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(The Conversation) — My grandmother was a Holocaust survivor from Kostopol, Ukraine. Years after she passed away, I was trying to learn more about her life before the war – something I knew very little about. When I found a book called “Sefer Kostopol” – Hebrew for “Book of Kostopol” – I hoped to find her among its pages.

It was a memorial book for her hometown, but beyond that, I wasn’t sure what to make of it. I’m a scholar of Holocaust memory , but I had never come across anything quite like it.…