Resources and Bibliography

There are not many original sources published about the towns of Mlynov and Mervits directly. Much of what we know, and is captured in this site, comes from the Mlynov-Muravica Memorial book, the 1850 and 1858 Russian revision lists for the two towns, oral family traditions and memories, and what we can infer and imagine from historical sources about related topics. This page of resources aggregates useful sources of information and resources about Mlynov and Mervits and related topics.

MLYNOV MURAVICA YIZKOR MEMORIAL BOOK

A memorial (yizkor) book to the two towns of Mlynov and Mervits was published in 1970. A new fully annotated translation is now available of the essays written by individuals who were born or lived in these two sister towns. The volume includes photos and memories from families that left these towns before WWII or who survived that war.

• The original The Mlynov-Muravica Memorial Book (translated title for original Sefer Mlynow-Mervits). Ed. J. Sigelman. Haifa:1970.
• A new fully annotated and complete translation is now available online. The book is also available in a beautiful printed hardcopy via JewishGen or Amazon.
• An online digital version of the original is available at Yiddish Book Center and the New York Public Library.
• A bound reprint of the original can be ordered from the Yiddish Book Center. I ordered one, and though expensive, it came out very nicely.

GENERAL ONLINE RESOURCES ABOUT MLYNOV AND MURAVICA

JewishGen is a website dedicated to Jewish Genealogy. In addition to this site, it has other links that may be of interest to those interested in these towns.

MLYNOV / MLINOV (currently, MLYNIV, UKRAINE)

• The JewishGen SIG Page for Mlinov provides a landing page for Mlynov.
• The JewishGen Community Page for Mlinov provides an overview of information.
• The JewishGen Family Finder shows other persons researching family from Mlynov.
• A list of Mlynov victims of the Holocaust, translated from the Memorial book, pp. 431–432.
• Russian Revision lists (census like records) for Mlynov in 1850 and in 1858.

MURAVICA / MERVITS / MURAVITZ (currently MURAVYTSI, UKRAINE)

• The JewishGen SIG for Mervits provides a landing page for Mervits.
• The JewishGen Community Page for Mervits provides a high level overview of Mervits.
• The JewishGen Family Finder shows other persons researching family from Mervits.
• A list of Mervits victims of the Holocaust translated from the Memorial book, pp. 431–432.

NETWORKING

• A private Facebook group has formed for networking among descendants of Mlynov and Mervits families. You can request to join the Mlynov Descendants Private Group . Be prepared to share your family's story.

OTHER RELATED LINKS

• Jewua.org page about Mlinov
  This is a site focused on information about different shetls. English does not seem to be the writer's native language which suggests s/he may be looking at primary sources, though those are not referenced, so it is hard to evaluate the accuracy of the data. But the site does have information that I have not found on other sites.
• Wikipedia article on "Mlyniv, Ukraine"
  This article provides some useful information from Ukrainian sources. It relies heavily on an article about Mlyniv by Bukhalo, H., Vovk, A. Mlyniv, "Mlyniv Raion, Rivne Oblast" which appears in The History of Cities and Villages of the Ukrainian SSR an Ukrainian encyclopedia, published in 26 volumes that provides information about the history of the populated places in Ukraine. According to online sources, the Encyclopedia was approved by the Communist Party of Ukraine in 1962. A Ukrainian researcher I hired tells me that the article reflects a pro-Soviet slant in its narrative.

BALTIMORE IMMIGRANTS FROM MLYNOV AND MERVITS

A large number of Mlynov immigrants moved to Baltimore between 1890-1925 and recreated their communal ties there.

• "Immigrants from a Russian village flocked to Baltimore, changing its history. Their descendants are celebrating." An article in The Baltimore Sun by Jonathan Pitts, about a gathering of 80 descendants of those who immigrated from Mlynov and Mervits to Baltimore.


• A century after their ancestors left Russia for Baltimore, descendants gather to share history and stories" An article in The Baltimore Sun by Lillian Reed about the same gathering.


• Jewish Museum of Maryland artefacts from the "Mlynov Verein," A Mlynov club or "landsmanshaftn," a social and philanthropic group of Mlynov immigrants in Baltimore that raised money and provided a social outlet. Over time the group evolved into the Maryland Free Loan Society.

SURVIVORS' STORIES

View the story of the survivors who returned to Mlynov in spring of 1944 and appear in the photo of the commemoration ceremony that took place that fall. Or delve deeper into individual survival accounts.

Liba Tesler

Liba was born in Mlynov in 1912. Her heart wrentching story of escape from the Mlynov ghetto and survival posing as a Polish Christian woman is narrated by her step-grandson, David Sokolsky, in Monument: One Woman's Courageous Escape from the Holocaust. After she survived, she managed to reconnect with relatives and come to live in Baltimore where she married David's grandfather. The book is available for purchase on Amazon.

Ezra Sherman

Ezra was a young boy of ten or eleven when the German occupiers lined up the Mlynov ghetto residents just before the liquidation. Ezra asked a guard to relieve himself, and when given permission, Ezra went around behind a building and climbed up and hid in the loft of a shed. He fell asleep there and when he awakened everyone was gone. Read an article about Ezra's amazing life, watch Ezra's Interview, or read a transcript of his interview or learn more about Ezra and the Sherman family.

Gerald (Zelig) Steinberg

Born Zelig Steinberg in Mervits around 1937, Gerry was a boy of about 5 years old when he went into hiding with his father, Getzel Steinberg, his mother Pessia (née Wurtzel) and his aunt Bunia Steinberg. They all survived in an amazing story told by Bunia's daughter, which is now translated into English. Read a news article about Gerry "Dedication of Holocaust Memorial," or about the Steinberg survival story.

Bunia Steinberg

Bunia was born in Mervits in 1912. She was a member of the Zionist group Betar and aspired to make aliyah. But her father tragically died and her grandfather frowned on her Zionist activities. Bunia survived the German occupation along with her brother Getzel and his family. A book length narrative written by Bunia's daughter, Shoshana Baruch (née Upstein) tells the story of Bunia's involvement in Zionist youth groups, the Steinberg family life under the Soviet occupation and their subsequent story of survival. Originally written in Hebrew, the book is now translated into English. Download here.

Helen Fixler

Helen was born in Mlynov in about 1930 as Etka Nudler. She remembers a happy, Yiddish-speaking home, with a book-loving mother and four siblings, including a beloved younger sister. She tells the story of how she and her father managed to survive in the forest and under a haystack. See the article, "She spent the war in hiding, from a forest bunker to a haystack," in The Jewish News of Northern California (Mar. 19, 2020) or listen to her oral history with the Holocaust Memorial Museum or read more about Helen and the Nudler family.

Yochanan Viner

is described as a child survivor born in Mlinov in 1928. A video interview with him is in the Zekelman Holocaust Center that is not yet public. A summary of the interview from 1921 indicates he was a child survivor born in about 1928. In a summary of his interview, he is quoted as saying:

"I survived because of my mother. In the nighttime, my mother woke me up, hugged me, and openedthe door to the ghetto. I asked how she knew when to open the door, because there were Ukrainian soldiers onguard. For weeks she would stay up and not sleep, and she would monitor the guards’ schedule to see whenthey would go urinate. And then she would know when there is a chance to take me out…. My mother grabbed me in her arms, opened the door of the ghetto with her leg and pushed me into the snow. Outside it was snowing, and I fell from the step of the apartment and was in snow up to my hips; and each step I had to use my hands to get my feet out of the snow and that’s how I moved forward. My mother said, ‘Go my son’ and that ended my conversation and rendezvous with my mother. I never saw my mother and father and younger brother again.

Memoirs and Family Histories by Residents or Descendants

Clara Fram (née Hurwitz / Rivitz)

Clara was born in Mlynov in 1902 and arrived with her family in Baltimore in January 1909. This memoir was written in an adult education course in 1982. Clara reminisces about life as a child in Mlynov and in Baltimore as a new immigrant. This Is My Story: I Write An Speak of Myself. March 1982. Courtesy of the Fram family. Click to Download.

Yehuda Mohel

Yehuda came to Mlynov in 1924 or 1925 when his father, a shochet, took a position there. Yehuda tells the story of his amazing life, becoming a vegetarian in rebellion against his father, then a budding Zionist in a youth group who made aliyah. He was subsequently arrested by the British authorities as a communist, shipped back to Poland where he eventually married and returned to Mlynov, then escaped the Nazis, and ended up with his family in Siberia before joining the Polish army. Yehuda's story is narrated by his son, Tracz, Dani, in Riva and Yehuda: Life Story of Trancman, Mohel, Tracz and Ben-Eliezer Families, 2015. Trans. from Hebrew by Lynda Schwartz. D.C.P. Haifa, Tel Aviv, Israel, 2017. The section on Mlynov starts on page 35.You can download here.

Neena B. Schwartz

A daughter of two Mlynov first cousins who married in Baltimore, Neena grew up in Baltimore and became a world-renown endocrinologist, proving the existence of a female hormone called "inhibin" and helping to reshape the masculinist assumptions and focus of science. Neena tells her story in A Lab Of My Own. New York: Rodopi, 2010. Download two chapters here.

Cities and Towns Near Mlynov and Mervits

• Article on "Dubno" in Wikipedia.
• Article on "Lutsk" in Yivo Encyclopedia.
• Article on "Rivne [Rovno]" in Yivo Encyclopedia.
• Article on "Novohrad-Volynskyi" in Wikipedia.

Related Historical Themes

• Article on "Partitions of Poland" in Britannica.
• Article on "Second Partition of Poland" in Wikipedia.
• Article on "Antisemitism in the Russian Empire" in Wikipedia.
• Article on "Jews under Russian Rule" in the Jewish Virtual Library.
• Article on "Russian Empire" in Yivo Encyclopedia.
• Article on "Pogroms in the Russian Empire" in Wikipedia.
• Article on "1905 Russian Revolution" in Wikipedia.

Scholarly Works Consulted

With a paucity of direct evidence about life in the townlets of Mlynov and Mervits, one has to imagine what life was like there. The scholarly historical research on Jewish life under the Tsarist regime helps open a window into that world and explores the complexity of the Russian response to Jews, which was not consistent, as well as the diverse responses of the Jewish communities to life during the period.

The Russian Period

• Antony Polonsky, The Jews in Poland and Russia. Vols. 1 and 2. The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization. Oxford, 2010. A very detailed, and I found helpful, summary of Russian policy towards the Jews, which gives the nuances of changes under each Tzar


• Joanthan Frankel, Prophecy and Politics. Socialism, Nationalism, and the Russian Jews, 1862–1917. Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1981. A detailed account of the rise of nationalist and socialist impulses in Russian Jewry with an emphasis on the 1881 pogroms as a decisive turning point.


• Benjamin Nathans, Beyond the Pale. The Jewish Encounter with Late Imperial Russian. Berkely: University of California Press, 2004. Looks at Jewish life in Imperial Russia from a different vantage point. Challenges views, such as Frankel's, that overemphasize the pogroms as the primary cause shaping Jewish identity in late imperial Russia and explores the ongoing attempts at what the author calls "selective integration" with a special focus on the community of St. Petersburg outside the Pale and the various ways the Jews there were attempting to integrate into the center of Russian life.


• Walter Laqueur, A History of Zionism From the French Revoluion to the Establishment of the State of Israel. New York: Schocken Books, 2003. A helpful look at the rise of Zionism with attention to the Russian context.


• Arthur Hertzberg, The Zionist Idea. New York: Schocken Books, 2003 [1972]. An account of Zionism's rise through the writings of various exponents.


• John Doyle Klier, Jews and the Pogroms of 188–1882. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2011.


• John Doyle Klier, Russia Gathers Her Jews: The Origins of the "Jewish Question" in Russia, 1772-1825. Northern Illinois University Press, 1986


• Steven J. Zipperstein, Kishinev and the Tilt of History. New York: Liveright Publishing, 2018.


• John Doyle Klier, Imperial Russia's Jewish Question, 1855-1881. Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2005.


• Michael Stanislawski, Tsar Nicholas I and the Jews: The Transformation of Jewish Society in Russia, 1825-1855. Philadelphia: Jewish Publications Society, 1983. A detailed look at the transformation of Jews under Nicholas I and also the best treatment of the conscription of Jews and Jewish youth under the Tsar's policy.


• Shmuel Feiner, Haskalah and History: The Emergence of a Modern Jewish Historical Consciousness. Trans. by Chaya Naor and Sondra Silverston. Oxford: Litman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2004.


• L. Michael Aronson, Troubled Waters: The Origins of the 1881 Anti-Jewish Pogroms in Russia. Pittsburgh: The University of Pittsburgh, 1990.

Interwar Poland 1918–1937

• Cala, Alina, "The Social Consciousness of Young Jews in Interwar Poland," 42–65. In Jews in Independent Poland 1918–1939. Ed. Antony Polonsky, Ezra Mendelsohn, and Jerzy Tomaszewski. Oxford: The Litman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2013.


• Davies, Norman, God's Playground: A History of Poland. Vol. 2. New York: Columbia Press, 2005.


• Yisrael Gutman "Polish Antisemitism Between the Wars: An Overview," 97–109. In The Jews of Poland between the Two World Wars. Ed. Gutman, Yisrael and Ezra Mendelsohn et. al. University of New England, 1989.


• Gutman, Yisrael and Ezra Mendelsohn et. al, The Jews of Poland between the Two World Wars. University of New England, 1989. See especially Ezra Mendelsohn, "Introduction: The Jews of Poland Between Two World Wars–Myth and Reality." 1–6, and Mendelsohn, "Jewish Politics in Interwar Poland: An Overview." 9–19. There are also very helpful essays by Yisrael Gutman "Polish Antisemitism Between the Wars: An Overview," 97–109, Gershon C. Bacon, "Agudat Israel in Interwar Poland," 20-35, Abraham Brumberg, "The Bund and the Polish Socialist Party in the Late 1930s," 75–97, and Jerzy Tomaszewski, "The Role of Jews in Polish Commerce, 1918–1939," 141–157, among other helpful essays.


• Holzer, Jerzy, "Relations between Polish and Jewish left wing groups in interwar Poland," 140-146. In The Jews of Poland. Ed. Chimen Abramsky, Maciej Jachimczyk, and Antony Polonsky. New York: Basil Blackwell, 1986.


• Heller, Celia, On the Edge of Destruction: Jews of Poland between the Two World Wars. Detroit: Wayne State University, 1994.


• Mendelsohn, Ezra, "Interwar Poland: good for the Jews or bad for the Jews," 130–140. In The Jews of Poland. Ed. Chimen Abramsky, Maciej Jachimczyk, and Antony Polonsky. New York: Basil Blackwell, 1986. A helpful summary of the differing theoretical perspectives that shape the historiography of the period.


• Mendelsohn, Ezra. The Jews of East Central Europe Between the World Wars. Bloomington: Indiana University. 1983. The chapter on "Poland," 10-83, is an excellent and nuanced summary of the trends, politics and impulses of the period for the Jews residing in Pole.


• Mendelsohn, Ezra, "Introduction: The Jews of Poland Between Two World Wars–Myth and Reality." 1–6 and, "Jewish Politics in Interwar Poland: An Overview." 9–19. In The Jews of Poland between the Two World Wars. Ed. Gutman, Yisrael and Ezra Mendelsohn et. al. University of New England, 1989.


• Mendelsohn, Ezra. "Jewish Historiography on Polish Jewry in the Interwar Period." 3-14. In Jews in Independent Poland 1918–1939. Ed. Antony Polonsky, Ezra Mendelsohn, and Jerzy Tomaszewski. A very useful statement of the differing theoretical lens brought to bear on the period.


• Marcus, Joseph, Social and Political History of the Jews in Poland, 1919–1939. New York: Mouton, 1983. Written by a Polish Jew, Marcus gives one of the more positive and optimistic presentations of Jewish economic life in this period and sees Jewish poverty as resulting from the poverty of an undeveloped country, not particularly antisemitism.


• Polonsky, Antony, The Jews In Poland and Russia: A Short History , XV-XXI. Oxford: The Litman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2013. See especially chapter six, "The Jews in Poland Between the Two World Wars," 211-252.


• Polonsky, Antony, "Introduction." In Jews In Independent Poland In Jews in Independent Poland 1918–1939. Ed. Antony Polonsky, Ezra Mendelsohn, and Jerzy Tomaszewski. A very useful statement of the differing theoretical lens brought to bear on the period.


• Polonsky, Antony, Ezra Mendelsohn, and Jerzy Tomaszewski, eds. Jews in Independent Poland 1918–1939. Part of the Series: Studies in Polish Jewish Polin . London: Litman Library of Jewish Civilization. Vol. 8. There are a number of thoughtful and interesting essays in this volume.


• Mendelsohn, Ezra. Zionism in Poland. The Formative Years, 1915–1926 . New Haven: Yale University, 1981


• Margalit, Elkana. "Social and Intellectual Origins of the Hashomer Hatzair Youth Movement, 1913-20." Journal of Contemporary History 4:2 (1969):25-46. Accessed April 4, 2020.

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Compiled by Howard I. Schwartz
Updated: July 2024
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