Belarus shtetls: some photos and finding Pelikany

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.

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.