Jane Ziegelman is the author of the new book Once There Was a Town: The Memory Books of a Lost Jewish World. Her other books include 97 Orchard. She lives in Brooklyn.
Q: What inspired you to write Once There Was a Town, and how did your own family history factor into your decision to write the book?
A: For people unfamiliar with them, yizkor books are books written to memorialize the Jewish towns—shtetls, in Yiddish-- destroyed during the Holocaust. Written by former shtetl residents, many of them survivors, there are over a thousand of these books, each book dedicated to a different community.
My father was born in one of these towns, a shtetl called Luboml, which my relatives were always talking about. The way they described it, it sounded like a place out of Brothers Grimm: a little town in a forest, where everyone was poor, and the houses had no running water, and where, in winter, the family cow slept in the kitchen.
As I was growing up, this town became part of my consciousness. Even as a young kid, I was haunted by it, a feeling that has stayed with me to this day. You could say it was that feeling that led me to write about yizkor books.
Q: How was the book’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?
A: Once There Was a Town is a phrase taken from yizkor books. It caught my attention for a couple of reasons. Yizkor books have a lot to say about storytelling and its central place in shtetl life. Yizkor books are in fact a continuation of that tradition.
Once There Was a Town is a phrase you might use to open a story. By putting it in the title I’m hinting at the importance of storytelling as a theme in my book.
More than that, however, Once There Was a Town conveys the idea of loss. Yizkor books contain many accounts of Jews returning to their shtetls only to find there was no shtetl left. That realization was a source of both profound sorrow and total disbelief.
Once There was a Town conveys the idea that they have accepted the impossible: that a place that once existed is no more.
Q: The writer and scholar Timothy Snyder said of the book, “A loss is not an absence but layers and layers of missing presences, which can be recalled with words and with care. The memory books of east European Jews, scattered like surviving Jews themselves, can together reveal those presences. With grace and sensitivity, Jane Ziegelman takes us from the pages of one such book to the shape of a world.” What do you think of that description?
A: I can tell you I nearly melted when I read what Timothy Snyder had to say about my book. First, because the language he uses is so evocative. But also because of what that language communicates.
It goes back to the idea of erasure. In yizkor books, towns that have been wiped off the map are conjured back into existence. I understood his quote to mean that my book does something similar.
Q: What impact did it have on you to write this book, and what do you hope readers take away from it?
A: Once There Was a Town took me over five years to write. A good portion of that time was spent simply reading yizkor books, absorbing as much as I could about the texture of day-to-day life.
One of those books was the yizkor book for my family’s hometown. After decades of wondering about this place, reading the town yizkor book was like finding the key to a puzzle.
I haven’t mentioned this yet, but along with documenting what life was like in these towns, yizkor books also document their destruction. Reading eyewitness accounts of Nazi round-ups or what it was like in the death camps is extremely difficult. Images and words from those sections will stay with me forever.
My hope for Once There Was a Town is that it will either introduce readers to these vanished communities, or deepen their understanding of them. Even more, perhaps, I hope it opens their eyes to yizkor books, and maybe even leads them to explore these books on their own.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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