My mother & her brother were born in Zalozhits, Galicia, then a shtetl in Poland & today a village in Ukraine. After my uncle died, his friend Ivan planned a visit to Zalozhits in his memory. No family member had been to Zalozhits since 1945. Ivan hoped to find genealogical information & visit sites of significance to our family. Ivan met with my mother & planned his trip for 2016. My mother died before Ivan's visit.
My mother's family had lived in many places over the past 70+ years, but they used the word "home" to refer only to Zalozhits. Ivan hoped, during his visit, to find & photograph any remnants of our family's pre-war life.

Although Zalozhits was "home," we knew that little, if anything, remained of that home after the German occupation. The house was used by German officers who burned it down when they retreated. The photographs that Ivan shared with us were indicative of what we already knew: the Jewish shtetl was destroyed; tombstones were broken and toppled. Only the photograph of the lake looked as it had in 1939.

Ivan wanted to bring back something tangible, and so found these stones from the lake shore. During his visit, Ivan had asked to meet the oldest person in Zalozhits. Although the 90-something-year-old woman hadn't lived in Zalozhits during the war, she was moved by his story & gave him this jar.

During our last visit to the Zalozhitser Lantsmanshaft plot in the cemetery where my mother & uncle are buried, our family placed some of the stones on their graves.

– Joel Maxman

Relationship:  Child of im/migrant Child of im/migrant