A Cyber-Memorial to the pre-WWII Jewish Communities of my Ancestors

May the memories of our ancestors live forever.
May their lives never be forgotten.

My Ancestral Trip

I visited Ukraine in September, 1997 to see the places where my ancestors and all of our family members had once lived, worked, dreamed, and created. The trip was the culmination of my genealogical research hobby of eleven years. My brother and I grew up in Michigan, never knowing any cousins, or any relatives at all other than our immediate family. When we asked, we were told that the entire family had died in the Holocaust. We have

Stanislau Great Synagogue
pre-WWI

since discovered a number of living relatives of all ages and   together with our American born parents, we're learning about our ancestors' personal history. The purpose of these Web pages is not to publicize our family details, but rather to share certain information that we've gleaned along the way which may be of interest to others, particularly others who have ancestors from the same communities and who may share our interest in our mutual heritage.

The geographical area is currently in Southwestern Ukraine, just North of the Carpathian Mountains, and near the Eastern tip of Slovakia, and the Northern border of Rumania. The closest major city is Lviv (formerly, Lvov, Lwow or Lemberg). All of our towns were in Galicia, a now defunct region of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire, which dissolved in WWI. Between the two World Wars, our towns were annexed to Poland. In 1941, the area became part of the Ukrainian region of the Soviet Union. Fifty years later, Ukraine became the first Soviet state to achieve independance.

May the fruits of our labor ensure that the Nazis' goal of eliminating our people be forever incomplete.

The trip was enriching and provided me with many images to share with my family and with others. To facilitate the trip, I engaged the services of a private researcher, guide, translator, driver. For details of the research materials that I used and discovered on this trip, see my article in Volume XIII, Number 4 issue of Avotaynu. I hope that this information and these photographic images are useful to others. I welcome any additional data from fellow researchers and travellers out there who may visit my Web pages. Should you have any related information in a computer readable format, I would be happy to consider linking it into these pages. My email link is below.

The cobblestone images in the background are taken from photographs of streets in our ancestral towns in Ukraine, September 1997. Take a walk...

May the fruits of our labor ensure that the Nazis' goal of eliminating our people be forever incomplete. We seek signs of the existence of our ancestral communities to highlight for all to see. Our people lived there, and our hearts are with them.

Sincerely,

Susannah R. Juni

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Page Modified: 07/29/01 05:26 PM