The noted historian and Litvak (Jews of Lithuanian heritage), Josef Rosin, presents the history of 50 Jewish towns in Lithuania. The book includes information about the founding of the settlements, their development into vibrant communities, and their ultimate destruction in the Shoah (Holocaust). This is Josef's third book, which brings to 102, the number of communities that he has documented. The thorough coverage shows the rich culture from which many American, South African and Israeli Jews of Litvak heritage can trace their history. This book is a rich resource for Litvak genealogists to...

Josef Rosins "Preserving Our Litvak Heritage" is a monumental work documenting the history of 31 Jewish communities in Lithuanaia from their inception to their total destruction in 1941 at the hands of the Nazis and their Lithuania helpers. Rosin gathered his material from traditional sources, archives, public records, and remembrance books. He has enriched and enhanced the entry for each community with personal memoirs and contributions from widely dispersed survivors who opened family albums and shared treasured photographs of family and friends. He made use of sources originally written in...

Josef Rosins "Preserving Our Litvak Heritage-Volume II" is a monumental work documenting the history of 21 Jewish communities in Lithuanaia from their inception to their total destruction in 1941 at the hands of the Nazis and their Lithuania helpers. Rosin gathered his material from traditional sources, archives, public records, and remembrance books. He has enriched and enhanced the entry for each community with personal memoirs and contributions from widely dispersed survivors who opened family albums and shared treasured photographs of family and friends. He made use of sources originally...

Josef Rosin started a normal life in 1922 in the small town of Kybartai in western Lithuania. Excelling in school he started at Kovno University in 1939, only to have his second year final exams interrupted by Operation Barbarosa, the Nazi invasion of Lithuania on June 22, 1941.

Life from that point on was anything but normal. With his resourcefulness and much luck, Josef survived in the Kovno Ghetto for more than two and a half years. At the beginning of February 1944, a few months before the destruction of the ghetto, he escaped into the woods of Belarus. There he met up with other...