Zichronos Family histories
Inside a book

What a Zichronos book holds

Every book holds a family’s records, its story, its family tree, its maps and its history. The example shown here is The Tarko Family, published in two volumes.

570 pages, 29 chapters, 23 maps, and 190 photographs and documents.

An overview

Five kinds of pages

Six pages of each kind from the example. Select any page to read it at full size.

Records

Every document found, read in the original and translated in full.

Stories

The family’s life told chapter by chapter, with relatives’ own words.

Family tree

Both sides of the family, every person and every spelling.

Maps

Towns, streets and routes, drawn for the book.

History

Each town and its community, then and now.

A closer look

Each part of the book, spread by spread

An American declaration of intention from 1950, as it was found. Book Two · pages 144 and 145
A camp file cover made by the tracing office after the war, facing a map of the march that followed. Book One · pages 98 and 99

Records

Each record is reproduced as it was found, with its source in the caption, and every handwritten entry is read and transcribed.

A refugee committee’s questionnaire from 1945, beside its full translation. Book Two · pages 27 and 195
A gravestone in Hebrew and English, with the Hebrew read and translated. Book Two · pages 180 and 181

Translations

Every record in another language is translated in full and printed in the back of the book, in the order the documents appear.

A town and the country around it, beside the town’s history. Book One · pages 20 and 21
Two crossings of the Atlantic, drawn for the book. Book Two · pages 140 and 141
One person’s road from town to town, year by year. Book One · pages 62 and 63

Maps

Maps are drawn for each book, from the towns the family lived in to the roads between them.

Both family trees, facing each other. Book One · pages 14 and 15

Family trees

Each side of the family has its own tree, with every spelling of each name and a portrait where one survives.

A town’s great synagogue and a family’s street, as they stand today. Book One · pages 36 and 37
Family photographs, placed in the story. Book Two · pages 174 and 175

Photographs

Period photographs show the towns as the family knew them, and new photographs show the same places now.

The years at a glance, across two pages. Book Two · pages 18 and 19
A part opening, facing the first chapter. Book One · pages 18 and 19

Timeline and design

The book is designed and set like a fine book, with timelines and part openings that help a reader find the way.

Where records give different birth dates, the book sets them side by side. Book One · pages 126 and 127
A relative’s recorded interview, summarized in the order it was given. Book One · pages 162 and 163
What is still unknown, set out plainly. Book One · pages 220 and 221

Evidence

The book shows how each conclusion was reached. Conflicting records are weighed in the open, and every open question is stated with the records that might answer it.

The example, page by page

Selected chapters, as printed

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The research behind this example

  • 26photographs of family documents, where the research began
  • 29archives and institutions written to, in six countries
  • 17public databases and collections searched
  • 76letters and replies logged
  • 309pages of case files read word by word, twice
  • 2published volumes

Begin with a conversation

Tell us about your family and what you would like the book to hold.

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