Jack Kugelmass and Jonathan Boyarin, translators and editors. From a Ruined Garden. The Memorial Books of Polish Jewry. New York: Schocken Books. 1983. Pp. xv, 275.

This chapter evaluates From a Ruined Garden (1983), which was translated and edited by Jack Kugelmass and Jonathan Boyarin. 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 have done a most important job of introducing yizker bikher to a wider, English-speaking audience.