The Zarasai Web Log

Zarasai boy makes good: Al Jaffee and his Mad Life

2010-10-02T02:38:00.005Z

Al Jaffee had an itinerant childhood: born in 1921, in Savannah GA, he was shlepped by his heymsick mother (a Gordon) back to Zarasai town in 1927 for a year, and then again in 1929 when they were four years in Zarasai and Slabodka. He eventually became a comic book artist - and winner of the major prizes in the field. He is best known for his fold-ins and other long running features in Mad Magazine.

A biography, Mad Life, has just been published written by Mary-Lou Weisman and illustrated by Al Jaffee - available from Amazon and all good book shops. There is an interesting piece in the New York Times. Al illustrates and recalls life in Zarasai in the interwar period from a unique perspective - as an American kid experiencing shtetl life.

For those of you in the NY area Al Jaffee is appearing at the NY Comic Con October 8-10 and there is a show of his illustrations for the book and other work at the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art in SoHo from 5 October to 30 January.

Ms Weisman is talking about the book at Fairfield Connecticut Public Library on 13 October and at the Strand Bookstore on 19 October.

LitvakSIG gets a name check - our All Lithuania Database and Zarasai District records were helpful in documenting the family history. Al and Mary-Lou made generous donations to our research funds.

Translated Files on Nexo website

2010-05-22T00:00:00.003Z

We are now using a NEXO site to archive translated data files and to make them available to qualified donors to the Zarasai/NovoAleksandrovsk district research group. We now have too much data to successfully send the consolidated excel file to all new contributors.

Thanks to Deena Berton and Dorothy Leivers for their help to set this up.

All qualified contributors should have received an invitation to join the Nexo group site. If you think you should, but haven't, please email me at zarasailist@aol.com .

Paul Hattori

Yahrzeit dates

2009-08-16T01:21:00.004Z

From August 1941 German units (primarily Einsatzkommando 3 of Einsatzgruppe A) killed, according to their own report (see http://www.holocaust-history.org/works/jaeger-report/htm/intro001.htm?lang_from=de), more than 130,000 men, women and children in Lithuania and neighbouring areas . These weeks mark killings in the Zarasai district. In particular we can remember:

Antaliepte/Antalept 26 August (3 Elul, this year 23 August)
Pandelys/Ponidel 25 August (2 Elul, this year 22 August)
Rokiskis/Rakishok 15/16 August and 25 August (2 Elul, this year 22 August)
Obeliai /Abel 25 August (2 Elul, this year 22 August)
Zarasai/Ezhereni 26 August (3 Elul, this year 23 August)
Pandelys/Ponidel 25 August (2 Elul, this year 22 August)
Dusetos/Dusiat 26 August (3 Elul, this year 23 August)
Salakas/Salok 9 August and 26 August (3 Elul, this year 23 August)
Skapiskis/Skapishok 15/16 August (22/23 Av, already passed)

People from smaller shtetls were usually taken to a larger place nearby. Dates for other Livak communities can be found at http://www.jewishgen.org/Litvak/HTML/yahrzheit.htm.

ZIMMAN? BRINKER? simple research tools

2009-08-04T01:09:00.004Z

I posted the following to the LitvakSIG discussion group digest where it appeared on 2 August 2009. It helps to illustrates some basic tools and techniques for research - and how far we have come: translated records available to everyone through the ALD- thanks to so many people's generosity - means a new researcher can find her roots: shazam! Arlette Doubnikof was thrilled.

------------------------------

I write in response to Arlette Doubnikof's email seeking information on Elka ZIMMAN, daughter of Shaba ZIMMAN and Sarah Dvore BRINKER "born on 3 august 1869 in NOWO-ALEXDRANDROVSK" .

This is a good example where intelligent use of available records and resources can lead us to an answer. Explanations of the various types of records I reference can be found on the LitvakSIG public website (www.litvaksig.org). Drill down under "FAQ" to "FAQs about Available Records for Lithuania".

NovoAleksandrovsk also known as Zarasai was the capital for a district named after the town. Often people used the name of the district or the name of the province ( or Guberniya) when they came from a shtetl that might not be well know. So it possible that the family came from some shtetl other than Zarasai itself.

So when we look at the All Lithuania Database (the "Search ALD" button at www.litvaksig.org) we see that the Brinker entries from the mid 19th century are all from Salakas - a shtetl in the Zarasai district. So in the 1845 Revision List we see a Sorka BRINKER aged 8 who is at least a candidate for Sarah Dvore.

The ZIMMAN link is more difficult. We can first look at the Given Names Database at www.litvaksig.org. This tells us Shaba is probably a version of Shabsay Sheftl - so might see this as something like Shepsel or Shebsel or Shabsel in the records. Now where would the ZIMMAN family come from and what were they called?

There was a tradition called "kest" where as part of a marriage settlement the bride's parents would provide the couple with room and board for a certain number of years. I discuss this practice and its genealogical impact in a recent post at www.zarasai.blogspot.com. So it is possible that Shaba ZIMMAN came from somewhere else.

We recently received a dataset (thanks to Maria Krane) of marriages connected to Salakas for a slightly later period from 1877 to 1915. A short statistical analysis is at zarasai.blogspot.com. This tells us that only 39% of marriages were within the district, so even though it makes sense to look there first, it is easy to be disappointed. There is however no name ZIMMAN, or possible variations such as ZIMAN or ZEIMAN, in any records associated with the district.

The possible variations are numerous: do a "sounds like" search on ZIMMAN on the ALD and see dozens of possibilities. However to cut through this mass of possibilites we can do a soundex search for ZIMMAN from Salakas at the JewishGen Family Finder (http://jewishgen.org/jgff/). This gives no result.

So we search the JGFF for Salakas without specifying a name. This gives a list of registered researchers and the names they are researching. We look through the left hand column and come across ZINMAN. This is suggestive.

Go back to the ALD and do a soundex search for ZINMAN. Eventually scrolling through the revision list entries in the results you will find in the 1887 Family List for Salakas Shebshel TSINMAN, born about 1841, married to Sora Dveyra with two sons and three daughters - one of whom is Elka.

Elka's birthday is not recorded there. If it were to be found elsewhere then do remember that the date shown would be according to the Julian calendar in use in Russia and would need adjusting to match other records.

Now there are other records that are not currently publicly available. LitvakSIG's District Research Groups sponsor research. Once newly translated files are received they are edited - to check for typos and other errors - by volunteers and then eventually - perhaps after a year or even two - they are included in the ALD. But qualified donors will generally receive the new files in excel format almost immediately. Currently qualification requires a donation of US$100.

Contributions can be made at www.litvaksig.org under "Join/Contribute" - on the contribution page select "Zarasai" under "Choose District".

One such file, distributed to the members of the Zarasai District Research Group last year is the Salakas 1876 Family List. Here we can do a quick search and find Elka's declared age, which is not consistent with a birth in 1879. We also find that the family is registered in Zarasai town! So they did live there and Elka could have been born there, but note that the family details were still recorded in the Family List in Salakas. The father is shown as Shabsel TSYNMAN rather than Shebsel TSINMAN, but transliteration of names between Yiddish, Russian and English is an inexact science.

Is this Elka then definitely Ms Doubnikof's grandmother? In all probability, she is - and using the BRINKER and TSYNMAN entries in ALD and other resources she will be able to trace her families back to the late 18th century - with luck even into the 1784 Grand Duchy of Lithuania census - and forward through (great) great uncles and aunts to TSYNMAN and BRINKER cousins across the world.

How healthy was interwar Lithuania?

2009-08-03T23:30:00.008Z

My conclusion: it was about as healthy as living in Switzerland. But before 1945 Switzerland was not such a great place to live: their economic miracle came after 1945. And life expectancy was below that for the US.

Last year I wrote a post that mentioned a 499 record dataset of deaths between 1922 and 1939 for one district ("dataset A"). I have also obtained another dataset of 963 deaths for the same period for an adjacent district ("dataset B"). The deaths are almost exactly split between male and female. Deaths of infants of less than one year in dataset A were 25, and dataset B 63. I have anonymised the information due to Lithuanian privacy laws for events within 100 years.

Grouping the deaths by age in 5 year blocks and adjusting for the different numbers in each dataset ("normalising") we can see the overall pattern of age at death in the two datasets.

The chart on the left (click to expand) shows a good eyeball consistency between the two districts in the pattern of age at death. This gives us some confidence in the quality of both datasets.

Note that I have excluded deaths of infants aged one or under.

What pattern can we see?

Up to the age of about 50 roughly similar numbers die annually and then from there the numbers rise sharply.

There is an interesting twin peak pattern: in the range 71-75 years the number of deaths dips when we might expect a peak. What might be the reason for this? This is really very odd - we are looking at a 17 year period and there is a consistent gap in this age range. I'll look at this again later.

The number of deaths then drops as the number of people left alive at each higher age falls. The oldest death in Dataset A was 102 and in Dataset B was 105. Now there may be some doubters out there, but I have looked at the 102 year old and traced the person back into mid 19th century revision lists and the age does seem to be correct.

How does the pattern of age at death compare to the rest of the world? I chose Switzerland as a benchmark. Switzerland is more formally known as the "Confoederatio Helvetica" or "CH" for short. I made this choice for a number of reasons. It was largely unindustrialised at the time, similar to Lithuania; it was unaffected by Great War deaths, which completely changed the demographics of France, the UK, and Germany; and reliable data is readily available from the Swiss Federal Statistical Office. I used data for 1928 and compared Dataset A with Swiss male and female deaths.

The chart on the right (click to expand) shows this comparison. (Again the total number of deaths has been normalised to facilitate this)

The eyeball consistency is remarkable: and particularly with CH female deaths.

We see the "twin peak" in the Swiss data. This means that our Litvak datasets' twin peaks were not aberrant or an artefact of my amateur analytical methods. There was a cross european phenomenon which meant that there were fewer deaths of 71-75 year olds of both sexes than one might expect.

I have no idea why this might have happened. If any historical demographer chances along here please comment. Anyone in fact: please post any ideas you might have.

Despite this gap in understanding, it is clear from the overall pattern that Litvaks and Swiss had very similar mortality patterns during the interwar years - and it's reasonable to conclude that overall health was therefore similar.

The consistency of the Litvak and Swiss data for the interwar period suggests that looking at Swiss data for earlier periods might be suggestive for the pattern of age at death for Litvaks in earlier periods, where we have much less information for Litvaks.

The chart on the left (click to expand) shows Swiss data for 1876. We see that the pattern is quite different: there are many more deaths at younger ages and many fewer very old people. The average age at death was under 50 in 1876, compared to 64 in dataset A.

This change in longevity has a genealogical impact. Litvak naming traditions were that children were named, when possible, for deceased ancestors. In the first half of the 19th century one can often see names repeated every other generation - by the time the first grandson was born the grandfather was often already dead and their name was therefore available for reuse in the family. But as time passed the grandparents were increasingly still alive - possibly for the birth of every grandchild - and so the first opportunity to reuse a name might be for a great grandchild or even a great great grandchild. The neat naming patterns break down and our task becomes that much more interesting.

To illustrate how things are today I also show 2002 deaths. People now live much longer. But note there is also a dip at 71-75. This suggests we may be seeing a culling effect with slightly more infirm people dying in their late 60s leaving a slightly healthier group with a slightly enhanced chance of survival.

These datasets have a lot more information to offer - for example, in most cases a cause of death is given and analysis of this information could be interesting. This sort of analysis, which can give us the possibility of new insights into the pattern of the lives of our ancestors is only possible with the translation of complete runs of records: this is a new sort of reason to support LitvakSIG's work.

More on marriage

2009-08-01T02:40:00.023Z

I am very pleased to be able to acknowledge the donation by Maria Krane, a former district co-ordinator, of an interesting set of records. The dataset contains records for 242 marriages and 7 divorces of people connected with Salakas from 1877 to 1915. This will be made available to qualified donors once editing is completed.

I have carried out a preliminary analysis of the data: and this posting is to share some of the more interesting findings. Note that the data before 1886 and after 1913 is sparse.

Age at marriage

There is data on age on marriage for most of the women and about half the men.

The average age of men on marriage was about 26 and for women about 23 1/2. The chart on left (click to expand) shows the annual average age for men and women and the rolling 5 year averages. The annual variability is due to the small number of marriages in each year. But the pattern over the period becomes clear when we look at the rolling average: the average age increases by about 1 year every decade. This appears to be the continuation of a longer term trend. From about 1909 the average age drops for men and from 1911 for women. This may be because mass emigration had by those times eliminated many older men and women from the marriage pool, as the eldest generally left first: only younger sisters and brothers were still in Russia.

The youngest age for men was 19 and for women 18. The oldest man was 40 - and he was a widower. The oldest first marriage for a man was 32. The oldest woman on first marriage was 34.

The chart on the right (click to expand) shows the frequency of each age for men and women.

You'll see that the male age curve is about 2 1/2 years to the right of the female curve.

Spouses' hometowns

For most of the marriages we can identify the hometowns for both the bride and groom. In only five cases did a woman from Salakas marry someone from elsewhere - and in every case the groom was from Dvinsk/Daugavpils. So was this also the case for the brides of Salakas men?

The chart on the left (click to expand) shows the home towns of 186 brides of Salakas men over the 25 years from 1886 t0 1910 in five year blocks. I grouped the data together to see trends more easily.

The answer is no.

It is interesting that the total number of marriages rises over 20 years and then drops in 1905-10. This may be an effect of mass emigration - or it may reflect differential survival of records.

In summary, for the whole period to 1913 the statistics are :

Salakas 17%
Other Zarasai district 22%
Vilkomir district 9% (about 1/2 from Utian)
Other Kaunas Gub 4%
Dvinsk district 20%
Other Vitebsk Gub 3%
Vilna Gub 11% (about 1/2 from Sventysyan district)
Other Pale Guberniyas 6% (Minsk, Grodno, Mogilev, Podolia, Suwalki)
Latvian provinces 5% (Courland and Livland)
Other Russian Empire 5%

Perhaps unsurprisingly 3/4 of brides were from the district and the immediately adjacent districts. But there are some very far found brides including Tiflis in Georgia , Dagestan in the Caucasus and Kamanets in Podolia.

Interestingly there were very few brides from the major Lithuanian cities. Over the period there were only 4 from Kovno city and 2 from Vilna. By comparison, there were 38 from Dvinsk and 4 from Vitebsk city. This is reflective perhaps for most people of effective local contact networks (perhaps a local shadchan), but for a few, much broader contacts across Russia. These may have been family, trade, educational or religious affiliations. In one case, in my family, the groom had already emigrated internally to a farm colony in Minsk Guberniya and found a wife there.

In the vast majority of cases the marriage took place at or near to the bride's hometown. And with kest in mind, we can surmise that perhaps 80% or more of the new families started their marital lives outside Salakas. Many indeed in this time period will have left for the US, Canada, the UK or South Africa within a few years after the marriage. But even if they stayed in Russia the associated vital records (such as children's births) will probably be found elsewhere, while the family registration and the list entries will be mainly in Salakas.

The rabbi

For many marriages the officiant (and in some cases the names of witnesses) are given. For Salakas from 1891 the rabbi is G. Lopaiko. This is probably Gershon Lopayko described in the 1912 box taxpayers list as a "wealthy peddler". It's probable that this is the Movsha Gershon Lopayko whose father Binel brought the family from Onikchty/Anysksciai by 1880 (according to the 1887 Family List). On the 1901 town plan Gershon owns 2 properties, number 2 and number 19. Number 2 is a building in the middle of the northern part main square. On the map it is shown with a balance drawn on top - so this seems to be the market. Number 19 is a property just off the northwest corner of the main square. Neither of these buildings now survive.

Does anyone know anything more about the Lopayko family?

Kest and marriage

2009-07-28T06:32:00.002Z

What was "kest"? and why is it so important for the Jewish genealogist?

Kest (or Mezonot) was the practice whereby a bride's parents gave room and board to a newly wed couple for an agreed number of years.

Professor ChaeRan Freeze of Brandeis University describes this is in her book "Jewish Marriage and Divorce in Imperial Russia" (University of New England Press, 2002). The relevant pages are here: http://tinyurl.com/nwe3hc.

For a poor Jewish father unable to afford a significant dowry for his daughter kest would have been an important part of the marriage agreement.

Now the shidduch itself could very easily be made outside the shtetl. For centuries at the large markets held in the big cities Jewish men could be found making matches for their sons and daughters. And we all know from Sholom Aleichem that there was a shadchan in the smallest shtetl - did they form a loose network across the Pale?

The net result of all this activity was that men often married out of their shtetl - and as travel became easier with the advent of the railway - farther and farther away. And then thanks to kest they stayed away for at least some years. At the end of the agreed time they had work, were settled and many would not have resettled their new family to their old home shtetl.

The implications for the genealogist are:

The vital and some other records for the new family (often starting with the marriage) are in the bride's town.
The groom often maintains his family registration in his hometown, so entries in the family and revision lists are there - sometimes registrations are transferred to the bride's town, but this is not common.
The children of the marriage will normally think of their mother's hometown (and usually their birthplace) as their hometown: but as far as the Russian bureaucracy was concerned this was usually wrong.

This last point needs to be grasped with both hands. In my family, a putative cousin was totally adamant that his family came from Rakushik (Rokiskis) - and he was correct, in part: but it was his grandmother's family shtetl. His grandfather was born and registered in Salok (Salakas) and never transferred his registration. We needed to look at Salok lists to find the family link.

Why this discussion? watch this space...

Catching up - Salakas town plan 1901

2009-07-28T06:07:00.004Z

In March 2009 qualified donors received a 1901 town plan of Salakas showing owners of every lot in the town at 7 MB size. The quality of the plan is terrific: print it in colour on A3 and it would look good framed on the wall. The snapshot here does not do it justice.

The plan shows the lot numbers and the names of all the Jewish owners of land and buildings - and all the communal properties.

Compare the pictures to the contemporary satellite view from google http://tinyurl.com/ab5beff - the accuracy is remarkable.

The lists of owners includes:

ARNIST, ASANOVICH, AVERBUKH, AZHINSKY, BAK, BARAKOVSKY, BARST, BEGAM, BEKER, BERMAN, BICHIK, BLEKHMAN, BLEYMAN, BLOSHTEYN, BRAUDO, BRAVO, BRIND, BRINKER, BYK, DEYCH, DUBINOVSKY, EPSHTEYN, EVELSON, EYDELMAN, FELMAN, FRIDLIAND, GADON, GAMBURG, GARBER, GELMAN, GELPERIN, GINDEN, GINDIN, GINZBURG, GLEZER, GLUSHAK, GOLIAND, GORDON, GUTERMAN, IOFE, ITSIKSON, KAGAN, KAMZUL, KARASIN, KATS, KHAIT, KHARMATS, KHAYT, KLAVER, KOPILOVSKY, KORB, KRUZ, KUPERMAN , KUSLEN, LEVIN, LIBERMAN, LIMOVICH, LOPEYKO, LUBOCHKA, MALEROVICH, MALEROVICH , MARGOLIS, MILER, MORDKHOVICH, NEKHEM, OBUZ, OLD CEMETERY , PLOTKA, PODVICH, RAKHMAN, RIFKIND, RIMER, RITS, RITVA, ROKHMAN, ROZENBERG, RUBINSHTEYN, SEGAL, SHAPIRO, SHER, SHERMAN, SHEYNES, SHLIAKHTER, SHMIT, SHTEYN, SHUR, SOLTAN, STRASHUN, SYNAGOGUE, TARN, TEYKHMAN, TSIBEL, TSINMAN, WULFSON, YUDELEVICH, ZAK, and ZURAT,

Rokiskis Postal Savings Bank Records 1891-1915

2009-07-28T02:21:00.005Z

Linda Cantor and the RokiskisSIG have very generously donated a translation of the Rokiskis Postal Savings Bank Records for 1891-1915. This list has 723 lines with much interesting information including amounts deposited, occupation, age and/or birth dates, and, for married women, their maiden names.

Rokiskis was also known as Rokishki [Rus], Rakishok [Yid], Rakiszki [Pol], Rokišķi [Lat], and Rokischken [Ger],

The list has been sent to all qualified donors (currently the qualification level is US$100). Donations can be made online at http://litvaksig.org/index.php?option=com_join&view=join&Itemid=87 and specify Zarasai District Research.

There are many families represented in these records and they include:

ABELEVICH, ABELOVICH, ABRAMOVICH, ADELSON, AFRAMOVICH, ALBER, ALPEROVICH, ARIK, ARONOV, ASINOVSKY, ASNES, AZNIS, BAR, BASMAN, BEDER, BEGUN, BERELOVICH, BERKOVICH, BERMAN, BERNSHTEYN, BERZ, BERZON, BEYNARD, BEYNART, BEYNERT, BEYNERTS, BLIUM, BLIUMBERG, BOR, BORADAVKIN, BRANDT, BRAUMAN, BREYTBORD, BRIKMAN, BRODGALDT (BROTGALDT), BUN, CHAPAYKO, CHETYSHSKY, DAVIDOVICH, DREYBAND, DROBIZ, ELTERMAN, ERMAN, EYDELMAN, EYDELSON, FAKTEROVICH, FAYN, FAYVELEVICH, FELDMAN, FELSHER, FERDE, FINGERBREN, FLAKS, FLAKSMAN, GAR, GELTSER, GESELOVICH, GEYMAN, GLEZER, GOLAND, GOLDMAN, GOLDSHMIDT, GOLSHMID (GOLSHMIDT), GOLUM, GOLUMB ?, GOR, GORDIN, GORDON, GREYS, GREYZ, GRIF, GRIZH, GURVICH, GUTMAN, IOFFE, IOSMAN, IOZEFOVICH, IZRALIT, KADYSHEVICH, KAGANOVICH, KALMANOVICH, KAN, KANKAROVICH, KANTER, KANTOR, KAPELOVICH, KAPLAN, KARK, KASHER, KATS, KATSEN, KATSIN, KELIM, KHAET, KHAETOVICH, KHAIT, KHAITOVICH, KHATSKELZON, KHAZEN, KHEYN, KHIRURG, KHIRURG (KHIRURKH), KHMELNIK, KHOLEV, KLAZ, KLING, KLINGMAN, KLIUMEL, KOGANOVICH, KOLEVZON, KOLOVZON, KOPELEVICH, KOPELOVICH, KOPILOVICH, KOVALSKY, KREMER, KRIL, KROK, KRUK, KRUT, KRYL, KUPERMAN, KUR, KUSHELEVICH, LAKER, LANG, LANGE, LEKUKH, LEV, LEVIN, LEVINSHTEYN, LEVINSON, LEVINZON, LEVITANUS, LEVITIN, LIBMAN, LIMAN, LIUBOVICH, LURIE, MALKIEL, MANASEVICH, MANELEVICH, MANILEVICH (MANELEVICH), MARGOLIS, MARGOLIS , MARON, MATUZON, MAYZEL, MELER, MELLER, MER, MEYEROVICH, MILKIN, MILNER, NOKHIMOVICH, NOKHUMOVICH, ORELOVICH, OSIPOVICH, PEYROS, PEYSAKHOVICH, PLIS, PLISS, POPLAK, POPLIAK, PORTNOY, POVERINETS, PULDO, RABINOVICH, RABKIN, RAKHMAN, RATMAN, REBE, RIF, RITS ?, RIVKIN, ROTSHTEYN, ROZEN, ROZINBERG, RUBIN, RUKH (RURKH), RYBAK, RYBAK (RIBAK), SAETOVICH, SANDLER, SAPOZHNIK, SAYTOVICH, SEGAL, SHADUR, SHAETOVICH, SHAPIRO, SHAYBEL, SHEG, SHEMTOV, SHEMTOV ?, SHER, SHEYDEMANTEL, SHEYDERMAN, SHEYN, SHEYN ?, SHIMELEVICH, SHIMELOVICH, SHLOMOVICH, SHMOTKIN, SHNAYDERMAN, SHNEYDER, SHNEYDERMAN, SHPAK, SHPITS, SHPUNGIN, SHREYBERG, SHRUBINSKY, SHTERN, SHTEYMAN, SHTEYN, SHULMAN, SHUSTER, SHVARTS, SHVARTSBERG, SLOMOVICH ?, SMILG, SNEG, SOLOVEY, SOMER, SON, SRUBISHSKY, TAER, TRAYTIL, TSUKERNIK, VAYNBREN, VAYNMAN, VAYNSHTEYN, VENGERIN, VENGRIN, VEYNIRIT, VEYTS, VINGERIN, VISHNEKOVICH, VISHNIKOVICH, VISHNIKOVICH (VISHNIAKOVICH), VOLPERT, YALOVETSKY, YANKELEVICH, ZAKSHTEYN, ZAMET, ZELBOVICH ?, ZELIKMAN, ZELIKSON, ZEMBOVICH, ZILBERSHTEYN, ZIV, ZOKHER, and ZOLIN.

Hello!

2008-11-12T13:15:00.003Z

Faithful reader:

This has been a deserted, quiet blog for some months: thanks for your patience, and I hope to be again more active here.

The Chicago conference was busy: among other things along with Deena Berton and Sally Mizroch, I stood and was elected to the LitvakSIG, Inc board. There has been a lot to learn about what and how and why. If you have views on the SIG's priorities, do let me know. The conference also sent me haring off after different research possibilities. I am now running a family DNA project.

I did get to meet those different sets of cousins: second, third and putative 6th (or 7th) cousins. Some fascinating payback for hours of research.

Here I have just updated the link for http://www.maps.lt/ - so this now works again - and provides access to the best interactive map of modern Lithuania.

JGS Great Britain held an Eastern European SIG meeting last weekend in London. About 20 Litvaks turned up - with a good mixture of experiences and interests. After introductions we broke into tiny groups to attack brickwalls and other problems. There was good feedback and so there will be similar meetings perhaps 2 or 3 times a year.

News for the future: some record distribution soon...

Our kind of town...

2008-07-22T01:55:00.004Z

I hope to meet district researchers in Chicago next month at the IAJGS conference. This will be my first IAJGS event so I'm looking forward to putting faces and names together. If you see me please stop and chat. I'll be with my mom - she'll also be glad to meet a landsman.

On a personal note, I'll be meeting three different sets of cousins while in Chicago:

my great grandfather's brother's family - who settled in Chicago;
my great great grandfather's brother's great granddaughter - coming in from New York; and
descendants of a putative common great great great great grandfather who settled in St Paul MN, but drifted. (We need very early 19th century records to evidence the connection)

This is really very exciting and one of the great rewards for this genealogical obsession!

Tauragnai lists

2008-07-22T01:52:00.002Z

At the very end of June we distributed two lists for Tauragnai:

(i) an 1880 family list of Jews transferred from Salakas and
(ii) a 1912 candle taxpayers list.

Thanks to our members for their continuing support!

Salakas 1876 family list

2008-07-22T01:46:00.002Z

In June we finally received and distributed the 1876 Family List for Salakas from the Kaunas archive thanks to one particular donation. It covers the period 1876 to 1887 and includes 5279 individual records. The most exciting feature of this list is that it includes ages for almost all women and girls. This is a rare feature.

The comments column is interesting. There is an entry for "murder and forgery", several conversions and one deportation to Siberia. It also shows the mass movement of families -mostly to nearby shtetls towns around the region - some of which we had not identified before on the district list including:

Tilze (also known as Tylza) at 5540 2634, located 17.8 miles NE from Salakas in the NE corner of Lithuania where the Lithuanian , Latvian and Belarussian borders meet. Tilze is in Shtetlseeker and is on the northern shore of Lake Druskiu.
Bachmatai/Bachmaty about 2 km south of Zarasai.

Belarus shtetls: some photos and finding Pelikany

2008-04-21T23:42:00.006Z

The Zarasai district boundaries follow the pre-1918 map. This means we cover a number of shtetls that are now in Belarus. These include, most notably, Vidzy with 49 researchers registered on the JewishGen Family Finder, and Braslaw with 23. Many records for these Belarussian shtetls are in Lithuanian archives.

Current pictures of the area are at http://www.radzima.org/pub/miesta.php?lang=en&rajon_id1=vibr. There are a lot of churches.

When I took over as district co-ordinator I tried to develop a list of all the shtetls we cover. One name that came up was Pelikany. And I looked at old maps, http://tinyurl.com/4jhwow for example, and there it was between Widxi (ie Vidzy) and Opsa (by the way this 1650 map has north to the right). But on modern maps it was nowhere. Look at http://tinyurl.com/4ca35u and zoom in: no Pelikany. There is a catholic episcopal website that lists a Pelikany church, but where it is was a mystery and they didn't answer my email.

There are no JGFF researchers listed for Pelikany, but there is a 1914 taxpayers list at Kovno according to www.rtrfoundation.org , so you never know...

The search went on in a fitful and desultory way and then at http://www.radzima.org/pub/miesta.php?lang=en&rajon_id1=vibr I found the answer... if you look on the left you see "Pielikany (Miluncy)". And then you go back to the modern map and find: "Milyuntsy" just west of Opsa.

So: the old shtetl was replaced by a new village, but the Church kept the old parish name. This is a story that one sees all over England, so it shouldn't have been a surprise - and it's a salutary reminder that not only people and families change their name.

New revision list translated for Salakas!

2008-04-21T22:47:00.003Z

I have today sent district research group members a spreadsheet containing a translation of the Vilnius Archive revision lists for Salakas over the period 1858 to 1876. There are 3082 lines of data.

This is the first of a number of lists that we should receive this year that will be sent promptly to research group members.

In accordance with LitvakSIG policy, the list will be made available through the All Lithuania database in 2009 to all other researchers.

Thanks to those members whose continuing support have made this possible!

Some statistics: mortality in reverse

2008-02-12T22:20:00.001Z

A warning to readers: this is a somewhat morbid discussion. I guess a consultancy at a life insurance company in 2006 has left its mark.

I recently was given a database of deaths containing about 500 deaths covering a district for 17 years in the 1920/30s. I found 2 people on the list who were from one family I'm researching. Only 2 people for an area that included that family's home shtetl! What was going on? Could I extract any more information from the database?

The average age of death was about 65 (excluding deaths over infants less than 12 months old). This means the overall annual death rate should be about the reciprocal of this: about 1.5% annually. This is a fairly crude basis: any actuary interested should let me know how this ought to be done.

Over 17 years this means that 25.5% of adults might be expected to die. So for any number of deaths the one might expect that they come from a group that is about 4 times that number. So 2 deaths in a family means that the size of the family should be about 8.

But this is only a statistical expectation, the real number could be higher (the family were healthy/wealthy) or lower (the family were poorly/poor). There is a strong correlation between wealth and mortality. What could be the range be? Statisticians use confidence intervals to define a range of likely results. I determined a 90% confidence range, using a roundabout method. I concluded that 2 deaths might mean between 2 and about 22 in the family.

I then looked at the numbers for other numbers of deaths over 17 years using the same overall death rate. My estimates are below [sorry about the layout]:

No of deaths .....Expected family size ....Lower limit ........Upper limit

5 ........................20 ....................9 ..................36
10 .......................39 ...................25 ..................58
20....................... 78................... 61.................. 98

Is this useful information? It told me at least that with high probability very few people in the target family had stayed in the home shtetl over this period - probably around 8 and almost certainly fewer than 22. This suggests that my failure to find significant numbers of people from this family in the home district in the interwar period and in Holocaust records (compared to the hundreds elsewhere at the time) is not a result of poor research technique - almost everyone had gone.

If anyone can suggest a better actuarial approach to this problem, please let me know.

New grand total for 2007

2007-12-31T18:19:00.000Z

I've just received news of more donations for December 2007. The total for the year is now US$4,604 - a grand total.

Thanks for everyone's help!

Happy new year!

Forward to 2008!

2007-12-20T00:39:00.000Z

2008, as I write, looms on the horizon. But the looming doesn't carry menace, but promise. Some of the promise is no more than hope - will we succeed in bringing in significant funding?

But some of the promise is guaranteed. There are a number of translation projects in the works - thanks to specific, generous donations this year - in particular for Salakas and Tauragnai - that will be completed in 2008. When we know how these cost out we will select further translation projects - and I do need group members to tell me what their priorities are.

I thank everyone who has contributed this year and who has helped make this a standout year.

I list below the donations to LitvakSIG for each year from 1999 that have been specified to Zarasai district. All figures are in US$.

1999....................228.00
2000................1,358.00
2001.................1,600.00
2002 ...............1,000.00
2003...................304.00
2004....................371.00
2005....................136.00
2006....................139.00
2007................4,054.00

This year's scale of donations means that we can make real progress. Please help keep this momentum going. If you haven't already, please think about a major donation - from yourself, from your family or from someone else who might be persuaded to contribute.

Ensuring the project's future

2007-11-04T20:16:00.000Z

The Group has supported Zarasai district research over more than 8 years. Over US$5,000 has been raised by the group and, with general LitvakSIG funds, about US$12,000 spent on many thousands of records over the past 10 years. This has been fantastic work by a number of district and research co-ordinators.

We have gone away and looked at what remains to be done. There are probably more than 25,000 records still to translate for the District. Knowing current costs and estimating future costs, this will probably cost more than US$20,000. At current donation rates, it would take many years, and not before 2020, to gather this. I don't want to wait that long. I'm hoping you share this feeling.

I am therefore today starting a more active search for donors - including those at the US$100 level - but particularly for larger donors. The objective is to have the funds in hand within the year to be 100% confident that we can achieve the goal of 100% translation of Russian Imperial records for the District and its shtetls within a reasonable time. With help from Olga Zabludoff, Maria Krane and Linda Cantor, I have prepared a short presentation about the project. This is available as a pdf file.

I now need more help - and this is from you. I'm not asking you for the money (although if you want...), but for help in getting our message out to people who might be able to help. There are a number of ways this might be made to happen, that could include talking with:

(1) Individuals or charitable foundations that you know and who might be open to help.

(2) Individuals in your own families. I'm approaching the more successful members of my clan. Some of them have been thrilled to be brought into contact with long lost and never known cousins and are positive about helping.

(3) Your family as a group. Bringing together many small donations - perhaps in honour of a founding father or mother - has the potential to add up to a decent amount. I'm hoping that if even a small proportion of the 1,000+ people in my clan might be induced to give US$10 each, then that could be US1,000 raised.

The pdf presentation is the basic tool. It needs to be moved out to where it might do some good. Ask me for a copy.

It's easy for any one to donate http://www.jewishgen.org/Litvak/HTML/donate.htm for credit cards and http://www.jewishgen.org/Litvak/HTML/donor.htm is the form for a mail in donation.

Please use me as a resource; to talk with people, to answer questions, to persuade and to let me know how things are going: are there problems with the presentation? or the message? how could this be done better?

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me. If you have any other ideas for how we might achieve our goal, please let me know. If you can suggest other people I should be mailing, tell me. And if you find someone who might give a very, very big amount: we can use it - LitvakSIG has a range of projects that need support.

Remember: our work as a Group is all about delivering "the gift of the past for the Jewish family of the future". Please help me make this

Unlisted records

2007-08-19T20:52:00.000Z

The CD-ROM for "Avotaynu" is an interesting source for information of all kinds. Searching through it recently I came across two articles by researcher Yakov Shadevich from 1995 and 1996.

The 1996 article lists Revision Lists in the Vilnius archive. Now the surprising thing about this is that these Revision Lists are not in our database of records and they're not in the rtrfoundation listing.

Those for district shtetls is as follows:

Antaliepte 1882
Breslauja (Braslav) 1816–27, 1871, 1874
Breslauja-Slabada 1816–27
Dubinovo (Dubene) 1816–27
Dusetos (Dusiat) 1870–71, 1883
Kamajai 1871, 1875–76
Pandelys (Ponedel) 1871
Papile 1858, 1865
Rokiskis 1871
Salakas (Salok) 1816–27, 1848, 1858, 1860, 1871, 1872–75, 1880
Tauragnai (Targin) 1816–27
Vydziai 1816–27, 1871, 1882
Zarasai 1816–27, 1863–64, 1883

For some of the shtetls - Papilys, for example - these records are not matched by anything we had databased and represent a wonderful research opportunity.

The 1816-27 records may provide the vital link to the 1784 Grand Duchy census.

I'll write about Mr Shadevich's other article in due course....

"Order, order"

2007-08-15T18:46:00.000Z

The Speaker of the British Parliament traditionally intones "order, order" to open business. We say "order, order" when we have donations that allow us to place orders for new translations.

Thanks in particular to Maria Krane we are moving ahead with our first 2007 orders.

The tiny shtetl of Tauragnai has few records, so we're aiming to get them all. Interestingly one set of records from 1880 is a list of "Jews transferred from Salakas". There is also a similar list for 1875 for Antaliepte. There are no similar lists for other shtetls. What happened in Salakas to cause enough movement for special lists of this type?

Salakas researchers can look forward to the 1876 Salakas family list - to fill in the long gap between the 1845 and 1887 lists - and the 1901 Real Estate Owners list with a town plan. The plan could be quite exciting. There are also Real Estate Owner lists for Drysviaty, Pandelys and Rimse.

We have some money in hand for further projects - and I'd like your nominations of what to go for next!

Thoughts from the weekend

2007-05-07T23:02:00.000Z

At the weekend I helped out at the JGSGB stand at the "Who do you think you are live" show at Olympia in London: Britain's biggest ever genealogical event. It was exhausting, but interesting and fun. One of the features at the show was celebrities being interviewed about their families (the BBC has a series that researches celeb's families).

I caught the end of one interview with a Jewish television personality - who said that his family had left Latvia because of "the pogroms". No, they didn't. (By the way, we know that his father's side immigrated to the UK from Latvia in 1893 and his mother's family arrived in the 1930s from, I guess, Germany).

Why is there this common misconception? and why did about 2 million Jews leave Russia between 1880 and 1914?

I think this idea gained currency for a number of reasons.

Coincidence of timing: The emigration accelerated after 1881. The most famous wave of pogroms in south Russia (Ukraine primarily) started in 1881.
1930s emigrants: German/Austrian Jewish emigration in the 1930s definitely was motivated by antisemitic activity (eg Kristallnacht also called Pogromnacht).
Emotional simplicity: "Zadie, why did you come to America?" "Because of the Cossacks and the Pogroms."

But if the Cossacks and the Pogroms were so awful how come there were still about 4 million Jews in the Pale in 1914. Why didn't everyone leave? The only reasonable answer is that things were sometimes very, very bad, but only for very, very few (as made clear by Bartal in The Jews of Eastern Europe 1772-1881 at page 146). So why did our families leave?

I'm sure that someone somewhere has researched this thoroughly, and please, someone let me know what I should be reading on this.

I identify three types of cause for the emigration: push, pull and technical.

Push causes

Population growth was remarkable. The Jewish population in the Russian empire through the 19th century rose from 1.6 million in 1820, to 2.4 million in 1850 and reached 4 million by 1880. The marginal nature of the economy in the northern guberniya meant that there must have been problems supporting the population.
Periodic famines every 10-12 years would have become more problematic with urbanisation. 1868-1869 saw crop failures across the Baltic region from Finland down through Kovno and Vilna Guberniyas.
Economic stress was enhanced at the bottom end of the economy by the freedom of the serfs in 1861 which created new competition in many areas of Jewish activity and by continuing restrictions on education limiting Jewish access to the professions.
Government policy to Jews including economic restrictions introduced as "temporary rules" in 1882 (including as one element tacit support for pogroms).

Pull causes

Economic opportunity in the capitalist, industrialising nations (US, Canada, UK, South America) and in South Africa (diamond rush from 1871 and a gold rush from 1886).
Religious toleration in the West.

Technical causes

The so-called "second Industrial revolution" started in about 1850. New railways allowed easy movement around Europe - the first train arrived at Vilna in 1860. Screw propeller steam ships were developed - from about 1870 this allowed reliable, cheap transocean sea travel.
Development of the money economy in Russia and savings and credit institutions which allowed potential emigrant families to find the cash to send one pioneer to the West.

In summary: there were reasons to go, places to go to and the means to get there. The pogroms may have helped create a mood where the movement happened sooner rather than later, but they were not what it was all about.

What does your family history tell us about this?

Developing the plan....

2007-04-02T23:50:00.000Z

Why do we need a plan? That almost sounds like a silly question. Making a plan helps people to put in their viewpoint and gains commitment to what comes out of the process. It means we have priorities for our work and we have clear ideas of goals and outcomes. We haven't a plan right now.

My idea for making our plan is to work on two main levels:
- a district wide level; and
- a shtetl level.

The district wide level will focus on the translation of the district revision lists. We'll need to gain some feel for the numbers and types of records included there and then identify priorities.

The shtetl level plans will look at what's been translated for each shtetl, what's untranslated and taking account of the probable number of interested researchers we can set priorities for each shtetl.

For some shtetls there may be no records to translate. In those cases there are two main areas of possible translation activity: the district level records, and yizkor books - many of which have not been translated for the district's shtetls.

At the same time there is scope for other activity that should be useful:

1. Shtetl family trees - Steve Bloom has posted on this subject for Salakas.

2. Emigration studies - where did people go and when. This may help with ideas for developing your research as people from the same shtetl often went to the same place.

3. Creation of shtetlinks - websites for each of the shtetls - to bring together yizkor book material, trip reports, photos, family trees and anything else that's relevant.

So in the end we can create a priority list for each shtetl for all this possible activity over the next few years.

Let's hear from you, please!

Family Tree Project

2007-03-31T22:34:00.000Z

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

2007-03-28T22:50:00.000Z

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?

2007-03-22T18:36:00.000Z

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?

2007-03-20T03:56:00.000Z

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

2007-03-16T03:29:00.000Z

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

2007-03-13T19:31:00.000Z

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.

Get daily updates by email

2007-03-11T15:26:00.001Z

You can get a daily email with updates (posts and comments) to this Weblog. It's the easy way to keep up to date.

Look at the left hand side and you'll see a box for you to put in your email address. Click the "Subscribe me" box. You'll be asked to retype a wavy text/number combination. Very quickly you should receive an email from "Blitzfeed". For verification purposes you'll need to click a URL.

All of that work is for your and our security. Blitzfeed will not use your email address for any other purpose - it's only for subscribing here. And you can unsubscribe at any time with two clicks.

Salakas cemetery data

2007-03-11T13:51:00.000Z

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

2007-03-07T16:20:00.000Z

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

Some thoughts about projects

2007-02-21T23:54:00.000Z

I'd like your ideas about projects we can undertake together in this and future years.

A huge amount has been achieved in recent years with help from many researchers in the the district. We have thousands of revision list and other records that allow some of us to trace our families to the 18th century. Rokiskis has created a first class shtetl website.

These achievements allow us to consider projects that would have been unthinkable a few years ago. But for some shtetls basic translation work still needs to be done, and for a few there are very limited or no records available. Whatever the position for each shtetl and for each researcher there are worthwhile projects that should allow us to build a better understanding of our families' history.

For me there are three main questions that motivate my research:

where did we come from?
where did we go?
who are we today?

I'll be posting summaries of information about each shtetl in the district to allow for informed discussion.

I look forward to your comments.

Other contemporary district maps

2007-02-21T23:34:00.000Z

These are tourist maps from the Utena county website: they cover Zarasai, Ignalina and Utena districts.

Click on the maps to see them in larger size.

Rokiskis district map

2007-02-21T18:12:00.000Z

This is the current Rokiskis municipality area. It covers a central part of the old Zarasai district.

Click on the map to see it in large size.

1650 Blaeu map

2007-02-21T16:34:00.000Z

This part of a map of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania published in about 1650 and drawn by Blaeu.

Unusually north is to the right -->. So Vilna is on the far left and Dinaburg (Dvinsk/Daugavpils) on the far right.

Salakas (Solok) and Rokiskis (Rakisski) are swapped around. And Kamajai looks to have travelled east.

Click on the map to see it at a good size.