Churban (Destruction)

"Churban" (destruction) was written in Yiddish and published in 1948 by Binyamin Ornstein, a Shoa (Holocaust) survivor. In the immediate years after the war, Binyamin Ornstein, like other Shoa survivors began to collect his own and other survivor experiences from the hell that was the Shoa, recording them for posterity. The book was given to my father, another Shoa survivor, who submitted some of his own personal wartime experiences to Binyamin Ornstein. It has been on my bookshelf ever since I can remember. The full original Yiddish book is attached to this English translation.
Many years later, after listening to my father recount his Shoa experiences to all who would listen, I wrote and published in 2006 my father's story - "Refuge: Memoirs of Kalman Horowitz - Surviving the Nazi occupation of Poland." Although I had always thumbed through the book "Churban" as I grew up, looking at the photographs, I never read it. And from time to time, I would again just scan the book "Churban." After a visit to the Yiddish Book Museum in Amherst Massachusetts, USA, I happened to come across Binyamin Ornstein's book encased for public viewing. It was then that a thought began to cross my mind. I understand Yiddish fairly well, having grown up with my Shoa surviving mother and father constantly speaking Yiddish to me. So I decided to take it upon myself to translate "Churban" into English, attempting to stay as close as possible to both the format and verbiage, while maintaining the context. Footnotes and additions, such as photographs, were used in this translation for clarity to help any reader unfamiliar with certain details provided in "Churban."