to raise the money in pledges, of $500 each, from twenty-four surviving Bialystokers. I gave some thought to both these options, but in the end neither seemed suitable. So like my father, I pushed all thoughts of Rajzner’s book to one side, and simply got on with the rest of my life.
I dropped the idea of employing a single proficient translator, expert in both Yiddish and English, because I didn’t want to limit myself to being a financial backer of the project. Now please don’t get me wrong. I am in no way belittling the role of philanthropists. Philanthropists play an important part in the lives of many people, much more than I could ever hope to play. But I believe that philanthropy is better spent on the living than the dead, and in this instance I felt a need to put my own sweat and tears into the project, not just my money! Also when it comes to raising funds, I have never felt comfortable asking others for money for such an intensely personal project, a tribute to the dying wishes of my father.
3. FRUITION
The real breakthrough came one day when my wife Sandra asked me to take her shopping to the supermarket. “Do I have to?” I replied. Her response was, “Be a friend and keep me company. While I’m shopping I don’t mind if you go across the road to the Sunflower Bookshop.” The Sunflower Bookshop specialises in books of Jewish interest.
While I was in the bookshop I picked up a volume entitled “Outwitting History” by Aaron Lansky. It was subtitled “How a Young Man Rescued a Million Books and Saved a Vanishing Civilisation.” This book grabbed me from its very first page. I strongly recommend it to anyone who wishes to experience an incredible read. By the time Sandra came to collect me I had already devoured a number of its fascinating pages.
It told the story of Aaron Lansky, an eighteen-year-old, first year student at Hampshire College Massachusetts who, in 1973, enrolled in a course of “Holocaust Studies.” He came from a secular Jewish family and had never heard Yiddish spoken at home.
Within a short time, Lansky was becoming less interested in the Holocaust as an event, and progressively more interested in the people whom the Holocaust had sought to destroy. He transferred his interest to what he calls ‘a sociological viewpoint of Jewish History,’ a fascination not with Judaism but with Jews. And it soon became obvious to him, that if he wished to continue to pursue his journey, he needed to seek out original source material. And to do this he needed to learn the language in which this source material was written. He needed to enrol in a course to study Yiddish.
One thing led to another and Lansky started to look for Yiddish books to help him improve his language skills. He soon became aware that many older Yiddish speakers were dying and that their extensive Yiddish libraries were being thrown out into dumpsters and being buried in ground-fills. If these procedures were allowed to continue Yiddish would gradually die out and eventually become extinct. This realisation transformed Lansky’s life. It caused him to stop his formal Yiddish studies and to become, instead, the man he is today, the man who has devoted the rest of his working life to the rescue of Yiddish books.
Lansky now started to lay the groundwork for what eventually became the “National Yiddish Book Centre.” This centre would serve as a storage point for the collection of unwanted Yiddish books. If asked the centre was happy to distribute any duplicate copies of its books to anywhere in the world, wherever individuals or institutions, such as schools or universities, might happen to want them. To facilitate all of this Lansky mobilised a small army of friends and acquaintances who were willing to help. He started to write many letters to prominent Jews, to writers and intellectuals, to leaders of the American Jewish community, and to numerous Jewish agencies, seeking support. He was looking for funding and, as is usually the case, it was proving difficult to find. It is certain that his dream would never have survived, except for the generosity of a small number of early interested benefactors. Lansky, however, was a man of perseverance and before long he had convened a board and managed to find six thousand square feet of floor space, the whole second floor of an old dilapidated warehouse, at a modest rental of nine thousand dollars per annum.
Lansky also issued press releases to more than three hundred newspapers. Newspaper publicity followed and people started to develop an awareness of the book centre’s existence. Articles appeared in the Boston Globe, the New York Times, numerous Jewish publications, and eventually even in Time Magazine. All this media attention stimulated more and more Yiddish readers to offer their libraries to the centre or to volunteer as active “zamlers” (local district collectors) for the centre. Lansky became an invited speaker and was asked to make television appearances, on one occasion together with Leo Rosten, the best selling author of “The Joys of Yiddish.” After the fall of communism he delivered Yiddish books in person to Russia. He was granted a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, worth nearly a quarter of a million dollars, and received an offer to relocate his National Yiddish Book Centre, free of charge, to the Mount Holyoke College Campus in New England. Instead he decided to purchase a block of land adjacent to his former alma mater, Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts. He saw the independent purchase of property as the only means of providing the centre with permanence. A $7,000,000 institution was designed to be built on the block. In appearance this building was to be based on the old wooden synagogues of eastern Poland and Russia. More appeals were held, but now that Lansky was well-known the funds were eventually raised.
Today the National Yiddish Book Centre is one of the foremost and best known Jewish institutions in the United States. And all this is due to the whim of a dedicated penniless persistent young idealist, truly an example of a miracle in our own times.
I bought “Outwitting History,” took it home, and devoured it in forty eight hours. It was inspirational. I immediately e-mailed Aaron Lansky and asked him if he could supply me with a list of names of Yiddish translators. He sent me fifty-nine names. I wrote this letter to each and every one of them:-
Dear Sir/Madam,
My name is Harry Lew and I am writing to you with a most unusual request. There is a book published in Yiddish, in Melbourne in 1948, by a Holocaust survivor Rafael Rajzner titled “The Annihilation of Bialystoker Jewry.” I want to get this book translated into English, to make it available to a wider audience. I am therefore writing to everyone on the National Yiddish Book Centre’s register of prominent Yiddish translators asking for a mitzvah (good deed). If I send you ten pages of this book would you be kind enough to translate it into English for me.
When the whole book is translated I will edit and publish it, mention each contributor, and send each contributor a personal copy to donate to the Holocaust Museum or Library of his or her choice. Please reply to this letter and tell me if you can help me.
Yours sincerely,
Harry Lew.
I also approached some local people. Rajzner’s book contained three hundred and twenty-four pages. I needed thirty-three translators.
I got less than the thirty-three required takers, but at least we had a start. A number of the translators wrote back to say that they would be pleased to do the work for a fee, usually in the vicinity of $US 500, but these people were rejected. This book would be translated gratis by 22 “Righteous Human Beings” who gave of their hearts. The English translations varied considerably, but this was to be expected. Some of them required more work, others less, but they were equally appreciated. My job was to try to give them a single voice, to try to create the feeling that the translations had been done by a single person. It is left to the translators themselves and to my readers to tell me if I have been successful. I will gladly accept their verdict whatever it may
