Emigrant Associations and Global Settlements

Records of Emigrant Associations of Lyakhovichi
and
Records of Lechovicher Settlements around the World

This page and the images on it are copyright, this is a protected publication, not a release to the public domain.

This is the Home Page for all pages of Records of Emigrant Associations and for all pages of Records of Lechovicher Settlements.

Emigrant Associations

We have been gathering photos of synagogues in Detroit, Philadelphia, Louisville Kentucky, and Sioux City Iowa; burial plot info from new cemeteries, and newspaper finds related to Lyakhovichi. Even the "old material" that we have is being augmented. We have images of newspapers showing Bnai Yitzhak Anshe Lechowitz as a contributor in 1905 to the anti-Pogrom collections, we have images of newspapers describing events at Lechowitzer social organizations. Readers have written in with their memories of some of the people and events described on this page and we will be posting their comments on the page. Most importantly, we have volunteers offering to take photos of cemetery stones that the webmaster will then index to create a database with all of the names as written in their original languages and English. We have volunteers offering to sit in NYC archives and search for the specific death certificates for Lyakhovichi people who we have listed chronologically by their date of death from 1893-1933. If you would like to help, we just need your family ephemera and photographs, and your willingness to donate your time at your computer or in cemeteries or in archives. Then come back and see what additional material the efforts of caring people will add to the next update!

In November 2009 we extracted the lists of Chevra Kadisha leaders of the late 1910s-early 1920s from the Gate Pillars at Mt Judah Cemetery. The gates may not have gone in with the first burials but they were certainly there by the early 1920s. We also have the list of the Congregation's leaders that were posted on the gates of Beth David Cemetery's Bnai Isaac Anshe Lechowitz plot in the 1950s.

We now have almost two thousand photographs of Lechovicher cemetery stones in New York City alone! We have added photos of Lechovichers in other landsmanschaften plots and in cemeteries around the world. All the images can be found in the Complete Lyakhovichi Records Catalog under the Cemeteries Lyakhovichi Plots tab. Search for the name you are interested in and then find the information associated with that individual along with a photo of the gravestone, where available. Among these links you will also find the cemetery registers - that is the list of burials in the group plots, maintained in the relevant cemetery offices. We hope to add registers from additional cemeteries, pages of memorial plaques, and other relevant materials on those born in Lyakhovichi in future updates.

Begin your exploration of other US Lechovicher associations below at More Emigrant Congregations and Associations related to Lyakhovichi to see where we are and help us grow. It includes first looks at a synagogue in rural Sullivan County New York, a former synagogue in Detroit, and Congregation Shaarey Zedek of Windsor, Canada. It also shares new information on New York City organization Arbeiter Ring Branch 260 - the Lechovicher, Baranovicher, Mir group whose 1923 Anniversary Dinner in NYC photo may include your grandparents!

It had seemed likely that one extra page on New York landsmanschaften would be sufficient for the update in November 2008, but in September 2008, I made a remarkable discovery. Two NYC Lechovicher organizations looked at the repeated calls for assistance arriving in the mail after World War I and decided that something had to be done. Many of the people writing for help from their relatives in America were telling the Americans that letters sent with money had never arrived or missing those funds. And the folks at home were desperate. They were starving, they couldn't afford winter fuel, their houses were barely standing after five years of being on the front lines. In April 1920, the organizations sent an emissary to personally appraise the situation, to personally deliver funds, and to gather the details that would allow the families in the US to best assure the well-being of those who remained in Lyakhovichi. So go to this brand new page to see the moving letters that the Relief Organizations Representative attached to his passport application, the records of the mission that we have so far, and to see how you can assist us in finding other material from this period. See Lechovicher Relief Associations after WWI for details.

Lechovicher Settlement Pages

Lyakhovichi's Jews settled in nearby Russian towns (Baranovichi, Kletsk, and Nesvizh, for example). They formed little communities of landsleit in bigger Czarist communities and cities like Minsk, Slutsk, Bialystok, Grodno, and Vilna. They moved on and settled in New York City's Lower East Side, Buenos Aire's Parque Chas, and in rural "Litvak'' communities around South Africa. They probably didn't live in separate "neighborhoods'' but we will likely find that townsmen directed other townsmen to the apartments and hostels close to where other members of the home-community already lived. We will add pages on these different settlements as new material is uncovered and we need your help to document the places your family lived. Our pages so far include details on: Lechovichers in Baranovichi, Nesvizh, and Kletsk, and Lechovichers on the Lower East Side of Manhattan NYC. You will also see Lechovichers in Slutsk and Minsk; Lechovichers in Slonim, and Pinsk; Lechovichers in Brest-Litovsk, Grodno, Vilna, and Bialystok; and Lechovichers in St Petersburg, and Moscow.

The 1907-1908 American Jewish Yearbook listed two synagogues in New York with the place name Lechowitz in their names: B’nai Yitzhok Anshe Lechowitz and Beth Aaron Chasidim d’Lechowitz. B'nai Yitzhok Anshe Lechowitz is the congregation whose burial plots and Ladies Auxiliary are discussed elsewhere on this page. The yearbook says that it was at 93 Hester Street, that it was founded in 1892, and that it had eighty members in 1907. It had an organizational structure and three officers listed: W. LEVY, President, residing at 49 Forsyth; A BERGER, Treasurer, residing at 95 Madison; Y. ZIRINSKY, Secretary, no residence given. There is no info given for Beth Aaron Chasidim d'Lechowitz other than its address at 185 Division Street.

The 1919-1920 American Jewish Yearbook listed B'nai Isaac Anshe Lechowitzwith the same address as above but the Americanized spelling of Isaac. It says it has 110 members and the officers are President Barnett BRODY and Secretary Morris ZABALOTSKY. The only Bnai Aaron is a Koidanover shul at 141 Madison which was organized in 1907, so is not an obvious successor to Bnai Aaron d'Lechowitz but it still might be, as one of the Hasidic groups in Lyakhovichi was the Koidanovers. A Chevra for the Koidanovers at 141 Madison was also listed. In 1919, a synagogue that would hire a Lechovitzer Rabbi in just a few years, Abram CHINICZ, is listed as Beth HaKnesseth Ahavath Zion at 66 Pike Street which was organized in 1891 and in the yearbook's statistics is listed with 120 members. It lists that services were in Yiddish (rather than Hebrew and Yiddish). More information can be provided about this shul when its further Lyakhovichi associations are established.

We have recently found an 1892 photo of the synagogue building of Bnai Yitzhak Anshe Lechowitz and we are seeking out authorization from its current holders to use it! We have also found that in the earliest days of Lechowitzer Jews in New York City, individuals prayed at the Slonimer Shul for the two years it preceded Bnai Yitzhak Anshe Lechowitz. Here is its image. Some sources date the Slonimers to 1849, but that is the building's age, not the congregation's which bought the impressive looking structure, already standing in 1880.

The congregation moved into the 1849 building in the lower East Side of NYC in 1880. Jews from Lyakhovichi prayed here at least until the 1882 construction of Bnai Yitzhak Anshe Lechowitz in 1882. Some, no doubt, stayed after the new synagogue was constructed. If you have information about your Lyakhovichi family in other NYC synagogues or in any other city, please let us know!

All of the Cemetery Registers on our pages previously published on Jewishgen.org, have been donated to JewishGen Online Worldwide Burial Registry. They are collected here as a service to Lyakhovichi researchers and because we continue to find new ways to use long-held materials. We continue to seek Membership, Organizational, Newspaper, and Burial records of Lyakhovichi groups in the United States, Israel, South America, and South Africa!

Manhattan's New York County Incorporations for Non-Profits 1848-1920

These were microfilmed and indexed by the American Jewish Historical Society in the 1960s.

• Chebra Bnei Mordchim Chasidim deLechowitz, incorporated in 1894, document number #93, microfilm reel XV

• House of Aaron of Religious Jews of the City of Lechowitz, 1904, document number #1143, Microfilm Reel XXV

• House of Aaron of Religious Jews of the City of Lechewitch, 1915, document number #4392, Microfilm Reel XXXVIII

• There is no registration in the online index for B'nai Isaac Anshe Lechowitz formed in 1892, a search will be undertaken.

• The Moosher and Branovicher Aid and Benevolent Society, incorporated in 1905, document number#1994, Microfilm Reel XXVI

• Moosher and Baranovicher Aid and Benevolent Society, incorporated in 1917, document number #2671, Microfilm Reel XLI

• Independent Musher and Baranowitcher Ladies Benevolent Association, incorporated in 1916, document number #6532, Microfilm Reel XXXX

We have now located a photograph of the early B’nai Yitzhok Anshe Lechowitz synagogue building taken in 1892

More Records of Lechovicher Associations and Congregations in the US and Canada

In August 2008, a reader in France took the time to look over our photograph of the Lechovicher-Baranovicher Workman's Circle Group in NYC in 1923. He knew his grandfather was a member because he had his 1909 membership certificate! I thank Frank Proschan for contributing both the pictures so far included on this page for Branch 260 of the Workman's Circle and for sharing his information that helped us expand our common knowledge-base. We now know of the burials from Branch 260 and have a greater sense of the locality diversity of this organization from its earliest days.

Help us find New Material. If you know of a synagogue where your great-grandfather prayed amidst people he knew in the old country, tell us about it. We can look for pictures, ephemera, corporate records, etc. only if we know what records we are looking for!

We are currently looking for information on:

• Beth Yaakov Synagogue of Detroit, one of whose builders was David Robinson of Detroit before his death in 1931.

We have found some of the information about that organization created by the Yiddish Writer's Guild as one entry on its list of Jewish Lodges in New York City in 1938. That record tells us that the group was founded in 1909 which coincides nicely with the data on this photo. It also says that the group was founded with 30 members in 1909 and in 1938 had 100 members. More, unlike this photo which only links the modern towns of Baranovichi and Lyakhovichi, it links emigrants from the town of Mir, to the original two towns. Perhaps we will find that a merger took place at some point, or perhaps the name was changed to reflect an always present but unnamed contingent from Mir. One can also speculate that perhaps the lesser known but closer town of Mush or Mysh was confused with Mir or mistyped for Mir when indexed in the 1930s, and that this Arbeiter Ring brought together the three geographically linked towns of Baranowitz, Lechowitz, and Nova Mush. And finally, either this event was especially well attended, or its membership went up before it went down to the 100 recorded in 1938.

The photo is repeated just below, this time divided by gridlines. Each of the sectors on the grid is numbered. We need you to help name specific people! Tell us why you think it is them. Show us other pictures of that person to help us understand. Tell us why you think that they would be at a Workmen's Circle Lodge function for townsmen from Baranovichi, Lyakhovichi, and Mir. Do you have other ephemera from this group that we can post? Other photos of your identified relative? Other documents that tie them to the towns named here? Please share!

Records of Emigrant Associations of Lyakhovichi
Around the World: Eretz Israel and South America
by Deborah Glassman, copyright 2008

Association of Former Residents of Lachowicze in Eretz Israel

This is a list provided by Moshe Inditzky of Tel Aviv of the membership list in 1999 of the Association of Former Residents of Lachowicze. Mr. Inditzky offered us the membership telephone list in an ongoing effort to make information about Lyakhovichi available. Neville Lamdan has edited the list to protect those members' privacy, but at this time (originally noted in 2005) we are able to publish the list of last names of Israelis who belonged to this society in 1999. People wishing to contact members of the Israeli group should send an email to Mr. Lamdan - you can contact him via his email address in JewishGen Family Finder. Note -If you are a member of this group and would not mind us posting the former last name of your family, that would be a valuable addition to this list that could help the members of the community network together more effectively. Contact us to let us know if we can share that info.

Lechowitzers Buried on the Mount of Olives, Har haZetim, in Jerusalem

The list of our landsmen buried in the Holy Land is barely started. The official count for those whose connection to Lyakhovichi was documented in the burial record is only 11 names but we know of a number that have not been included. Help us build this list! This shows the numbers from each of several towns near us known to have been buried on Har haZetim.

• Lyakhovichi - 11
• Kletsk - 7
• Byten - 5
• Kobrin - 5
• Novogrudok - 19
• Noesvizh - 23
• Slutsk - 52

Since these records are not created by a purposeful seeking out of a hometown society, I have placed them on our page Primary Records of Other Nations - Eretz Israel. Please click the link to see those recorded from Lyakhovichi, Slonim, and Slutsk.

Emigrant Relief Associations of Lyakhovichi
by Deborah Glassman, copyright 2008

In September 2008, I was trying to ready the material that would be published at the Thanksgiving 2008 update for the entire Lyakhovichi website, when I made a new discovery that promptly upset the schedule. I found documentation related to two NYC Lechovicher organizations which stepped up to the need of distressed Lechovichers in the hometown following World War I.

Lechovichers in the US had been receiving frantic letters: their families were starving; local currency was worthless; people were crammed with all of their relatives into buildings whose walls were barely standing. Paper over the windows was keeping the winter cold out, and small bundles of kindling were going for outrageous sums in the winter of 1919-1920. Families in Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Manhattan, all separately documented that the funds they had sent their relatives who had made their way home after the war, had not arrived, and a solution other than sending more money was needed.

The sizable Lechovicher community in Manhattan and Brooklyn was getting frantic with concern and they decided that the only thing that made sense was to send a representative who had a clear head, a good business sense, and an ability to get things done, to physically go to Lyakhovichi carrying funds on his person. In April of 1920 two Lechovicher organizations in New York City agreed on a single person to represent them. The very competent, successful businessman, Barnet Brody, was chosen. He applied for his passport and it is the documentation that accompanied that passport that provides our window on this period after World War I and during the crises created around the Polish-Russian War.

The Lechowitzer Relief is called in its Yiddish seal the Lechowitzer United Relief and the congregation of Bnai Isaac Anshe Lechowitz refers to itself in this document as a Chevra (a Society) but the officials of both groups have long been active in the Bnai Isaac Anshe Lechowitz synagogue and association. The relief organizations officers are president Sam Loss and secretary Wolf Levy. The congregation's president is given as Wolf Levy and secretary Fishel Surowitz. We know that Wolf Levy had been an officer of the shul in multiple years since 1900 including president. Fishel Surowitz was listed as the rabbi and sexton of the synagogue in the WPA assessment of the synagogue records in the 1930s. Barnett Brody himself, was reported as the president of the synagogue in the American Jewish Yearbook 1919-1920.

We do not yet know what groups the Lechovicher United Relief brought together. The religious community that gathered around Bnai Isaac Anshe Lechowitz Synagogue and the workingman's groups like the Arbeiter Ring's Baranovicher-Lechowitzer Branch 260? Members of the community who bought their burial insurance from lodges of Brith Abraham, the labor unions, and the debating societies? Perhaps the traditionally observant community and some from varying strains of Chassidus? This was not the first time the Bnai Isaac Anshe Lechowitz community had provided relief services.

The Ladies Auxiliary of Bnai Isaac Anshe Lechowitz

These records can be found in the Complete Lyakhovichi Records Catalog under the tab Directory Ladies Auxiliary.

The cemetery gates of the Bnai Isaac Anshe Lechowitz plots at Washington Cemetery, Mt Judah Cemetery, and Beth David - all in the New York city metro area, are in the Complete Lyakhovichi Records Catalog. The Ladies Auxiliary leadership appears on the gates at Beth David's plot. Find the images on the Burial register for Beth David Cemetery page.

We have photographs of the cemetery stones of almost every adult woman who belonged to Bnai Isaac Anshe Lechowitz. Because of the incredible labors of Tina Levine all of the cemetery stones in all three of the Bnai Isaac Anshe Lechowitz owned plots in New York city were photographed.

We want individual and group photographs of the ladies themselves. Do you have a picture of any of these ladies to share?

There has, as yet, been no history of the Ladies Auxiliary of Bnai Isaac Anshe Lechowitz, found unpublished or languishing in someone's papers. If you have such a document, or know of materials that could be used to create one, please contact us via the link below. The synagogue congregation was founded in 1892. The congregation purchased cemetery plots at Washington Cemetery in 1893 and the gates and pillars at that site probably do not include any women's names among the organization leadership. (The images have not yet been made legible). The second set of cemetery plots at Mt Judah were purchased sometime before their first member burial in 1915. Their gates have just been transcribed and they do not give any indication of active female participation in the organizational activities of the Congregation. This may be misleading as the pillars specifically refer to the Chevra Kadisha of the Congregation, which like all other Chevra Kadisha of the time period was still a male-only organization. The Congregation appears in American Jewish Year Book's directories of Jewish organizations in New York City beginning in 1900, but we reach the 1940s before the Ladies Auxiliary appears.The pogrom relief collections of 1890-1910 that did their fund-raising among every Jewish organization in the US, did not hesitate to credit the efforts of Ladies sewing circles, helping hand associations, and other groups run by the wives of men active in Jewish life. But Congregation Bnai Isaac Anshe Lechowitz gave its contribution in 1905 as a single group, no separate contribution from any women's group was noted. As late as 1939 when the WPA survey of the congregational records of NYC religious institutions was done, interviews with the sexton Fishel Surowitz and the congregation president J. Suchow, turned up no hint of an associated Women's group. See the WPA survey photo and the link to the readable copy.

Correspondence of Bnai Isaac Anshe Lechowitz and the Ladies Auxiliary

The flyer below is from an event scheduled by the Congregation and the Ladies Auxiliary, together. We also have correspondence sent by the group to its membership and would like to find more. This piece is from just after the Holocaust Memorial was built at Beth David Cemetery and has one side in Yiddish and the other in English. We learn the original Yiddish language surnames of the three signers, also. It was accompanied by a photo of the monument at Beth David. What other documents do you have?

YIVO's Records of the Ladies Auxiliary of Bnai Isaac Anshe Lechovitz in NYC

Neville Lamdan, wrote an introduction to these records in 1999 and Jerry Seligson did a yeoman job on getting these names transliterated from the Yiddish files at YIVO in 2001, and then put them into a form that could be listed. In the table below, the abbreviations are ML - membership list 1952-1956; AN - annotated notes from the membership books about men who were officers in the larger organization of Bnai Isaac Anshe Lechowitz, who participated in events of the Ladies Auxiliary. But the table is largely dry-as-dust financial notes: whose dues were paid, and in what years. We need your help to make this list more valuable. Paulayne Epstein has already begun when she sent us this email:

March 11, 2008: I enjoyed scanning the site, especially the Lechovitcher Ladies Group.

Yetta Szapiro Sklarsky was my Mom. Esther Kantrowitz Berg was my mother's closest friend and married to her cousin from Kletsk. Reba Levy was my pseudo Aunt and married to my Mom's first cousin. G Shapiro was my Tanta Gussie.

I'll pass the info on to Esther's children. Perhaps they can recognize some of the photos. I'll also try to make some copies of my Mom's photos from Lechovich. Perhaps someone will know who they are. Paulayne Epstein

Letter accompanying Holocaust Memorial with Yahrtzeit dates and location of mass grave in Lyakhovichi, shared by Harold Levy.