This morning I shared a remarkable experience with Yaron Kapitulnik, a second year rabbinic student. While perusing a book published in 2004 and written in English and Polish about Lopuszno, a Polish shtetl destroyed during the Holocaust, I happened upon some photographs of people named Kapitulnik and could not help but wonder if these persons were related to Yaron.
I went to my computer to send Yaron an e-mail, asking him to come to my office, but before I could even sit down, he magically appeared at my door with a reference question totally unrelated to anything we had ever previously talked about. As I passed him the book, he literally collapsed in a chair, for he recognized photos of his grandfather as a young man, as well as great-grandparents and his grandfather's siblings, none of whose faces Yaron had ever seen before. (His grandfather, having left Poland in March of 1939, was the only member of the family to survive the Holocaust.) Especially poignant was a photo of his grandfather and a sister reciting Kaddish at their mother's grave on the eve of his departure.) I recalled the book had been donated by an Israeli businessman who had funded the book's publication, and I was glad to pass along his contact information in Tel-Aviv to Yaron. Yaron was eager to call Jerusalem and tell his father of this remarkable and entirely serendipitous discovery. That's the story so far Moments such as this truly make the work of a librarian most rewarding! Messages and opinions expressed on Hasafran are those of the individual author and are not necessarily endorsed by the Association of Jewish Libraries (AJL) =========================================================== Submissions for Ha-Safran, send to: Hasafran @ lists.acs.ohio-state.edu SUBscribing, SIGNOFF commands send to: Listproc @ lists.acs.ohio-state.edu Questions, problems, complaints, compliments;-) send to: galron.1 @ osu.edu Ha-Safran Archives: Current: http://www.mail-archive.com/hasafran%40lists.acs.ohio-state.edu/maillist.html History: http://www.mail-archive.com/hasafran%40lists.acs.ohio-state.edu/history.html AJL HomePage http://www.JewishLibraries.org
