TRANSLATION OF BOOKS, MEMOIRS, DOCUMENTS
A number of vital Zychlin documents are in the process of translation from Polish, German, Hebrew, and Yiddish. We are seeking memoirs, videos, and letters/post cards of people and places connected to Jewish Zychlin.
YIZKOR BOOK TRANSLATION
Status: Translation completed; w/o Jewishgen publishing
ADJCP APs: Leon Zamosc, Lori Sandoval, David Goren, Marysia Galbraith
Date Initiated: Sept 1 2021
Date Completed: Oct. 28, 2021
Brief Summary:
The English translation of the Zychlin Yizkor Book, Sefer Zychlin, is now available online and in print. Both the online and print versions include the original content of the 1974 Memorial Book as well as additional photos, written materials and lists of Holocaust victims that became available after the book’s publication.
The Zychlin memorial book can be ordered via the JewishGen Press. More information and a link to the order page are available here: https://www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/
The contents can be accessed online here: https://www.jewishgen.org/Yizkor/
Translation of the book was spearheaded by ADJCP in concert with the JewishGen Yizkor Book project.
HELENA BODEK “HUNTED LIKE ANIMALS
Jak Tropione Zwierzeta (Hunted Like Animals) by Zychliner Helena Bodek
Status: waiting on translators
ADJCP APs:
Date Initiated: TBA
Date Completed: —
Brief Summary:
Translation from Polish to English
Helena Bodek grew up in pre-war Zychlin. She shared her experiences of living through the Holocaust in a 1993 memoir, Jak Tropione Zwierzeta (Hunted Like Animals). Published in Polish, the book documents what happened to Bodek during World War II, the outbreak of war in Zychlin, and the Jewish ghetto in nearby Kutno. Like the Zychlin Memorial Book, Bodek’s work offers an inside perspective on what Zychlin’s Jewish residents experienced and the destruction of their community at the hands of the Nazis.
ADJCP is translating Jak Tropione Zwierzeta (Hunted Like Animals) into English, so that the memoir will be more accessible to non-Polish readers.
(Note: Bodek, whose name was Chaja/Halina Tzinamon, also authored several chapters of the Zychlin Yizkor book
HEINRCH BIELAWSKI “ESCAPED FROM HELL”
Der Holle Entronnen (Escaped From Hell) by Zychliner Heinrich Bielawski
Status: w/o translators
ADJACP APs:
Date Initiated: TBA
Date Completed:—
Brief Summary:
Translation from German to English
Another memoir sharing a Zychliner’s first-hand experience of World War II is Heinrich Bielawski’s Der Hölle Entronnen (Escaped from Hell), published in German in 1989. From the blurb introducing Bielawski’s book: Camp “Station”, Leimnitz, Finkenherd, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Oranienburg, Sachsenhausen, Ohrdruf: this reads like any list of a number of labor and concentration camps. These are the stages in Heinrich Bielawski’s ordeal, which began for him, the Polish Jew, after the outbreak of war. In fact, it seems almost unimaginable to us today what he – and countless others like him – has to go through: hunger, cold, mistreatment, humiliation, illnesses – dysentery, typhus, etc. – the murder of the family and all of his relatives – just one brother survived -, forced labor on construction sites, in the quarry and on the notorious ramp of Auschwitz, thoughts of suicide, but also hope that flickered again and again, finally the “death march”. (Der Holle Entronnen, Heinrich Bielawski, 1989)