From a Ruined Garden Book

	Acknowledgments
	Introduction	1
	Our Towns
	What Is a Pinkes?	51
	The Court of the Plyaters	53
	At the Market	58
	Novoyelne	64
	The Twenty-first of Adar: The Great Day	65
	The Burial Society	68
	Girls' Kheyders	70
	Anarchist Activities	72
	The Struggle for the Right to Work	76
	Light and Shadow	79
	The Jewish Porters of Warsaw	81
	When Anti-Semitism Raged	87
	Sports Clubs and Self-Defense	88
	The Last Meeting of the Community Council in Kutno	91
	Townspeople
	The Blind Cantor	97
	Reb Moyshe-Yudl, the Traveling Tailor	99
	Ayzikl the Bachelor	101
	Zabalye the Coachwoman	101
	The Mute	103
	Esther-Khaye the Zogerin ["Sayer"]	104
	Tall Libe	106
	Reb Dvoyre Mash	107
	Crazy Sora	108
	Shloyme-Akive, the Town Fool	109
	Alter, the Village Peddler	111
	The Kozhenitser Rebe	113
	Lifeways
	Customs, Symbols, and Ceremonies	119
	The Healer in Bilgoray	122
	The Town's New Torah Scroll	124
	The Angry Dance	125
	A Disrupted Seder Night	126
	A Purim in the Region of Sants	129
	The Death of the Bukovsker Rebe, Dovid Shapiro	131
	Concerning the Opponents of Hasidism in Lizhensk	132
	A Strike in Kheyder	133
	My "Days" in Slonim	135
	From American Universities to the Polish Yeshivas	138
	The First Yiddish Library	140
	My Grandmother Sews Her Own Burial Shroud	141
	Events
	The Butchers of Zhirardov Commission a Torah Scroll	145
	The Righteousness of Revolutionaries	146
	The Ruined Wedding	148
	The First Suicide in Town	150
	A Hasidic Demonstration	152
	The Dispute Over the Succession to the Rabbinate	154
	An Escape from Certain Death	158
	A Murder in the Forest	160
	The Pogrom in 1936	162
	A Communist Assembly Elects a Zionist as Representative	164
	Jewish Fighters on the Battlefields of Spain	166
	Legends and Folklore
	The Ancestors' Merit and the Blessings of Laughter	171
	Three Parables of the Dubner Magid	173
	The Slaughtering Knife and the Saw	174
	Khayim-Yisroel Melamed and the Kozhenitser Magid	175
	In Khorostkov During the First World War	179
	Dear God!	182
	Holocaust
	A Final Moral Lesson	189
	The Typhus Epidemic and a Wedding at the Cemetery	192
	How I Read Yiddish Literature to an S.S. Captain	195
	Terror in Vishnevits	198
	The Families in the Bunkers	200
	How I Hid Twelve Jews	203
	Wanderings of a Child	204
	My Escape from the Ditches of Slaughter	208
	Passover: Under the Rule of Hitlerite Tyranny	212
	I Was a German "Soldier"	218
	The Capture of Girls	225
	Kol Nidre in Auschwitz	231
	The Transport from Auschwitz	234
	Return
	Searching for the Life That Was	243
	Belkhatov Without Jews	244
	My Tragic Night in Zhelekhov	246
	A Visit to My Town of Bilgoray	248
	End of Sentence	249
	The City Without Jews	254
	In the Tracks of the Jewish Life That Disappeared	262
	The Townspeople Abroad
	The Landsmanshaft in Montreal: Book of Memory to the Jewish Community of Shebreshin	269
Appendix I	Bibliography of Eastern European (Yizkor) Memorial Books
Appendix II	Geographic Index and Gazetteer