Shtetl Links: Lyakhovichi

Twentieth Century Records:
Polish Records of Lyakhovichi Residents and Emigres
(from 1920-1939)

There is a rich core of material available from records created by and for the Polish government after World War I and before World War II. These interwar years were decades in which the Jews of Lyakhovichi were: educated in schools supervised by Polish authorities; serving in the military of the newly rebuilt Polish state; being counted in two national censuses; voting in national and local elections; buying and selling real estate and other assets; and fully participating in Polish life as modern citizens. On this page you will find extracted lists, both ordinary and extraordinary. A list of school children in 1926; a list of Polish citizens from Lyakhovichi and its surrounding towns applying for the passport visa referred to as Polish Aliyah passports; and a description of specific documents identified in archives, with details we look forward to posting. See the list of Polish citizens from our area applying for the Aliyah passports in column one on this page.

                           
Baranovichi Tarbut School, 1926       Gymnasium in Slonim, 1926

These images are part of a wonderful 1926 document where every school child in Poland signed a "birthday" greeting to the United States of America on the US's 150th anniversary. The many volume set of pages from each school in Poland is at the Library of Congress in Washington DC. and the not yet digitized volumes include a page from the elementary school in Lyakhovichi. If anyone is heading to Washington DC and can get us a copy of the Lyakhovichi page, we would post it immediately with full credit and our thanks! The children listed on the pages above are indexed in our surname index by name and by their presence on this page Polish Records. Note that though most of the children's first names are simply initials, that girls can be distinguished from boys by the appropriate ending of their name Wengerovna vs Wenger, et al. After clicking on the title to get to a larger image, Hold your cursor over the bottom right corner for the internet explorer expand icon which brings it up to full readability

Records of Polish government agencies in the Belarus National Historical Archives in Minsk The Lyakhovichi Research Group and this shtetl website are tremendously lucky to have Dr. Neville Lamdan as the hands-on knowledgeable researcher contributing his expertise. His personal visits to the Minsk archives and to Lyakhovichi, and his considered study of every document identified by other researchers working at his direction, play an incomparable role in the discovery, accessing, and understanding, of the source material. Dr. Lamdan provided a fond-by-fond description of the Minsk archives" Lyakhovichi-relevant holdings, and though many still remain for further examination and inclusion - you would do well to study this list at Inventory of Holdings at the Belarus National Historic Archives in Minsk

Lyakhovichi Jews in Polish Schools (1920-1939) In the 1920s Lyakhovichi had a public elementary school which most of the Jewish children attended. It also had a Tarbut school and around 50 people in a Yeshiva in the town itself. Lyakhovichi Yeshiva students also attended schools in Slutsk and Kletsk and Baranovichi. There is a list of some of the cheders, small Hebrew schools for children before bar mitzvah, listed in the Yiskor book. Gymnasium, or High School was not free, but there were well respected ones through the area including Baranovichi and Slonim, which had Lyakhovichi students. Jews also attended the Teachers' Colleges, the technical schools, the schools of Pharmacy, et al, in the region in this time period. We have more documents from such schools in the vicinity around Lyakhovichi, so let us know if Lyakhovichi students went to them. Baranovichi was the site for a number of educational endeavors from Western relief organizations that made a special effort to reach out across the Baranovichi region - schools run by ORT, by Tarbut, by the Orthodox Educational movement, and others, were abundent. We have two documents from nearby posted - the roster from the Baranovichi Tarbut School pictured above with 42 signatures and a comparable document from the Slonim co-ed gymnasium. There is a document for Lyakhovichi from an elementary school from the same series, and we would like someone to please get us a copy from the Library of Congress (or to just extract the information if a copy cannot be acquired.) In the State Archives of Brest there is a list of every teacher in the Baranovichi povet (including Lyakhovichi) for 1920-1939, purportedly including those in Jewish schools like the Tarbut schools and the Yeshiva and the Orthodox chederim. Please share school pictures, help us learn about resources, and inform us if research or historical materials related to any of these areas is published or available to be indexed, or if you have photocopies of any of these materials from the archives.

Jews in the Polish Army -Lyakhovichi was in Military District #9 of Poland between 1920 and 1939. The records of this group were at the Ministry of Military Affairs of Poland (DOK-9) and records related to servicemen from this group are stored at the Brest State Archives. Those records include personnel files of officers 1920-1939; the year 1920’s files on servicemen including: identity cards, birth & residence certificates, and other documents; and the names of young men born between 1904 and 1907 who were eligible for military service in military district #9 (no date on file in published inventory). Young men born between 1919-1922 for conscription, in a list of 1939. If you have researched in these materials and can share sample documents or information learned, we would like to hear from you! ! Click Lyakhovichi Jews in Polish Army to see pictures of some of our young men in Polish uniform. We would like to quickly augment this section with some of the documentation at the Brest State Archives (or that you have on your family members) on Lyakhovichi Jews in the Polish Army.

Polish Records - Census The Poles conducted Censuses in 1921 and 1931. Anyone with information about the accessiblity of these records or even the archives or office holding them, please contact us. These records were stored on a national basis in or near Warsaw, and are not declared as destroyed in WWII.

Polish Records - Vital Records: ZAGS Office State Archive of Register Offices for the Brest Region
18 Svobody Sq., 224030, Brest
Tel: (375-162) 26 73 22
This office is supposed to be able to tell us the location of Civil registration records for Lyakhovichi covering the last seventy-five years, and as acquistion is ongoing from local offices and passes on a schedule to a national archives, they are often knowledgeable about materials from dates not covered by their mandate. I have not seen information on any civil registration from Lyakhovichi, please help me learn more.

Polish Records - Voters Poland elected a national Sejm (parliament)in 1930 and municipal authorities more frequently. Baranovichi's voters and those of Novaia Mysh were recorded in fonds at the Brest State Archives. I have not yet seen a list that specifies Lyakhovichi, though Lyakhovichi was in Baranovichi povet whose records are at Brest State Archives.

Polish Business Directories Lyakhovichi Jews in Business Directories and Polish Business Directories of Lyakhovichi and surrounds