Page 20 - The Legacy of Abraham Rothstein - text

Preface

one person in the community where I lived who ever wrote or kept a
diary or record of his actions and behavior. In that half-primitive land
they never read biographies of famous men, only the Bible and
religious writings. Very few changes occurred in the period and place
of my and my father’s youth. The environment was the same.
Scientific advancements did not penetrate to those obscure places
where we lived; our life centered on Talmud and synagogue. The
outside world was very distant to us in Pelcovizna.
With the advances of the Machine Age and migration of peoples,
the common individual is churned around in a maelstrom of races
and nations, a forgotten being melting away like a snowflake in the
desert. But his history could be of interest to a generation living in
the most advanced period in human history, looking forward to even
greater accomplishments, that they may know how in a short period
of time this great change took place. At the turn of the twentieth
century we stood on the threshold of a great revolution in human
progress.

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