Invisible Jewish Traces in Eastern Galicia

Jason Francisco

Formerly a Jewish street, Rozhniativ

“We will surely remember you, our town of Rozniatow!” exclaims the Yizkor (Memorial) Book of Rozhniativ. And it continues in language that is at once frank and dramatic: “You are etched in our memories with letters of fire that warm and light up our souls… [and] your soul, oh our town, accompanied us on all of our paths of life, and anointed us with a very personal and spiritual way of life…. You became an orphan, oh our town, from the best of your children, and now you sit forlorn, mournful, and accursed in your heart, just like us, on account of the murderers who brought destruction upon you without mercy.  You were denuded of your most vital element, the well-rooted Jews who for generations toiled for you greatly––a toil of creativity and spirit.” The Yizkor Book contains more than 200 pages of such loving remembrance, including intimate portraits of Jewish residents from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. In fact such recollections form the tip of the iceberg. The reader of the book can only imagine what a blessing it would be to have a recollection of each of the 1600 Jews living in Rozhniativ in the 1930s, not to mention such a compendium over time––all the way back to the first arrival of Jews in Rozhniativ, when it was still a village. We do not have such sketches. But by reading the book carefully and studying its maps, we can at least learn the names of some of people who owned prewar buildings still standing in the town today. It is a small wonder, given the devastation of the Holocaust, to be able to say that this picture shows, on the left, the house of one Zaharia David Liebermann, and on the right, the house of one Leopold Adlersberg.

Unmarked site of the ancient Jewish quarter, later the Nazi prison-ghetto for Jews, Sokal

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