Ukraine: Jewish agricultural colonies updated

Material has been added to the Jewish Agricultural Colonies of the Ukraine site, which states:

The study of Jewish agricultural settlement in an organized form in the European Diaspora contributes to an understanding of the endeavors of Jews to improve their social and economic situation under the restrictive and oppressive Tsarist regime.

The Jewish farmers’ efforts were a unique episode in the struggle for Jewish survival in the Diaspora, even as they held to Jewish values and lifestyle.

As archives in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine become more accessible, more new material is now appearing. In those countries, descendants of the colonists are finding material and developing websites. Although most are in the Russian language, various online translation tools help researchers.

Chaim Freedman is the force behind this site.

Here are some highlights:

Two valuable Russian books hold information about the Ekaterinoslav colonies:

L. Uleinikov [Binshtok], Jewish Agricultural Colonies in Ekaterinoslav Province in 1890, St Petersburg, 1891;

I. Kankrin, Jewish Agricultural Colonies of Aleksandrov Uyezd Ekaterinoslav Province, Ekaterinoslav, 1893.

The authors made detailed censuses of the colonies and provided statistics.

The census of the households included an overview of each colony and a summary of its history and assets. Kankrin added detailed house and street handwritten plans of the 10 colonies he studied, and sketches of buildings.

Uleinikov includes complete lists of heads of all families (surname, name and patronymic) in 17 colonies of Ekaterinoslav Province, Aleksandrovsk and Mariupol Uyezds, with detailed record of family composition, military service, type of house, agricultural implements, livestock, land and its subdivision within family and notes about profession etc.

Kankrin studied in a similar fashion 10 colonies in Aleksandrovsk Uyezd and has even more information about colonists' families. He was obsessed with the idea that colonists in reality remained artisans and not worked much as agriculturalistsPartial translations are available.

Other additions to the site:

-- Interview of Ukrainian residents of former Jewish colony Novozaltopol by Father Patrick Desbois; a horrifying account which demonstrates who actually carried out the massacre of nearly 800 Jews.

-- Photographs from the St. Petersburg Film archive and World ORT Photographic archive taken of many colonies in 1904 and 1922 showing public buildings such as schools, synagogues, municipal offices, and farmhouses.

-- "Nayzlatopler Rayon" [Novozlatopol Region] an account of the Sovietized colonies after the Revolution and Civil War.

-- "Destruction of Jewish Tradition under the Soviet Administration" [in process]

-- An article assessing the affect of Sovietization on the destruction of Jewish cultural and religious life with particular reference to the role of the Yevsekzia.

-- Revision lists from colonies Zelenopole and Mezhirech, 1850 and 1858.

-- Memoirs of Grafskoy 1907-1921 by the son of the colony's rabbi. Description of colony life, and reaction to post-Revolution pogroms.

-- Prenumeranten lists from two 1911 books include many residents.

-- A new links page for more information.

Chaim adds that Yakov Pasik's Russian site has been updated with English, photos and maps.

For more information, contact Chaim Freedman.

Seattle: Deciphering Cyrillic and Hebrew, Feb. 8

Learn to decipher Eastern European Cyrillic and Hebrew archival documents at the next meeting of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Washington State on Monday, February 8.

Doors open at 7pm at the Stroum Jewish Community Center, Mercer Island.

"Reading in Another Hand: Deciphering Cyrillic and Hebrew Archival Documents from Eastern Europe," will be presented by Natan M. Meir.

This lecture-workshop will demonstrate elements of the Russian and Hebrew/Yiddish cursive scripts used in the Russian Empire in the 19th-early 20th centuries. Topics discussed will include the Cyrillic and Hebrew alphabets, their use in archival documents, key words and phrases in documents of interest to genealogists, and the structure of tsarist and Soviet archives.

A number of archival documents will be viewed as attendees work together to decipher words and phrases.

Participants are encouraged to contact the speaker in advance with specific documents or questions they've had problems with, and some will be integrated into the presentation. Email questions.

Born in Jerusalem, Natan Meir was raised in New Jersey and Quebec. He earned a PhD in Jewish History (Columbia University, 2003), and is the Lokey Assistant Professor of Judaic Studies at Portland State University. His scholarly interest is modern Jewish history, focusing on the social and cultural history of East European Jewry in the 19th and 20th centuries.

His first book - "Kiev: Jewish Metropolis, 1859-1914" - is forthcoming from Indiana University Press, and he is now working on a second project tentatively titled "Jewish Marginals in Eastern Europe."

Fee: JGSWS members, free; others, $5.

For directions and additional information, see the JGSWS site.

Volunteers needed: Cyrillic, Hebrew

Can you read and transliterate accurately from Hebrew or Cyrillic to English?

This is your chance to do a mitzvah (Hebrew, good deed) for thousands of researchers around the world who do not have your language skills. This project is for the JewishGen Romania Special Interest Group (RomSIG) , with data destined for the Romania Database.

And, if your roots are in the towns named below, you might even discover your own family's records while participating!

RomSIG coordinator Bob Wascou (Sacramento, California) desperately needs people who can read the difficult Hebrew. For Kishinev, nearly all the Cyrillic records have been done, but the Hebrew records need to be validated. For Balti, there are many records to be done from scratch in both languages.

I know readers are asking about validation, which is basically a term for quality control.

Volunteers will quality control those Kishinev vital records already translated from Cyrillic. This requires a person fluent in Hebrew to check what was entered on Excel spreadsheets and add anything different from the original Hebrew record.

For Balti, volunteers are needed to both translate the Cyrillic and Hebrew vital records and input data in Latin letters on Excel spreadsheets.

More than 123,000 records were created by the Jewish communities in the towns were the events took place, with text in both Russian (Cyrillic) and Hebrew script.

The original records are at the National Archives of the Republic of Moldova (NARM) in Chisnau, Moldova, were microfilmed by the Genealogical Society of Utah, and were provided to JewishGen on CD-ROMs. The films are available through the LDS Family History Library and all LDS Family History Centers.

Requirements:

- Volunteers must have the ability to read Hebrew or Cyrillic
- To view JPG images as email attachments
- Knowledge of Excel
- Ability to input data into Excel template
- Have a high degree of accurate data entry.

All entries will be made in Latin letters, and transliterated as necessary from Hebrew or Russian according to standardized guidelines, which will be supplied to volunteers.

To volunteer, email Bob and tell him about your language skills.

For more information, check out this webpage.