Introduction to the Kremenets Shtetl CO-OP

Coordinators: Ron Doctor (rondoctor@earthlink.net) and Sheree Roth (ssroth@pacbell.net)

Welcome to the Kremenets Shtetl CO-OP’s website. We are a worldwide group of people who trace our ancestors to Kremenets and the towns of the Kremenets District in present day Ukraine. We formed the CO-OP in August, 2000, following the IAJGS Conference in Salt Lake City. We are part of Jewish Records Indexing – Poland (JRI-Poland) and we are a project of the Kremenets-District Research Group.

Kremenets is at 50 06 / 25 43, about midway between Ternopil and Dubno, in western Ukraine. Before the partitions of Poland (1772 to 1795), Kremenets was part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. After the partitions, Kremenets came under Russian rule. Following WW1, when Poland was restored as a nation, Kremenets once again came under Polish rule, and remained part of Poland until an agreement between Russia and the Nazis once again divided Poland. Kremenets fell under Russian rule. Before WW2, Kremenets had about 15,000 Jews (about 8,000 permanent residents and 7,000 refugees) 40% of the population. Only 14 survived the war. There is a monument at the site of the mass grave where the Nazis murdered the Jews of Kremenets in 1942. Today about 20 Jews live in Kremenets. Gradually, we are building a photo collection on our website to show historic Kremenets as well as Kremenets today.

Originally, our purpose was to translate and make publicly available the vital records (birth, marriage, and death records) that the Mormons had recently microfilmed. Those microfilms cover most of the years from 1870 through 1907. They contain about 15,000 vital records. The records are handwritten in 19th century Russian and Hebrew/Yiddish. The left side of each ledger page is in Russian. The right side presents the same data in Hebrew/Yiddish. Sometimes one language has information different from the other. Some years are incomplete or missing. There are about 5,000 pages with almost 15,000 records in each language! Unfortunately, the ledgers have no index pages, which made our translation project even more important. The COOP posts English language indexes to the records on-line in the Jewish Records Indexing – Poland database (http://www.jewishgen.org/jripl/town/kremenets.htm).

The vital records are an incredibly rich source of information. For example, the birth records include not only the given names of the newborn, but also the father’s surname, the given names of the mother and father, and sometimes the mother’s and father’s patronymics and mother’s birth surname. Many records include the social class of the father and the mother’s father and the town or shtetl in which they were registered. Some even include the given name and surname of the mother’s father and his social class and registration town. As I write this, we have found almost 500 different registration towns in the Kremenets vital records.

Our website includes many resources for those interested in Kremenets. We urge you to explore the site, and, if you can add to it in any way, please do so. One of the most important resources on the site is an “Indexed Concordance of Personal Names and Town Names” derived from the vital records and other records we have translated to date. The Concordance identifies the source of each record and the location of the record in each source. We have developed an “Introduction and Guide to the Concordance” as well as a “How to use the Indexed Concordance” document to help you use the Concordance effeciently. These documents are available on our website.

To assist our volunteers and researchers, we have developed a number of transliteration aides that can help you recognize names and keywords. You do not need to be fluent in either Russian or Hebrew, but you do need to be able to read (or at least, recognize) the Cyrillic and/or Hebrew alphabets.

Since our formation, we have expanded our scope to include all the material we can find about Kremenets and its surrounding villages. For Kremenets, those materials include two 450-page Yizkor Books (one published in Tel Aviv and one in Buenos Aires), 18 Booklets published by the Organization of Kremenets Emigrants, and a Yizkor Book for Vishnevets. The books and booklets are in Hebrew and Yiddish. In addition, we have begun a project in cooperation with the Mayor and Town Council of Kremenets to document, restore, and maintain the Jewish Cemetery of Kremenets. The Cemetery contains more than 7,500 matzevot. About 50 of them are from the 16th century and 70 from the 17th and 18th centuries. Documents describing our Cemetery Project are on the Web at: http://www.shtetlinks.jewishgen.org/Kremenets/web-pages/kjcp.html

We recently learned that the Mormons microfilmed the various Revizskie Skazki (Census) records for Kremenets. These cover the years 1806 through 1874. We have begun a multiyear Revision List translation project. And, we have obtained copies of documents from the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People, some of which date to the 1500s.

Although the CO-OP is volunteer-based, we have found it necessary to use paid professional translators to accelerate some of our translation projects. Our success depends on your assistance. You can help make the project a success by donating money or by donating your time (or both!).

We need funds to cover the fees of professionals working on our translation projects. Your financial contribution will help our projects move forward. For information about how you can donate to our projects please click on the “Support our Work” button on our Kremenets Shtetlinks website.

If you have any suggestions regarding our projects, or if you just want to be kept informed of our progress, please contact either Sheree or Ron. Sheree’s e-mail address is ssroth@pacbell.net. Ron’s is rondoctor@earthlink.net. Our success depends on your cooperation and assistance. If you want to advance your own Kremenets research AND help others at the same time, please become a partner in this effort.

Revised, 17 December 2007