The Heavens Are Empty - Avrom Bendavid-Val [75]
Mennonite Historical Atlas, Second Edition. Text and some maps by Helmut T. Huebert, and maps by William Schroeder; published by Springfield Publishers, Winnipeg, Canada, 1996. An excerpt from the Atlas dealing with Volyn, together with several maps, was sent to me in 1998 by Helmut T. Huebert.
My Townlet–Trachenbrod: A Chain of Memories. By David Shwartz; published in Yiddish and English by Elisha Press, Tel Aviv, Israel, 1954. David Shwartz was born in Trochenbrod in 1880. He was already married to his wife Miriam when he left Trochenbrod alone in 1907 and began earning money in Columbus, Ohio. He returned to Trochenbrod and brought his wife and children back to Columbus just before World War I broke out. He visited Trochenbrod again, with his wife, in 1934. He wrote his memoir in 1939, but only printed it as a booklet fifteen years later. David died in 1960, Miriam eight years after him. David and Miriam Shwartz left behind what is today a large family of grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and other relatives.
Pinkas Hekehilot (Encyclopedia of Jewish Communities from their Founding until Just after the Holocaust and Second World War), Volume 5, Volyn and Polesia. By Shmuel Spektor; published in Hebrew by Yad Vashem, The Holocaust Martyrs and Heroes Remembrance Authority, 1990, Jerusalem, Israel. I was guided to this volume and additional materials in 2009 by Michlean Amir, reference archivist at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Russia to New York. By Jeanne Glass Kokol. Jeanne Kokol was born in Trochenbrod in 1913 as Shaindeleh Ruchel Gluz. She came to the United States in 1921. She wrote this memoir for her family in about 2002, and died in Florida in 2007. Thomas C. Spear gave me this memoir in 2008, after obtaining it from Irving Kokol, Jeanne’s son. Thomas’s and Irving’s great-great-grandfathers were brothers.
Shmilike Drossner’s Trachenbrod. An oral history by Shmilike Drossner, primarily but not only about how Jewish holidays were observed in Trochenbrod before World War I; told to and transcribed by Samuel Sokolow in the 1970s. In 2008, Burt and Ellen Singerman and Robbie Ross Tisch separately gave me copies of this oral history.
Sofievka (Trochenbrod). An article originally written in Hebrew and submitted to the Yad Vashem (Shoah memorial) archives in Jerusalem by Gad Rosenblatt (see Esh Achazah BaYa’ar—A Forest Ablaze, above). Marvin Perlman (see Ani Maamin: Eidut V’Hagot—I Believe: Testimony and Meditations, above) gave me an English translation of the article in 1998.
Trochenbrod (Sofiyevka). An article by Eliezer Barkai (Burak) published in Hebrew in the journal Yalkut Volyn, (“Anthology of Volyn”) Issue #1; published by Archion Volyn B’Eretz-Yisrael (Volyn Archives in Palestine) and Irgun Yotzei Volyn B’Eretz Yisrael (Organization of Emigrés from Volyn in Palestine), Tel Aviv, April 1945. This article can be read in Hebrew or English on the Bet TAL Web site, http://bet-tal.com. The article was first brought to my attention in 1999 by Dr. Yale J. Reisner, working for the Ronald S. Lauder Foundation in Warsaw.
Trochenbrod: The Life and Death of a Shtetl in the Ukraine. By Morton L. Kessler; a thesis paper submitted for an M.A. degree to the Graduate School of John Carroll University, Cleveland, 1972. Morton Kessler was the son of an immigrant from Trochenbrod; his paper was based in part on a large number of interviews with immigrants from Trochenbrod living in the United States.
Other sources that I drew upon for this book include:
• Photographs of Trochenbrod and Trochenbroders that I obtained from Laura Beeler, Marlene Berman, Marilyn Weiner Bernhardt, Miriam Antwarg Ciocler, Betty Potash Gold, Phyllis Grossman, Alyn Levin-Hadar, Ryszard Lubinski, Burt and