorial books published in Germany, often by municipal archives, which list or provide short biographies of former Jewish residents.

Cemeteries: Includes books and articles about specific Jewish cemeteries. Many of these resources document the tombstone inscriptions, either for the entire cemetery or just for the rabbis and prominent community members buried there. Many of these cemeteries were documented before WWII and were later destroyed during the Holocaust. This category also includes Hevrah Kadishah (Jewish burial society) ledgers which have been transcribed and published.

Prenumerantn (Pre-Subscription Lists): Jewish authors of the past few hundred years, especially writers on rabbinic subjects, often traveled to numerous communities to sell advance copies of their works to raise the necessary funds for publishing. These pre-subscribers—prenumerantn in Yiddish—were often acknowledged by having their names printed in the book, and their names were usually organized by locality. (The “Search Inside” feature only searches the prenumerantn lists and not the entire book.) 

Communal Histories: Consists of local histories, travelogues, folklore research, musical scores, and other published works which include information on any Jewish community, their rabbis, or prominent citizens. (See Yizkor Book & Holocaust for works dedicated to Jewish communities destroyed during World War II.)

OTHER FEATURES:

External Internet Resources: The bottom of each town page often contains links to relevant internet resources, which are arranged by category, e.g., Jewish History, General History, etc.

Recent Updates tab: Lists either materials loaded within the past 30 days.

TRANSLATION ASSISTANCE: 

For assistance in translating short passages relating to genealogy, try posting your questions to one of the following websites:

To find a translator of Yiddish or Hebrew material, see: https://www.yivo.org/Translators-List

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We are greatly indebted to Liping Ren, Systems Manager, for the tremendous job she has done in programming this website. We also want to express our heartfelt gratitude to the following Touro Library current and past staff members: Yan Chen, Aaron Farntrog, Michael Kahn, Eva Matiteeb, Philip Papas, Leiba Rimler, Edward Schabes, Yitzchak Schaeffer, and Carol Schapiro.

We are particularly indebted to the following individuals for their generosity in loaning volumes from their private collections for digitization: Rabbi Yitzchok Stroh, Rabbi Dov Weber, Nechemiah Shiffman, and Dr. Shnayer Leiman.

If you are the copyright holder or the heir of a copyright holder for one of the digitized works in Project Zikaron, please contact us with any questions or concerns.

ADDITIONAL ONLINE RESOURCES:

The Historical Jewish Press: Initiated by Tel Aviv University and the National Library of Israel, this project is dedicated to digitizing and making searchable Jewish newspapers from the past.

Genealogy Indexer: Search historical business, address and telephone directories, yizkor books, and numerous other sources from locations in Central and Eastern Europe.

HebrewBooks.org: Includes tens of thousands of digitized and searchable Hebrew books.

Otzar HaHochma (fee based): Includes tens of thousands of digitized and searchable Hebrew books.

JewishGen: Includes tens of millions of records.

JewishData (fee based): Includes over 1 million records such as images of Jewish tombstones, school yearbook pages, and citizen declaration documents.

Israel Genealogy Research Association (fee based): Includes some 2 million records primarily found in Israel.

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