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Brichany

Other Names

A village of 5,000 people before WWII, Brichany/Briceni is now, at a population of 80,000, the fifth largest city in Moldova, which itself is peopled by around 4.5 million people.  A second shtetl, around 30 miles away to the east, is also known as Brichany or Briceni.  The first Brichany is, according to ShtetlSeeker,  at 48° 22´ north latitude and 27° 06´ east longitude, which put the shtetl 124.1 miles northwest of Chisinau (also Chisenau, Cisenau, Kisheneff, Kishenev), the capital of Moldova.  The second Brichany/Briceni is, again according to ShtetlSeeker, at 48° 22´ north latitude and 27° 42´ east longitude, which put that shtetl 108 miles north northwest of Chisinau -- and on the northeasternmost border of pickle-shaped Moldova.   But other sources appear to treat the two Brichany/Briceni shtetls as the same place!

There is also a controversy over which spelling of the shtetl should appear atop this page: Brichany or Briceni.  Some allege that Briceni represents the shtetl in Romanian and in Moldovan and that Brichany is only a transliteration from the Russian spelling.   The problem with that argument is that regardless of the country in control of the land, the people living there would still call the shtetl by its name.  Given also that "Brichany" is how immigrants at the turn of the century wrote the name of the town and that the author of this text has seen that spelling in their handwriting, the name atop this page shall remain Brichany until definitive information is received which demonstrates that our people called it something else.  The author of this text is not even convinced that our people spoke Romanian or Moldovan.  Brichany might even have been a transliteration of the Yiddish pronunciation as it was spoken then . . . although one reader of this site has argued that Britshan is the Yiddish equivalent.

Even the answer to "When was a "Moldavian" town in Moldavia, Moldova, Romania, Russia, or Bessarabia?" is elusive . . . for between 1711 and 1944,  "Russia invaded Romania about 12 times" [Dima monograph] and control changed several times.  For the full story, one reaching back to 100 CE, see  History of Region.

All of the above, of course, is in perfect harmony with the mysterious history of the Moldovan Jews,  who are believed to be a mixture of Hungarian, Ukrainian,  and Turkish Jews, the latter being descendants of the Jews from the Turkish state of Khazaria, who, it is speculated, comprised the majority of the Jews populating the area  in the late 1400s.  But whoever they are, Brichanians, love bryndza cheese and mamaliga -- mamaliga, a symbol in as many poems extolling the beauty of Romania as it is the subject of recipes worldwide.

For a fascinating learned site, go to http://www.khazaria.com.   And when you go to the map linked below, note that in yesteryear, Turkey's northern boundary was considerably different than it is today:  that part of Turkey in which Khazaria was located was north and east of the Black Sea as well as north and west of the Caspian Sea, making Khazaria almost the "next-door" neighbor of the land which later became the principality of Moldavia at a time when it nuzzled up to the Black Sea.

History of Region

Maps

Pictures

Brichany Jews

  • Amizur, Y.,  Brichany: Its Jewry in the first half of our century (Tel Aviv)

    • Table of Contents
  • Amizur, Y.,  Brichany . . . Memorial book inscriptions

    • Brichaner Immigrants

    Moldovan Resources

    Genealogical Research Sources

    Note: These lists are for Brichany/Briceni at 4822-2706.

    Holocaust Research Sources

     Project Proposed


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    Webpage Compiled by Barbara Cholfin Johnson
    Updated BCJ:  9 May 1999
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