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A Still-Life Shtetl
Rebuilding the Life and Times of Luboml, One Faded Photo at a Time
By Toby Axelrod
Sept. 1, 1995
It is a silent reunion. In shades of brown and ivory
they sit, stiff and proper, before romantic painted
backdrops. Others lounge on the grass with friends
gathered around. Formally, a couple stands with
two young children, staring straight at me.
I look at them one by oneand hundreds
more like them: family photos in folders, filling
two drawers in the tiny office of the Luboml Exhibition
Project in Midtown Manhattan. It's the
largest gathering of Luboml's souls since the
shtetlmy father's birthplacewas destroyed 53
years ago.
For several months the photos have been arriving
from Canada, Israel, Arizona, Argentina,
and Brooklyn in response to notices in the Jewish
Week and elsewhere. A few of the many envelopes
came to my desk, and I would open each
with reverence, as if entrusted with something
holy. I understood afresh the superstitions some
have against being caught on film. The photos
are all that remains. And those eyes, those expressive
hands touched a world I knew only
through the stories of my grandfather, Rabbi
Yakov Axelrod.
"I'll never forget it," was how he usually began.
I can hear his voice any time because I recorded
hours and hours of his storytelling and
have spent years transcribing the tapes.
But I never thought my personal obsession
would converge with the dreams of so many
other people, to create a museum exhibit about
Jewish life in that obscure little Polish-Ukrainian
town. The photos, documents, and objects gathered
in that midtown office today are waiting to
be seen, and they will be seen, thanks to the
413
sponsorship of Aaron Ziegelman, who left
Luboml as a boy in 1938.
It's hard to believe I will set foot in that town
myselfthe goal is to find more material for our
collection. But first, I will put down the last corrections
on our toughest project: the translation
of our entire Yizkor Buch from Yiddish into English.
Hundreds of such books about the life and
demise of European Jewish towns were written
after the war by survivors, but most of these rich
volumes are gathering dust on bookshelves, inaccessible
to all but those who can read Yiddish.
Two have been translated into English.
Several years ago I volunteered to help edit
Luboml's tome, for selfish reasonsI wanted to
read more about the town I knew through my
grandfather's stories. Now, as I check the spelling
of names of those killed by the Nazis, a list
that closes the 400-page book, I marvel that a
window is to open for others on a world lost forever.
The book translation was begun years ago by
members of the Libovner Voliner Benevolent Society,
with survivor Nathan Sobel and his wife,
Eleanor, at the helm.
Recently, Aaron Ziegelman started the exhibition
project. For him, the journey began several
years ago as an effort to unerase his past. He
managed to find relatives around the world, reconstructing
a family tree and orchestrating a
reunion.
Eventually, he decided to sponsor the creation
of an exhibition chronicling life in the
shtetl. Since last summer, hundreds of photos
and items have been gathered for display at museums
in New York, Israel and other venues.