Dear Fellow Kremenetsers,
It has been quite a while since I have sent out a Kremenets
Shtetl CO-OP Update message, so I'd like to take this opportunity to bring
you up-to-date on all
the things we have been doing in the past year.
Vital Records
The biggest news of the year is that we have obtained from
the LDS all of the Kremenets Jewish Vital Records that they have microfilmed.
At our request,
our LDS contacts obtained Church approval and then Ukraine
Archives approval to digitize the seven rolls of microfilm; They put the ledger
images on
cd-rom and provided the cd-rom set to us ... all at no cost
to us. This greatly reduces our copying and mailing costs. More important,
it makes the work of
our translators/transliterators a bit easier. Now a translator
can magnify the ledger page images, improving his/her ability to read the
handwritten ledger
entries. And, using a split screen on a monitor, the ledger
page can appear on one part of the screen and our data input template on the
other. The terms of
agreement with the LDS and Ukraine Archives does impose some
restrictions on us, however. The most important restrictions are (1) we can
not make the
image files generally available; They can go only to our
translators, and (2) we have 2 years to complete our work on the files. All
results will be freely
available, so we have no restrictions on posting the results
to our website and to JRI-Poland. We are deeply indebted to Wayne Metcalfe
and Brent
Griffiths of the LDS for sheparding our proposal through
the approval process, and to Steve Valentine for getting the cd-roms produced
and delivered to
us.
Side Note: The Belarus SIG and the Litvak SIG obtained similar
agreements with the LDS about the same we did.
Volunteers Needed: Now that we have the cd-roms,
we need a few volunteers to "index" them. You don't need to know
Russian or Hebrew to do this.
Let me explain. Each cd-rom contains the image files from
one of the seven rolls of microfilm. Each image file is sequentially numbered.
Each numbered file
shows two ledger pages, a Russian page and the corresponding
Hebrew/Yiddish page. The left columns on each page sequentially number the
female and
male births or deaths, or the marriages that occurred in
that year. We need to index which numbered events appear in each image file.
To do this, all you
have to do is record the numbers in the left-hand columns
for each page. I have done some of this indexing and have developed a data
template to record
the results. It is tedious work, but pretty straightforward.
We need volunteers to complete this task. This is what you will need if you
volunteer:
Indexing will allow us to locate, quickly, the file containing
any particular record. If you can help, or if you have any questions about
what is involved, please
contact me (rondoctor@earthlink.net).
Vital Records translalations that have been completed: Until now, we have relied entirely on our fellow
Kremenetsers to work as volunteer
translators/transliterators. About a dozen of you have stepped
forward to help. As a result, we have completed initial translation of the
1870 birth records,
and the 1870 through 1872 death records, a total of 974 records
out of the 15,000 we have. I'm sorry to say that I've been a bottleneck in
getting the actual
records on-line to the JRI-Poland site. However, we are taking
steps to accelerate this effort. In the meantime, we have posted the surnames
that appear in
these records. They appear on the Kremenets section of the
JRI-Poland website. Go to http://www.jewishgen.org/jri-pl/jripldat.htm.
Scroll down the list
until you get to Kremenets. There you will find the Surname
List. It is indexed to indicate where in each source the surname was found.
Together with names obtained from our Yizkor Book translations
(see below), we now have identified more than 1,500 names. Of those there
are 415
different surnames and 257 different given names.
In addition to the names of people, we are extracting the
names of towns mentioned in the vital records, and indexing where in the records
they are
mentioned. So far, we have a list of 47 different towns,
most of them fairly close to Kremenets. We will make this list available to
our Kremenetser group in
the near future.
Many thanks to our volunteer translators: Al Bell, Yael
Driver, David Dubin, Gary Khusidman, Rick Liftig, Peggy Pearlstein, and
Alan Shuchat for
leading the way on these translations, and to Adam Bronstein
for translating the column headings..
Using Professional Translators for Vital Records Translations:
Translating/transliterating the vital records has turned out to be
much more difficult and
time consuming than we anticipated. (Ask any of our volunteers
about this!) Reading the old, handwriting is hard, despite the transliteration
aides we have
developed, so progress has been steady, but slow.
Now we are considering supplementing our volunteers with
paid professional translators. Sheree Roth, Co-Coordinator of the CO-OP, is
working to
identify suitable professionals and to determine the lowest
reasonable cost to get this work done. So far she has been in touch with 46
translators. She has
received bids ranging from $.17 to $5.00 per single record.
(Do the math ... That's a lot of money!)
Sheree will soon let you know what the results of this search
are. Be sure to look for her message. If we can hire several professional
translators we will be
able to complete this part of the vital records translation
in a timely manner, and all of us will have a better chance of extending our
ancestral lines back to the
1850s and perhaps even earlier.
Yizkor Book Translation Project
As most of you know, in the two decades after World War 2,
the Organization of Kremenets Emigrants published two Yizkor Books, one in
Tel Aviv in
1954, the other in Buenos Aires in 1965. Our translation
efforts have been focused on the Tel Aviv book. So far, we have translated
about 110 pages of the
454 page book. The translation is on-line, complete with
included figures and photos, at the JewishGen Yizkor Book website
(http://www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/kremenets/kremenets.html).
An addition to the translation was posted in early February, so if you haven't
been to the
website recently, be sure to visit and peruse the book. When
you do, be sure to take a look at the Names Index, which we added to the translation
to help
you find people listed in the book. We also have included
names from this and other Kremenets Yizkor Books in the Kremenets Surname
List on
JRI-Poland.
Many thanks to Rob Goldstein, Aya Betensky,
David Dubin, Rabbi and Mrs. Ben Friedman, Sari Havis, Jack
Horbal, Barbara Lipkin, Thia
Persoff, Elliott Raisen, Aviv Tzur, and Steve Wien
for contributing translations to the Yizkor Book project. In addition, we
owe thanks to Shalom
Bronstein, Jules Feldman, David Goldman, Alan Hirshfeld,
and David Wilk for their translation assistance on the project.
Thanks to Peter Kardon, we now have the Buenos Aires
Yizkor Book digitized and on cd-rom. In the next few months we will consider
ways to distribute
this book to our
members, as well as the pages of the Tel Aviv book we have digitized and translated
so far. To raise money for completing these
translations, it has been suggested that we offer copies
of the cd-rom to those who make some (as yet undesignated) minimum contribution
to the Kremenets
Yizkor Book project. I would like to hear your thoughts on
this proposal, and on what the contribution should be. If you have any comments,
please send
them to me at rondoctor@earthlink.net.
The Booklet Series:
In addition to the two Yizkor Books, from 1967 through 1982 the Organization
of Kremenets Emigrants, published a series of at
least 18 booklets. Most of them were titled, Kol yotzei Kremenits
b'Yisrael v’batfutsot (Voices of those who departed Kremenets, in Israel and
the
Diaspora). The booklets were published in Tel Aviv and distributed
to Kremenetsers worldwide through representatives in New York, Buenos Aires,
and
Winnipeg. Norm Kagan, whose father, William Kagan,
was the New York representative of the Kremenets landsmanshaft has donated
copies of all
booklets he had to the CO-OP and to YIVO. We have added these
Booklets (each 50 to 70 pages long) to our list of items to be translated.
However, several of the published Booklets are missing from
our collection. They are Booklets #3 through #7, #9, #13, and #17, plus any
numbered greater
than #18. If any of you have one of these missing Booklets
in your possession, I ask you to make a copy and send it to me, so that we
can get it translated.
Other towns that appear in the Kremenets Yizkor Books:
Several towns near Kremenets either have Yizkor Books of their own, or are
included in one
of the Kremenets Yizkor Books.
Pochayev
(Pitshayev, 50° 01’/25° 29’, 11.8 miles WSW of Kremenets) is included in the
Buenos Aires book. In addition, there is separate Yizkor
Book for Pochayev.
A partial translation, with a Name Index, is on the JewishGen Yizkor Book
site.
(http://www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/pochayev/pochayev.html)
Shumsk
(Szumsk, Shumskoye; 50 07 N / 26 07 E, 17.8 miles E. of Kremenets) is included
in the title and content of the Booklets beginning with
Booklet 16 in
1979. In addition, there is separate Yizkor Book for Szumsk. A partial translation
is on the JewishGen Yizkor Book site
(http://www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/szumsk/szumsk.html).
Vyshgorodok
(Vishgorodek, 49° 46’/25° 58’, 25.6 miles SSE of Kremenets) is included in
the Buenos Aires book.
Yampol’/Tikhomel’
(49° 58’/26° 15’, 25.4 miles ESE of Kremenets) has a separate Yizkor Book.
It is on the JewishGen Yizkor Book site.
(http://www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/yampol/Yampol.html)
Please advise me of any other Yizkor Books you know of that
are for towns in the Kremenets area. It is important to recognize that our
ancestors moved
around quite a bit, and the Yizkor Books for nearby towns
may have information about Kremenets families.
Kremenets ShtetLinks Website
Sheree Roth and her son Max have put forth a tremendous effort
to create and then expand our Kremenets ShtetLinks website. If you haven't
visited it
recently, point your web browser to http://www.shtetlinks.jewishgen.org/Kremenets/.
You are in for a delightful treat. The website now has separate
sections featuring:
General
Information, including Questions and answers about the Kremenets Shtetl
CO-OP; Past updates about our activities, a brief history of
Kremenets, a
map of the Russian Empire, a description of the Kremenets Jewish Cemetery
from the IAJGS Cemeteries Project, and a Biography of
Isaac Stern from
The Violin Multimedia Encyclopedia.
Reports produced
by modern day Kremenetsers, including a travel report by Beth Miller,
and a letter about the New York City Kremenitzer
Volyner Society
submitted by Norm Kagan.
Kremenets
records and name lists, including, an article I wrote describing birth
and death patterns in the vital records of Kremenets, Al Bell's
guides for translating
the Kremenets vital records, our initial inventory of the Kremenets Jewish
vital records that appear on microfilms held by FHL,
and the current
Surname List from Kremenets Vital Records and Yizkor Books.
Translations
of the Yizkor Books. Go here to find web links to our current translations
of the Kremenets Yizkor Books.
The Kremenets
Photo Gallery now has three sections: (1) Photos of Kremenets, (2) Photos
of Kremenetsers, and (3) Do you know these people?
Many thanks to Kremenetsers Norm Kagan and David Goldenberg
and to Polish photographer Radek Orski for donating their photos to
the
Kremenets Photo Gallery.
If you have travelled to Kremenets and have written about
your trip, please submit your report to us so that we can put it on the website.
If you can help
identify any of the people shown in the Do you know these
people? section of our Photo Gallery,
please contact Sheree (ssroth@pacbell.net). And if you
have photos of Kremenets, please submit them to Sheree so
that we can put them on the website.
New Activities
The more we do, the more there is to do! That basic truth
applies to our Kremenets activities as well as to other activities we engage
in. Let me outline some
of the projects on our "to-do" list.
Kremenets Jewish Cemetery Project. Remarkably,
the Jewish Cemetery in Kremenets has survived. Not only that, the Cemetery
includes readable
tombstones dating back to the 16th century. The Center for
Jewish Art in Jerusalem reports that the old section of the Kremenets Jewish
cemetery, although
in a "state of deterioration" contains 120 tombstones
from the 16th to 18th centuries (50 from the 16th century, and 70 from the
17th and 18th century).
They report, "Some of the tombstones are crumbling and
engravings [are] legible on seventy-five percent of the remaining tombstones."
As Kremenetsers, this cemetery represents a very important
part of our heritage. As a group, I would like to see us commit to a cemetery
documentation,
restoration, and preservation project. We need to do the
following:
This will be a major project. We need a volunteer to manage
the Kremenets Jewish Cemetery Project, and we need volunteers to work
on this
project. If you can help, please contact me (rondoctor@earthlink.net).
I will be going to Kremenets in September of this year and will try to find
out what
local arrangements might be possible. And, I will try to
assess the scope of the documentation, restoration and maintenance that needs
to be done.
Digitize the Tel Aviv Yizkor Book and the Booklets
that we have. As I mentioned earlier, Peter Kardon has digitized the Buenos
Aires Yizkor Book.
We also need to digitize the Tel Aviv book and the various
Booklets in our possession. So, we need a volunteer with a scanner and with
access to the
books. Will you help?
Check YIVO's files for documents referring to Kremenets.
We have copies of the documents that Norm Kagan submitted from his
father's files.
However, there are likely to be other documents in the YIVO
collection. We need a volunteer from the New York area to do a search, identify,
and copy
mission. If you are interested in taking this on, please
contact me.
Extract Kremenets entries from the Ellis Island Database
(EIDB). One of our members, Mark
Baich, has done this, at least partially. However, he
has run into copyright issues. We need a volunteer who is
skilled in copyright issues to help us get permission to make available to
our members the names
we extract from the EIDB. Please contact me if you can help.
Vital Records CD-Rom Indexing Project. Please see
the description of this project near the beginning of this message. We need
several people to work
on this, so, if you can help, please contact me.
I know it is almost trite to say this, but we are living
in a remarkable period of time, a time when Jewish genealogical resources
are becoming available that
we could only dream about a few years ago. In tapping these
resources to expand our knowledge about our Kremenets ancestors, we can be
helpers or
takers. Jewish genealogy has expanded so rapidly because
so many of us are helpers, willing to volunteer our time and skills to help
expand and deepen the
resource bases that we all use. The Kremenets Shtetl CO-OP
needs your help now. Will you volunteer to help on one of these projects?
Ron Doctor and Sheree Roth
Co-Coordinators, Kremenets Shtetl CO-OP