November 2010 (2)

Dear Kremenets District Friends,

Thanks to your generous contributions, we have been able to keep our translators working on the Revision Lists for Kremenets District towns. For the past 6 months, I have been doing initial processing of their translations. We have added thousands of entries to the Concordance for the towns of Vishnevets, Radyvyliv (Chervonoarmeysk, Radzivilov), Katerinovka (Katerburg), Yampol, Shumskoye, Velikiye Berezhtsy (Berezhets, Brezits), Vyshgorodok, Oleksinets, Lanovtsy, Belozerka, and Pochayev. Revision List records contain entries for whole families. In many cases, these are extended families (uncles, aunts, grandparents, children and their wives and children, nephews, nieces). Sometimes the residents of these households are related but have different surnames. So, this is a great way to figure out relations among the families of our towns. We have translated 5,717 pages for more than 3,096 households so far. The translation spreadsheet contains 41,273 rows. These revision list translations have produced 53,879 new entries in our Concordance. And, this is only the 'tip of the iceberg'. We still have about 15,000 pages to translate.


In the meantime, the 390 revision list pages that have been translated and proofread are now available on JRI-Poland's searchable database. These pages yielded almost 3,000 name entries in the Concordance. As we proofread additional pages they will be submitted to JRI-Poland for inclusion in their database.

In addition, KDRG Board Member Ellen Garshick has finished editing, proofreading, and formatting our translation of all of the Hebrew chapters of Pinkas Kremenets, the 1954 Yizkor Book published in Tel Aviv. The entire Hebrew section, along with selected translations of Yiddish sections, now is available on the JewishGen Yizkor Book Translations website (http://www.jewishgen.org/Yizkor/kremenets/Kremenets.html#TOC). She has added a personal names index, a town locator for all towns mentioned in the book, a Bibliography of Yizkor Books for Kremenets District town and three special Supplements (an eyewitness article titled "The Holocaust of the Jews from Krzemieniec in 1942" by Jerzy Strumiński, copies of the incorporation documents for the New York Kremenetser Association, and the death notice for Galina Sorochinski, a Polish woman who saved several Kremenets Jews during the Shoah).  We owe deep thanks to Ellen for successfully completing this project.

Thanks to KDRG Board Member Susan Sobel and to Hadassah Assouline, Director of the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People, for obtaining vital records for the Vyshgorodok, a town in the Kremenets District. We now have digitized copies of almost 900 pages of these vital records for the years 1878-1889 and 1895-1900. In addition, we soon will receive additional vital records for Kremenets (1910 and 1922) and Velikiye Berezhtsy (1892-1913). We need to raise funds to pay for digital copies of these and to translate them.

An exciting new project soon will be ready for primetime! Susan Sobel Kishon and Mark Baich have been extracting records for Kremenets District towns from the Ellis Island Database. Because the EIDB contains some extraordinary errors this work is a lot more difficult, and a lot more useful, than it first appears. So far, we have extracted more than 1,000 records for immigrants from Vishnevets and Shumskoye. As part of this project, Susan has been indexing the two un-indexed fields: person and address at the immigrant's origin and person and address at the immigrant's destination. Data from these un-indexed can be used to identify relationships between families that have different surnames. We expect the first installment of this work to be ready before the end of the year. Keep tuned for an announcement of availability.


A Special Chanuka Gift for Contributors

Now, I'm pleased to announce a special Chanuka gift for those of you who have contributed in some way to our work. If you have donated money, time, documents, or any kind of service to further our work, you are one of our 188 Contributors (out of 425 on our e-mail list). Contributors now can download our translation spreadsheets and key translated documents. If you are a Contributor you will receive a message following this one. It will tell you how to access the revision list translation spreadsheets, vital records (birth, marriage, divorce, and deaths) translation spreadsheets, and the full translation of the Hebrew section of Pinkas Kremenets (including photos). If you do not receive a message with the subject line: "Kremenets: For Contributors Only" then we do not have you listed as a Contributor. Write to me at rddpdx@gmail.com to let me know if we have erred on this.

If you are not yet a Contributor but would like to have access to the full sets of translations, all you have to do is make a contribution of any size or any kind to further our work. Monetary contributions can be made to "Jewish Records Indexing - Poland". They may be made by check, bank draft, money order, or credit card. Be sure to specify that your contribution is for the Kremenets Shtetl CO-OP. Send your donation or credit card information to:

Jewish Records Indexing - Poland, Inc.
c/o Sheila Salo, Treasurer
5607 Greenleaf Road
Cheverly, MD 20785 USA

Telephone:  (301) 341-1261
Fax: 1-810-592-1768 (24 hours)
E-Mail: ssalo@capaccess.org

When you send your donation, please send me an e-mail message to let me know the amount you contribute and the date of mailing so that we can be sure the donation gets applied properly. If your employer has a matching gift program, please think about matching your donation through that program.

The Kremenets Shtetl CO-OP is affiliated with Jewish Records Indexing - Poland, Inc. (JRI-Poland), which is a non-profit (501(c)(3) organization. Your contributions are tax-deductible in the U.S. and Canada to the extent permitted by law.

Ron Doctor
Co-Coordinator, Kremenets Shtetl CO-OP / JRI-Poland
an activity of the Kremenets District Research Group
http://www.shtetlinks.jewishgen.org/Kremenets/web-pages/index.html

Researching DOCTOR (DIOKHTER), VARER, AVERBAKH, KORENFELD ... all from Kremenets, Oleksinets, Yampol, Vishnevets
and KAZDOY (KOSODOY), DUBINSKI, DUBOWSKY ... all from Kiev, Uman, Odessa