[pp. 455-458]

To the Young Generation
To our American-born Children

You have been privileged to be born in a free country, the United States of America. The past of your parents is unknown to you. The name of their old hometown might even seem strange to you.

Our Memorial Book, to which your parents have contributed, tells us everything connected with our hometown, Bursztyn, a townlet now far from Stanislaw, Galicia. It was a typical townlet, like hundreds of other tiny communities in Poland. Life was so simple, so primitive, but in spite of all, it had a beauty of its own.

The Bursztyn Jews were religious and their life centred around their synagogue. The holy Sabbath made them forget their daily cares and worries. There were many scholars and men of intellect in Bursztyn. The education given to the children was traditional. The boys were taught in a “Heder”, and some of them afterwards continued their studies in a “Yeshiva” or “Beth-Midrash”. The girls learned the prayers and some of them took Hebrew and German or Polish lessons from the local teacher. Some of the young people, however, were not satisfied with this primitive way of life, in which they saw no future or chance of making good in such a small town. Both merchants and workers tried hard to make a living. The merchants traded with the gentile farmers in the surrounding villages, and while struggling for commercial success, they remained true to their moral precepts.

The Jews of Bursztyn were renowned for their hospitality. They gladly shared their meals with the hungry and poor way-farers. They gave to the utmost of their ability to charitable causes, and everyone was willing to help a friend in need.

The first cultural institution, a library, was established together with a Zionist organization, at the beginning of the 20^th century, by a group of progressive Zionist youth. The library became the centre of their life. Newspapers in many languages, including the Hebrew daily “Hatzflira” and the Hebrew weekly, “Hamitzpa”, were subscribed to by the organization. The young people longed for educational progress. Their lives were always full of dreams of Zion.

During the period between the two World Wars, the Jews of Bursztyn, like elsewhere in Poland, were undergoing a cultural revolution. Up to 1914, almost the entire population was religious and the children started their education in the “Heder”. The youth wore long coats (“kapotes”) and did not shave. Only in rare cases could Jewish parents afford to give their children a modern education. In those circles, attention was seldom paid to Jewish problems.

World War I violently shook the slumbering Jewish population of Bursztyn. The youth began to feel a tremendous thirst for education, and to evince a desire to look like their fellow-citizens, while remaining intensely Jewish. Certain Jewish circles were greatly inspired by socialist ideology and saw redemption only in this movement.

The majority, however, achieved some degree of knowledge, not in the regular schools, but by painstaking self-education. The Peretz library, which had by then been founded, was the source of the education of an entire generation.

In this matter, a large number of young people graduated, while being supported by their parents during their studies. However, the qualified advocates, philosophers and other professionals remained jobless, because of the anti-Semitic bias which then prevailed in Poland. Their only hope lay in being able to emigrate to Palestine, America and other countries. But the Nazi occupation in 1939 put an end to their dreams.

With the annihilation of the millions of our brothers and sisters, our own community was also destroyed, and almost the entire 2,500 inhabitants of Bursztyn perished. The handful of survivors tell us in our Memorial Book of the terrible sufferings undergone by our martyrs. They describe the lives of our dear families in the ghettos of Bursztyn, Bakachewitz and Rohatyn, and the final journey with its merciless end in Maidanek and Auschwitz.

Our Memorial Book is a documentary record of the life of a Diaspora townlet, of which there will never be any continuation.

We have written this Book especially for the young generation, for our children in Israel and for those of you in America. The Bursztyn Memorial Book is also yours.

Honour it and read it!

The Committee