Jewish Studies: The Holocaust

The first Jewish memorial book was produced in Nuremberg in 1296, providing a record of Jewish communities slaughtered in the crusades across Europe. The book’s main purpose was liturgical, enabling relatives to say prayers for the dead, but its format provided the basic model on which  all later memorial books were based. After the Second World War, the memorial book was given a dramatic revival as hundreds were published, often in limited print runs, by Holocaust survivors living in Israel, Argentina, and the United States. Post-war memorial books were usually produced in large format, often in excess of 400 pages and mostly written in Hebrew or Yiddish. A typical memorial book contains reminiscences, biographies, historical accounts, literary pieces, lists, photographs & maps. Each book provides an incredible primary resource for genealogists, biographers, and historians.

The Isser and Rae Price Library of Judaica owns a large collection of memorial books (yizkor books or yizker buchen). The collection probably amounts to over 600 books, but the exact number is not known because each individual book is separately cataloged and the subject fields do not link them. A preliminary list of 471 titles has been compiled and can be consulted by clicking the link below.