Staszow, a shtetl in southeast Poland on the road between Kielce and Sandomierz, was home to Jews for two and a half centuries, until the Holocaust left the village judenrein. Among the Staszow Jews were the Goldfarbs, Jack Goldfarb’s forebears.

When the Philadelphia-born freelance writer first visited his ancestral homeland a half century ago, he found no trace of Staszow’s original Jewish cemetery. A newer Jewish burial ground, two-thirds of a mile from the center of the village, was an open, empty lot on a tree-lined hill.

Two names to keep in mind — Alexandra and Roman Zaretsky.
They’re Israel’s top-ranked ice dancing team, 22nd- place finishers in the 2006 Winter Olympic Games at Turin, and likely competitors in Vancouver next year.
This week they took part in the European Figure Skating Championships in Helsinki, which ends on Sunday. The brother and sister — Alexandra is sometimes knows as Sasha — were in the middle of the pack after the compulsory dance part of the program.