How does one commemorate the destruction of millions of people, indeed of an entire nation, without being overwhelmed by the enormity of the numbers? How can one grieve for and honour so many human beings on an individual plane and accord to their memory the dignity which they were denied?

Jewish survivors of the Holocaust responded to this by creating a unique tombstone - a collection of yizker bikher, memorial books. A large majority of these books, around four hundred volumes, commemorate Polish Jewish communities, providing an extraordinary insight into the life of the shtetl. From a Ruined Garden is an anthology of fragments from over 60 memorial books of Polish Jewry. The translators and editors of this volume, Jack Kugelmass and Jonathan Boyarin, have done a most important job of introducing yizker bikher to a wider, English-speaking audience.

These books constitute a very special genre, for not only are they written monuments, preserving and establishing the living memory of a people and its culture, but they are a source of historical information as well. They usually bear the same structure, with one section devoted to the history of a particular shtetl before the First World War, another to life in independent Poland, and a third to the Holocaust. These books stem from the need to preserve the past, but as the translators point out in the Introduction, the reality of that past is distorted because it is seen always through the prism of the Holocaust.

The English anthology presents us with a personal selection based on a thorough familiarity with Yiddish texts. The editors include both pieces which are very representative for the memorial books, and those which they regard as most interesting. Thus besides the typical descriptions of, for example, market day in a small town, there are others relating the history of over 200 years of relations between the aristocratic Plater family and the Jews, or a story of Jewish anarchists from Krynki. A rich picture of Jewish social life is presented. There are stories about various organizations from a burial society to a sports club and the union of Jewish porters. We have descriptions of religious and family ceremonies like burials, weddings and visits to a tsaddik.