The Yiddish word shtetl referred to any small East European town inhabited largely by Jews. They were all different according to time, location and population. Ivenets, situated between Vilna and Minsk had access to culture, politics, literature and commerce. Its residents had newspapers, a library, theater, and were affected by religious changes.
Shtetl life as described in These We Remember brings to life a place, time and tradition. The marketplace, places of worship, council proceedings, bath house rituals, school customs, help preserve the memory of a way of life that was obliterated during the Holocaust.
All the text and photos included in These We Remember were painstakingly reproduced from the original Yizkor memorial book. It is a miracle that these images exist at all—transported by survivors, compiled, and included in this memorial book printed in 1973. How did the survivors save them? Where did they put them while they were escaping and building new lives in new lands?