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Jewish Markuszow doesn't exist anymore, annihilated like all the Jewish communities of Poland.

This particular settlement was small, not even marked on some maps, but it too shared the same fate of millions of Jewish lives, killed for being Jewish during the great destruction.

But today, we, the remnants of Markuszow, are oppressed by a grief deeper and more painful because of the prematurely extinguished lives of those who do not even have a grave. And this knowledge was painful: how to perpetuate their memory? How to describe the noble images of our religious parents, the beloved brothers and sisters, and charming little children? How not to allow the ebullient and creative lives of an entire Jewish community to be forgotten, and the lives martyred under the occupier, and their brutal deaths?

As soon as the news of the destruction of Polish Jewry, which also included Markuszow, came to Israel, the thought of a perpetual spiritual monument to the memory of the murdered shtetl Jews was constantly on our minds. The will to produce such a book grew stronger when the surviving Jewish youth of Markuszow, who thanks to their determined, organized and heroic resistance in the partisan otriads, they were able to survive the hell–alive, proud, with the knowledge and satisfaction that with weapons in hand they had fought against the German murderers, taken revenge for the shedding of innocent blood, rescued the honor of the Jewish people, and made an important contribution to the Jewish resistance in occupied Poland.

Sorrow over the destruction, and the pride in the bravery were the two most important stimuli

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to putting out this yizkor book, although we realized that for the 50 Markuszow families in Israel, and a few others outside Israel, it was a Herculean task–and who knew if we would be successful with a memorial book about Markuszow. The difficulties were enormous, really not realizable: Where do you get the intellectual power to bring out Jewish life in the shtetl in the 19^th century, to describe their struggles and their spiritual world of dreams and aspirations, messianic ideas, and secular thought? Who could evoke on paper the sorrows and pain of a Jewish community condemned to death, and who could be capable of recording the countless facts about Markuszow bravery in the resistance? And to this was added a difficult, prosaic question: how can such a small collective, like the association of Markuszow landsleit in Israel, find the necessary money for such an enterprise?

Nevertheless, we undertook the burden as a holy mission, and overcame all the difficulties. The book produced, a product of two years of work, was put together on the basis of personal recollections and memories which bind Markuszowers to their shtetl still to this day, no matter where they find themselves. Because of the absolute lack of historical materials and documents, which we couldn't acquire, in spite of strenuous efforts in that direction, almost all the material was put together from memory–something which does not always correspond with the historical, statistical, and factual situation, for which we apologize to the reader. These and other gaps in the book can be justified by the singular goal of lighting a yorzeit candle, a ner tamid over the unknown grave of the Markuszow Jews known so well to us, and to tell future generations about the heroic deeds of a group of young Jewish people in a small settlement in Poland during the worst era of the Jewish people.

The yizkor book, “Destruction and Bravery of the Shtetl Markuszow” is divided into two parts: The first part, “This is How the Shtetl Looked” consists of memories and descriptions that give an overview of the political, social, religious and cultural life of the shtetl for the last 50 years. The second part, “Destruction and Resistance” is dedicated

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to the martyr journey and the martyr deaths of Markuszow Jews, and contains articles by survivors of the resistance, partisans and fighters from their lives in the forests, in bunkers, and farm hideouts–a tragic and heroic chapter in the Jewish destruction and heroism during Hitler's occupation.

Finally, we would like to extend a heartfelt thanks to all those who helped materially and spiritually to bring out this book about Markuszow, a severed Jewish community in Poland.

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