Event
Journey to Israel in 1967
Journey to Israel in 1967, including entry into Bialystok
אויף מיין רייזע קיין מדינת ישראל אין יאָר 1967
Scan 13Read evidence
Yizkor book · a living הַנְצָחָה · Poland
Białystok
Jewish life, families, institutions, destruction, survival, and remembrance in the community of Białystok.
Open the memorial book
- Evidence nodes
- 8,006
- Node types
- 14
- Book scans
- 630
- Region
- Podlaskie Voivodeship
Byalisṭoḳer yizker bukh · 630 scanned pages
A grounded Yizkor book
Everything here is read from the real pages
You are browsing Byalisṭoḳer yizker bukh — the Białystok Yizkor memorial book, written by survivors in Hebrew and Yiddish. Every person, family, place, and event on this site was read from its actual scanned pages, and each fact links back to the exact passage and scan it came from. Nothing is invented; the original page is always one click away — a modern way to browse a primary source, not a replacement for it.
Ways into the book
Learn the history through a guided path
Reading path 1
What kind of Jewish community was Białystok?
This path introduces Białystok as a living community with an economic base, religious institutions, schools, political movements, and cultural organizations. By the end, readers will see that the people later described as victims belonged to a complex society with many forms of communal life.
4 source-grounded chaptersBegin with the evidenceReading path 2
How did family, work, and migration shape Białystok life?
This path follows families across textile work, education, business, and migration. It helps descendants and family researchers understand how Białystok connected local lives to wider Jewish networks in America and elsewhere.
4 source-grounded chaptersBegin with the evidenceReading path 3
How did occupation transform everyday life?
This path traces the shift from prewar communal autonomy to German occupation, confinement, forced labor, hunger, and terror. Readers will understand how the ghetto was both a site of coercion and a place where people tried to preserve education, work, and mutual responsibility.
4 source-grounded chaptersBegin with the evidenceChronology
Białystok through time
Follow dated events and testimony in chronological order, with every entry connected to its source node.
11 evidence-linked momentsOpen chronologyFind a starting point
People, families, places, and events
Enter the historical record through a familiar subject. Each result remains connected to the passage that supports it.
Inside the memorial book
Source-linked highlights
Begin with passages that open into people, places, institutions, events, and the wider community graph.
Place
Koshtshelne 6
Address associated with the Mendele School.
קאָשטשעלנע 6
Scan 59 · page 43Read evidence
Institution
Bialystok Jewish Middle School
Jewish middle school using Yiddish as its instructional language.
די אידישע מיטל-שול PN ביאַליסטאָק
Scan 59 · page 43Read evidence
Start with these nodes
People, institutions, testimony, family, and events linked directly to book evidence.
EventAligned
Journey to Israel in 1967
Journey to Israel in 1967, including entry into Bialystok
Scan 13Open node →
PlaceAligned
Koshtshelne 6
קאָשטשעלנע 6
Address associated with the Mendele School.
Page 43Open node →
InstitutionAligned
Bialystok Jewish Middle School
די אידישע מיטל-שול PN ביאַליסטאָק
Jewish middle school using Yiddish as its instructional language.
Page 43Open node →
OrganizationAligned
Bialystok Bund
ביאַליסטאַקער , בונד"
Bund organization that developed the educational complex.
Page 43Open node →
PersonAligned
Hertske Lubel
הערצקע לובעל
Listed as a Bund school worker killed during World War II.
Page 43Open node →
PersonAligned
Rubin Khayot
רובין כאַיאָט
Listed as a Bund school worker killed during World War II.
Page 43Open node →
Contribute
You know things this book doesn't
A memorial book holds what its compilers could gather, decades ago and often from memory. Families carry the rest — a photograph, a maiden name, a street, a correction to a date. Editors of Białystok can add that context to any node, with their contribution recorded and reviewable.
Reading needs no account. Editing is invite-only, so the record stays accountable.
Editors of Białystok
No one is keeping Białystok yet. If this is your family's town, you could be the first — the book is already open, it just needs someone who knows what it left out.