"Mlinov", "Mlynov", "Mlynow", "Mlenow", "Mlynów" [Pol], מלינוב [Heb] ,
Lat:50° 512390', Long: 25° 607000'
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A collage of Mlynov ancestor photos I have gathered from descendants in Baltimore
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This site is a tribute to our ancestors from Mlynov (and the nearby townlet of Muravica), both those who left and those who stayed behind,
and to their stories and memories which I endeavor to capture here. There are many variations in the transliterated spelling of these village names
in the records, as custom officials and immigrants themselves tried to render the Yiddish pronunciation into English.
I prefer "Mlynov" and "Mervits" but there are many other acceptable variations.
*** If you are a Mlynov or Mervits descendant and would like to share your family's story,
network, join the Mlynov-Mervits descendants roster, or Facebook group, please contact
Howard Schwartz.
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Great Synagogue courtesy of Audrey Goldseker Polt; the others are from the Mlynov-Muravica Memorial Book.[2]
Most of what we know about Mlynov and Mervits, from family histories and memories, refers to people from the period between 1850–1940 and comes from a later date; the Mlynov Memorial book, for example, which contains many recollections of Mlynov or Mervits families,was published in 1970 and thus represents memories after WWII when the atrocities of the Nazis had come to light and been understood. I have not found many recorded memories or information about families who were living here before the 1850s. A small number of residents survived the Nazi occupation, and their memories have been recorded. This site is a tribute to both the families and their descendants from this place.
*** Mlynov is located today in what is now Western Ukraine and spelled "Mlyniv."
In the second partition of Poland (1792–1795), Mlynov became part of Russia where it remained until WWI. Mlynov was close to the Eastern Front
during WWI and switched hands multiple times in the civil war following WWI before becoming part of Poland.
Mlynov remained part of Poland until WWII. You can view Mlyniv today via
Google Maps or
Mapquest.
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Location
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We know from memoires and oral interviews that residents of Mlynov and Mervits would visit Dubno on a regular basis. Dubno is mentioned in the memoire of Clara Fram as the larger town her mother, Pesse, visited when shopping for nice things for the holiday and the place her father disembarked from the train on his trips to and from America in the 1890s. Solomon Mandelkern spent time studying in Dubno after leaving Mlynov when he was 14 in about 1860. Immigrants and survivors from Mlynov recall walking to Dubno as young teens.
According to the census of 1897, Dubno had a population of 13,785, including 5,608 Jews. The main sources of income for the Jewish community in Dubno were trading and industrial occupations. There were 902 artisans, 147 day-laborers, 27 factory and workshop employees, and 6 families cultivating land. The town had a Jewish hospital and several chederim (Jewish schools).[5]
Lutsk is also mentioned in the Demb family story as a place where Samuel Roskes, the husband of Mollie Demb, the youngest Demb daughter, was born and where their first son was born. We don’t know how Mollie Demb and Samuel Roskes met each other but the marriage suggests the kind of local mobility that was possible at the time. Sylvia (Barditch) Goldberg also recalls in an essay in the Memorial Book about going as a young girl from Lutsk, where she was born, to Mlynov where her grandparents lived, to attend a memorable wedding. In 1802, there were 1,297 Jews in the town; by 1847, there were 5,010 (60% of the population); and in 1897, there were 9,468 (60% of the population).[6]
To the west and south about 25 miles, you can see Berestechko, which is where Gulza, the oldest daughter of David and Pesse (Demb) Rivitz, settled with her husband, Leizor Mazuryk (later Louis Mazer in Baltimore). In her memoire, Clara Fram has childhood memories visiting her older sister in Berestechko as a young girl and recalls how she passed through Brestechko with her mother, grandmother and two sisters on their immigration to Baltimore in late 1908. The community numbered 1,927 in 1847, 2,251 in 1897 (45% of the total population), and 2,210 in 1931 (total population 6,514).[7]
Novohrad-Volynskyi (sometimes “Novograd” in immigration records) is about 100 miles to the east. Records indicate Mlynov-born, Motel Demb (Max Deming), his brother Simha Gruber and Simha's two sons, Nathan and Samuel, were living here for a time and this might have been the city to which some of the Mlynov population was evacuated during WWI. Motel married a woman from Novograd and their daughter Sylvia was born here. At the start of the 20th century, 10,000 Jews or 50% of the population, lived in the town. In 1919, the Pogroms in Ukraine reached Novohrad-Volynskyi, and the troops of Symon Petliura murdered 1,000 Jews.[8]
Volodymyr Volynskyi, called "Ludmir" in Yiddish, is 70 miles west of Mlynov. Ludmir was the town where the well-to-do Moshe Gruber from Mlynov headed to find a suitable husband for his daughter Rivkah Gruber when she turned 11 and was of marrying age. He brought back a fifteen-year-old named Israel Jacob (“Yisrael Yaakov”) Demb. They became the patriarch and matriarch of the large Demb family in Mlynov.
It is possible that Moshe Gruber was drawn to Ludmir because of its reputation as a Hasidic center. When the founder of the Karliner Hasidic dynasty, Rabbi Shelomoh ha-Levi (murdered in 1792), settled in Ludmir in 1786, the town became an important Hasidic center. The “Maiden of Ludmir,” Khane-Rokhl Werbermacher (~1806–~1888), a local woman known for her righteousness and wisdom, also became a popular Hasidic leader; numerous Hasidim gathered in her bet midrash. After she moved to Jerusalem in 1861, her bet midrash was occupied by the Rakhmistrov Hasidim. The Jewish population of Ludmir grew thanks to its status as a trade and crafts center located close to the border. Some 1,849 Jews were registered in the city in 1799; rising to 3,930 in 1847; and reaching 5,869 (about 60% of the population) in 1897.[9]
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[1] A very detailed, and I found helpful, summary of Russian policy towards the Jews, which gives the nuances of changes under each Tzar, can be found in Antony Polonsky, The Jews in Poland and Russia. Vols. 1 and 2. The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization. Oxford, 2010. These volumes give an understanding of the variability and complexity of the evolving policies and their motivations. ↩
[2] Audrey (Goldseker) Polt, a descendant of the Goldseker Family, provided this clear photo of the "Great Synagogue" in Mlynov. The others are from the digital version of theThe Mlynov-Muravica Memorial Book (translated title for the original Sefer Mlynow-Marvits . Ed. J. Sigelman, Haifa:1970. Published in Hebrew and Yiddish by former Residents of Mlynov-Muravica in Israel. A digital version of the original can be viewed online in several websites including the NY Public Library and the Yiddish Book Center. A number of the stories have been partially translated in English by Eugene Schwartz, collected by Irene Siegel, subsequently edited and published by David Sokolsky in 2018 as the Mlynov-Muravica Memorial Book (English Translation) and now available on Amazon. ↩
[3] Two websites record that the population of Mlynov was about 690 Jews in 1897–1900 but neither give the source of their information. See JewishGen and a website on Shetl history. There was a Russian census in 1897 and it is possible these statistics derive from that census, but that is uncertain. The citations from the Memorial Book are from pages 10 and 11 of the original and cite a Polish Encyclopedia from 1885 and the Jewish Encyclopedia, Vol. 12, written in Russian. For the translation of those pages, see Sokolsky, Mlynov-Muravica, p. 3-4. ↩
[4] David Sokolsky also cites statistics on the population of Mlynov in his book on Liba Tesler's escape from the Holocaust, Monument: One Woman's Courageous Escape from the Holocaust, 2017, 15. David writes that when Liba was born in 1912 there were 670 Jews in Mlynov comprising 60% of the population and that by 1931 the number of Jews had grown to 900. In an email to me, David indicated that when he was first researching the book in the 1970s he found these numbers in a 1910 World Almanac. I have not yet been able to verify this source. ↩
[5] See "Dubno" in Wikipedia. ↩
[6] See "Lutsk" in Yivo Encyclopedia. ↩
[7] See "Berestechko" in Yivo Encyclopedia. ↩
[8] See "Novohrad-Volynskyi" in Wikipedia. ↩
[9] See "Volodymyr Volynskyi" in Yivo Encyclopedia. ↩
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