Family Tree Project

First, I'll introduce myself. I'm Steve Bloom, from a small town in Virginia, US where I am a college professor. My great grandmother, who I only met once as a child, was from Salakas, Lithuania, and I have found her and her family in the Revision Lists.

I wanted to let everybody know that I have begun a family tree project, starting with Salakas.
The project will begin with creating trees from the on-line Revision Lists, but I will add more info from other sources (personal genealogies, Yad Vashem testimony, etc.). I have already added a handful of names from Yad Vashem that were fairly clearly the same person, but with, in some cases, maiden names added, or names of children, etc.

I have started with the surname ROZENBERG, since my ROZENBERG family was from Salakas. In addition to my family, I found 12 other apparently unrelated families in Salakas.
However, commonality of certain gives names, particularly Honel, suggests that there might be some common ancestry. Eventually, translating the somewhat earlier lists may help us to make these connections.

I will next move on to the KORB and SHADUR families, since I have seen these names already on the blog. Past that, I will collect trees for any surname requested. If none are requested, I'll
just go in alphabetical order of surname.

I will make trees with Family Tree Maker, which can be coverted to many other formats.

Suggestions on where to go next will be most welcome. Of course, it is my intention to make the data widely available for download somehow, but, for now, I can just email folks a tree upon request, once it is finished.

This is the sort of project that is likely to add to our knowledge incrementally rather than break through all the brick walls, but I do think representing the info in tree format will help make connections.

Records translated and available: first step to a plan

We have constructed a complete list of all records for the district. This includes all records on the terrific www.rtrfoundation.org website and those we already knew about.

This exercise threw up some interesting results.

There are a stack of district wide records which have not been translated - these range from an 1811 census for Braslav Uyezd, through1837 and 1864/71 censuses for the NovoAlexandrovsk Uyezd and more recent records. Some will overlap with shtetl level records, but some of the dates suggest previously unsuspected resources. A list is at the links on the left hand side of the blog or at http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=ddtjn9x2_5ck6z52 .

For many shtetls there are lists that will be essential to proving connections between isonomic groups (I hope I just made that up: families of the same name) that remain untranslated. All the lists are sorted by shtetl at http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=ddtjn9x2_6fk4t6q and you'll see what's on the ALD and what's not.

The last major group of records for research are vital records (births, marriages, deaths and divorces). These are primarily the territory of the VRT project - but in the district only Suvanaiskis is so far included in that effort. The extant records are listed here: http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=ddtjn9x2_2d9czd6 . These are mainly early 20th century records that can have a lot of interesting information.

Why is this the first step to a plan? because we now know the lie of the land. I ask researchers to contact me to indicate which records they think should be the priority for their shtetl.

Are these all the shtetls in the district?

The modern names:

Antaliepte Braslav Drisviaty Dubinovo Dukstas Dusetos
Jūžintai Kamajai Kazachizna Kriaunos Kvetkai Obeliai Okmyanitsa
Onuskis Opsa Pandelys Panemunelis Papilys Pelikany Plyussy Redutka
Rimse Rokiskis Salakas Skapiskis Sloboda Smalvos Suvainiskis
Tauragnai Vidzy Zamoshye Zarachye Zarasai

I have added a link on the left to a document which has all the alternative names.

Is your favourite shtot or shtetl missing? let me know please!

So, how much do we need to raise?

There are, I am reliably told, 20,457 records for the district on the All Lithuania Database. Looking at the lists for what has been translated and what remains to be translated there is at least the same amount to go in terms of revision and other lists - and there may be more - I need to include all the information on www.rtrfoundation.org into our master list.

If we reckon on about US$0.60 per record, we'd need about US$15,000 to more or less complete the district records. If we allow for some contingency perhaps US$20,000 should be our fundraising target. At current funding rates this might take a long, long time to raise.

There are perhaps 450 researchers listed on JGFF for the district - so we need about 1/2 of them to become US$100 members of the Research Group. I might be very persuasive, but that might be beyond me. So I'm thinking about what we might be able to offer donors for much larger sums - say U$1,000 or US$5,000 - in terms of recognition. But as the old Hungarian recipe for rabbit stew says: "First, catch your rabbit..."

So who has contacts with anyone who might be able to directly or through a charitable foundation donate $1,000 and above? At this stage I just need some idea if anyone who reads this has potential contacts.

Comments please!

1846 kheder list sent to research group members

A list of kheders in the district in 1846 has been sent to District Research Group members. This gives for every shtetl a list of kheders - the name of the teacher and where they were - usually in someone's house.

Olga Zabludoff has prepared the following note from a Russian language encyclopedia and Dov Levin’s book "The Litvaks".

All Jewish communities in Lithuania had at least one melamed [teacher] for boys aged 3 to 13. If there was a group consisting of more than five boys, the community organized a kheder. A Jew who didn’t enroll his son to study could be exiled from his community.

Wealthy families sent their sons to study in large towns, and the boys returned home only for holidays. For kheders with more than 25 students, an additional melamed assistant was hired.

First Importance kheders were for the wealthiest people; tuition was high. Second Importance Kheders for less wealthy Jews charged more moderate tuition fees. There were also kheders for poor students with minimal tuition. Both primary- and secondary-level kheders existed within the three categories of kheders.

The Bulletin of Jewish educational institutions combines the various types of kheders into dated lists by district.

Primary-level kheder was for 3- to 7-year-old boys; secondary-level kheder was for boys to age 13. The curriculum in the primary kheder started with the Hebrew alphabet, moved on to the Pentateuch with Rashi’s basic commentary, and soon thereafter concentrated on selected portions of the Talmud with the traditional commentaries. At a slightly later stage, when the pupil reached Bar Mitzvah age, he moved on to a deeper study of the Talmud in a small group taught by a melamed who was a recognized scholar. This system was aimed theoretically at giving the student the ability to continue his studies on his own and become a Talmudic scholar. He could also, if he was able, continue his studies at a small yeshiva. However, students in kheders for the poor had to be exceptionally gifted in order to study in a yeshiva.

Crossing borders: the district's lost shtetls

My grandmother told me that it was said that we used to "go to sleep as Lithuanians and wake up as Russians" - she was brought up in Lithuania during the Great War. And there are a number of shtetls that were in the Novo Alexandrovsk Uyezd ["NAU"] and are now in Belarus. These seem to include Braslaw, Dubinovo, Okmyanitsa, Opsa, Plyussy, Slobodka, Vidzy, Zamoshye, and Zarachye. Vidzy has 46 resarchers listed on JGFF and Braslaw 22.

There are records listed at www.rtrfoundation.org for NAU, the older Braslaw Uyezd and at least some of these shtetls at the Vilnius archives. Most of the Zarasai district shtetls were in the Braslaw Uyezd.

Perhaps we need some sort of cross border project to work on these records?

My thanks to Batya Olsen for prompting these thoughts to-day with an enquiry about Vidzy. Batya is the Disna district co-ordinator.

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Salakas cemetery data

Maria Krane has very generously provided significant information on burials at the Salakas cemetery. She provides the following notes.

"The Salakas Jewish Cemetery is located 10 km SE of Salakas. A memorial was later constructed at the entrance of the forest to commemorate those who lost their lives during WWII, murdered by their neighbors, and buried in a mass grave.

The cemetery was documented by Regina Kopelovich in 2001, who had to ask the mayor of the town to have it cleared of the underbrush and debris, so that she could read the tombstones and transcribe them. Regina had to take a helper who turned over many stones that were not standing and therefore, unable to be read. Some stones remained undocumented because they were too heavy to lift. Most of the stones did not contain surnames.

The project was funded by Maria Krane, in memory of her mother-in-law, Rose Krane nee Rachman, who was born in Salakas in 1910. "

The information includes burials from 1805 to 1940. A few of the more recent stones carry surnames; most only give patronymics.

To meet file size restrictions I have cut the data into two parts. The spreadsheets can be opened here by clicking on the URL (I hope! let me know if you have a problem):

Part 1 http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=pwqonpED2qPyIn5f_dOZdCQ&hl=en

Part 2 http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=pwqonpED2qPyVPq5rYlm5cA&hl=en

To save the file to your computer click "File" then "Export" and choose your format.

Many thanks to Maria Krane.

Going live

Welcome kind visitor! take your shoes off and relax. This blog is now open for your comments. I've had a few emails directly following the announcement on the LitvakSIG forum and digest. Thank you Steve Bloom, Linda Cantor and Oscar Friedman for getting in touch and for your best wishes for this incumbent.

Steve is another Salakas researcher (looking at ROZENBERG) - and he tells me that for one of the Polish shtetls he's also interested in someone prepared a family tree for the whole shtetl. While they had the benefit of vital records and we have to rely on revision lists it is still possible we may be able to get some way with a "Family Tree of Salakas" and, for example, put names to some of the many "Last Name Unknown" women who arrive in our family trees and massively branch our family trees. We will need to obtain as yet uncaptured revision lists for 1858/71 and 1876. Is this a worthwhile medium term project? Comments?

Linda is the Chair of the terrific RokiskisSIG (link down on the left). Her family - as some of mine did - came from somewhere else before hitting downtown Rakushik. She'd like us to do more record capture for some of the smaller shtetls. I wonder whether we can try to emulate the Rokiskis website for other parts of the District? Maybe not in such splendour....

Oscar is researching the KORB family from Salakas, but seems to be missing the key record to tie in his grandfather to the records. His family believe that Meir KORB may have gone to Argentina. I had not thought to look for members of my clan in Argentina: Chicago, Boston, Minnesota, New York, Ekaterinoslav, Schedrin, London and South Africa, yes, Argentina no. It would be interesting to analyse shtetl emigration patterns. And it might give clues for research in our own families. What do you think?

Paul