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Created: April 30, 2002
Latest Update: April 30, 2002
jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu

Memorbuch: Memories

Validating Facts through Archival Records

Copyright: Jeanne Curran and Susan R. Takata and Individaul Authors, April 2002.
"Fair use" encouraged.

This essay is based on verifying facts from a variety of sources by seeking out historical materials and archives. When a publication takes a definitive perspective, there is always the possibility that the facts in evidence have been distorted by that perspective. Although there is no way to determine that exactly, since all of history is recorded from some perspective, one approach to the dilemma is to go back, as far and as thoroughly as your needs warrant, to the available preserved records, such as "memorbuchs," or records of deaths in a community, records of births in a community, records of marriages, etc. Such records are generally found in state-preserved depositories and are called "archives."

A currently running advertisement in a number of newspapers and magazines, "The Big Lie," reports the facts in evidence of the whole issue of "occupation" in the Palestine/Israel Conflict. The ads are sponsored by FLAME (Facts and Logic about the Middle East). I have linked to that advertisment here, and then added some of the follow-up verification you would want to pursue if you chose to use such popular media information in a scholarly piece.

"A Memorbook is a register containing the names of the deceased in a particular community, which was read aloud in the synagogue on the holidays when prayers for the dead were said. This was customary in the communities of Central Europe, that is France, Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia etc. The genealogical value of such books is limited as they rarely give family names and do not always give exact dates of death. As they were part of the synagogue ritual, they are in Hebrew. It was not customary in Eastern European communities to maintain Memorbooks.

"Yizkorbooks are printed volumes of articles and personal memoirs published after World War II by Holocaust survivors from various towns, usually in Eastern Europe. They do not contain systematic lists of names but do mention various families, especially from the generation or two preceding the Holocaust. Most of the books were published in Israel, the United States or South America by the various “Landsmannschaften”, in Hebrew, English, Yiddish, or a combination. Some are still available. The Central Archives have a few such books. The largest collection is held at the library of “Yad Vashem”. Other large repositories are the National Library in Jerusalem, “Yivo” in New York, the Library of Congress in Washington, etc."

At p. 7 of Archival explanations.

At Israel Archives.

© "Memorbuch" of the Jewish Community of Schwarza (Germany), 1767 Illustration from Jewish Archives. Link added April 30, 2002.

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