The Yizkor Book
F or many years, the survivors of Ludvipol tried not to think about Ludvipol, the Holocaust, and our loved ones who had been tor- tured and murdered. Even so, the first Ludvipol memorial service was held in Jaffa, Israel in 1950, as soon as the survivors were in a position to do so. An annual memorial service has been held there every year since. But people wanted a written remembrance of Ludvipol, a yizkor book. Creating the book was a long and emotional process and re- quired significant financial resources. A Commemoration Committee was established in 1952 by Na- hum Feldman, Abraham Stadlin, Judah Raber, Mordechai Ostro- vsky, Zvi Tuchman, Abraham Shlifer, Nachum Ayalon, and Shmuel Shafir. Six years later, the committee sent a letter to all the surviv - ing members of the town’s Jewish community. It read, “People of Ludvipol, remember! The Yizkor book is your book. Contribute to it whatever you can afford, and do it today, because tomorrow will be too late!” People contributed funds, photographs, information and recol- lections. Baruch Guttman, among others, wrote extensive testimo- ny for the book and elsewhere. The book was published in 1965, twenty-three years after the liquidation of the community, on the Hebrew date Yud Gimmel Elul. The Ludvipol Yizkor Book begins, “The decision to publish a yizkor book and to commemorate the terrible Holocaust that af- flicted our community was conceived in the hearts of the few sur - vivors left after the war. Those who survived, who saw with their own eyes the atrocities of the terrible Holocaust, and succeeded in
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