WELCOME TO THE WEBSITE
OF THE JEWISH SHTETL OF

KAMENETZ LITOVSK

(Kamianiec)
Now known as
KAMENETS, BELARUS

This page is dedicated to the memory of Miguel Kaplanski, of Buenos Aires.
Miguel visited his ancestral home of Kamenets twice, and was tireless in
his efforts to research his family origins in Kamenets.
Many thanks for all his advice and support.

Maps:

• Grodno Gubernia Map
• Brest Region Map
• Search for Kamenets , Belarus via MapQuest (Latitude 52°24' 23°49')

Photo Galleries

• Glembowski - Ajzner Family of Kamenets (courtesy of Esther Weinstein, daughter of Mirka (Ajzner) Gorfinkel)
• Heshy Boumerand's Album, taken in 1931/32
• Historic Kamenets, the community and buildings
• Kotik Family, (courtesy Israeli Kotik descendants)
• Larry Gorfinkel's Kamenets Trip, August 2009
• Ruchama Shain's Book, "All for the Boss", taken in Kamenets, 1937
• Shalitzki Family of Kamenets (courtesy of Amos Shalev and Simcha Shalhav, grandsons of Zacharia)
• Trip to Kamenets, including Holocaust Memorial Ceremony, 26th July 2009

Background Information:

Some twenty-five miles (thirty-nine kilometres) north of the city of Brest, Kamenets has always belonged to the Brest district and there were many close connections between the two towns. Many Kamenetzer surnames are also to be found in Brest. There was also much interaction between Kamenets and Wyoskie Litovsk, Volchyn, Zhabinka and Kobryn. Kamenets had a smaller ‘satellite’ village of Zastavye, which was just on the other side of the Lesna River on which the town is situated.

Kameniec is a common Slavic toponym, usually denoting a place founded on a rocky mountain or stony embankment of a river or stream. It is part of or the entire name of dozens of places mostly in Central Europe. The name derives from the Slavic word Kamienny meaning stony.

Kamenets (known since 1276) is the center of the Kamenets district, one of the sixteen districts of the Brest region, located on the banks of the Liasnaja (Lysna) river, thirty-nine kilometers north of Brest, twenty-eight kilometers north west of Zhabinka. It is situated on the Brest – Minsk railway line.

Population was 9,400 in 1995.

The town was first mentioned in the Halych – Volhynian Chronicle in 1278, when a castle with a keep, the famous tower of Kamenets was constructed on this spot to protect the northern boundary of Volhynia from the attacks and raids of invaders. The site on the stony steep banks of the Lysna river had attracted Oleksa, the prominent builder and architect of Volhynia. He showed the site to the prince of Volhynia, Vladimir Vasilkovich, who appreciated the position and ordered Oleksa to build a castle with a keep on the spot. Later, a town appeared around the fortification.

Jewish Settlement in Kamenets

Documents

• 1929 Polish Business Directory page for Kamenets

Other Links

•    Belarus Guide

•     Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Kamyanets

•  Radzima.org has excellent photos and information on Kamenets.

• Click here to see Oleg Medvedevsky's site on Kamenets:

• Click here to read Bobby and Joan Engel's excellent family history on Kamenets

Books of Interest for Kamenets Litovsk Researchers

In 1945, Falk Zolf, a Jewish teacher in the I.L. Peretz School in Winnipeg, published a moving semi-autobiographical novel in Yiddish called Auf Fremder Erd. (On Foreign Soil). In a series of 132 vignettes, he vividly described elements of his life from his childhood in Zastavia, which was across the Lezna River and joined to Kamenets by a long bridge.

 Born in 1898, he offers us a glimpse of a generation whose youth predated the Holocaust, and was compelled to grapple with the forces unleashed during World War I, be they military, ideological, or psychological. Zolf's experiences are extremely diverse: a student at the Slobodker Yeshivah, a "draft-dodger" from the Czar's Army, a soldier in the Communist Russian Army, a Poale Tzion activist, a prisoner in a POW camp in East Prussia, and a family man in Zastavia, to name a few. His many wanderings in both the Pale of Settlement and Russian heartland until his emigration to Canada give the reader a picture of the diversity of Jewish communities at the time. Zolf also addresses how the -isms and schisms of his day played out in this life: religious observance, secularization, and the various platforms of Jewish political movements.

Read the online English translation at:  http://www.onforeignsoil.com/english.htm

 

Yekheskl (Ezekiel) Kotik (1847-1921), was born in Kamenets-Litovsk. He is mainly known for his two-volume memoirs "Mayne Zikhroynes" (1913-1914). In the first volume of his memoirs the author describes his childhood in Kamenets; in the second volume his life in Belorusia and several cities in Russia proper. Read online English excerpts of the first volume at:  http://www.onforeignsoil.com/kotik.htm

Searchable Databases

• JewishGen Family Finder (for Kamenets)

  Would you like to connect with others researching Kamenets? Click the button to search the JewishGen Family Finder database.

•         The 1880 Russian Army deserters list

Additional Categories of Information

•  Click here for the 1920 list of Kamenets businesses ( This list was compiled by the town historian Grigory Musevich who faithfully kept it in an old exercise book )

•  Click here for the 1921 list of Kamenets names

• Click here for the 1891-1918 list of Kamenets Army conscripts