Destruction and Resistance of a Jewish Town (1949)

by Dr. Benjamin Orenstein

This Yizkor Book, by Dr. Benjamin Orenstein, was published in Montreal in 1949, very soon after he arrived in Canada from post-War Germany.

While this Yizkor Book is only twenty pages long, thereby qualifying more as a “booklet”, it seems to have been often overlooked. Nevertheless, it earns a place within our Project because of the statistics that it contains and because of its author.

Orenstein, in various publications, became a prolific chronicler of events, relating to Częstochowa Jewry, both during and after the Holocaust.

According to his entry in “Częstochowa Jews – A Biographical Dictionary”(Częstochowa, 2019): Benjamin Orenstein,

“… soon left Germany and, on 28th October 1948, he came to Canada and settled in Montreal, where there were many Częstochowa Jews in a very active community.

He was soon elected as the chairman of the local Częstochowa landsmannschaft, later also serving as its general secretary.”

Orenstein is passionate in his commitment to ensuring that the memory of those Częstochowa Jews, who perished in the Holocaust, should be immortalised for posterity. At the end of the introduction to this booklet, he says,

“Oh, you brothers and sisters who have fallen in the active and passive struggle – I immortalise your sacred memory with the blood of my heart!“

This Yizkor book, in its entirety, has been professionally translated into English.

The professional English translation of this Yizkor book has been made possible by the financial support of the

Wolf Rajcher z”l and Dora Rajcher z”l were both Holocaust survivors from Częstochowa.

They were prisoners in both the “Big Ghetto” and the “Small Ghetto” and, until liberation, were slave labourers in HASAG-Pelcery. Following the War, they emigrated to Melbourne Australia.

Upon the passing of both his parents, their son, Andrew Rajcher, established this charitable fund in their memory.

(The numbers in brackets, after each chapter, correspond to the appropriate page numbers in the Yizkor Book.)

Title Pages and Introduction (1-4)

The Destruction of Częstochowa Jewry – Statistical Data (5-10)

The Underground Movement in Częstochowa (11-20)

ENGLISH TRANSLATION:

Dave Horowitz-Larochette

IMPORTANT NOTICE

While the English translation is available for download, it may not, either in part or as a whole, be distributed or published without the prior written permission of Andrew Rajcher, the copyright-holder of this English-language version of this Yizkor Book.