Jonathan Wind

Wysokie-Mazowieckie Jonathan Wind

How should we express the searing pain while preserving for eternity our holy dear ones and the community of our town, which had existed for centuries, and was completely destroyed by the foul Nazis, and their helpers, the cursed Poles?

We planted one thousand trees to honor them in the Forest of the Martyrs; we put up a memorial plaque in the Chamber of the Holocaust; but we knew that it was not enough.[2] These are only metaphors and symbols, and cannot describe the horrors endured by the Jews of our town. Such a description can be found in the memorial book, which recounts the history of our town as well as the culture typical of Jewish communities in Poland, and the particular features of the Wysokie-Mazowieckie community.

When we began realizing our plan for the Yizkor Book, we encountered serious difficulties - both in gathering the materials and in collecting the financial means for publishing the project.

Our doubts and efforts concerning publication of the book lasted for almost ten years, until we finally succeeded in creating the book that we had aimed at. True, the book is modest, and it lacks many details of important events and interesting figures who lived and were active in Wysokie, and left their mark of their talent and good deeds on the town.

Besides being limited by our small budget -which rendered the publication of the book difficult -we consciously limited ourselves by deciding to describe only important social and community events, and mention very few individuals, so as to avoid arguments and complaints by townspeople whose families and loved ones were not mentioned.