YIVO Documents

In August of 1999, while attending the 19th Annual Conference on Jewish Genealogy in New York City, I visited the YIVO Institutue for Jewish Research, which is part of the Center for Jewish History on West 16^th Street. I searched through YIVO’s Inter-War Communal Records for Lithuania folders for Rokiskis. There are 10 folders of Rokiskis material, containing 518 documents, almost all from 1922 and 1923.

Most of the material concerned official Rakishok Jewish community business and was of no genealogical value. I obtained copies of eight documents which contain lists of names. Five of these documents relate to elections held by the Rakishok Jewish Community in 1923, three of the documents contain names of orphans in the Rakishok Jewish Orphanage. I also got a copy of a tax receipt from the Lithuanian government to the Rakishok Jewish Community because I felt it was of historical value.

I certainly did not retrieve all of the documents which are of genealogical value to the Rokiskis researcher and encourage others to view this material and perhaps, locate additional valuable documents.

The documents below are from the YIVO Archives, Record Group 2, Lithuanian Communities collection, and are reprinted with full permission.

NOTE: These documents have been translated from hand-written Yiddish and the letters are not always clear. Moreover, the spelling of the names may not exactly reflect the manner in which the family subsequently spelled their name in English. They have been translated by Mathilda Ginsburg Mendelow and Steven Weiss

To see these documents, click on the links.

Ministry for Jewish Believers

Nominations for Jewish Council of Rakishok - Unity Party

Nominations for Jewish Council of Rakishok - General Zionist Party

Nominations for Jewish Council of Rakishok - Independents

Nominations for Jewish Council of Rakishok - Zionist Socialist Party

Election Results

Rokiskis Orphanages

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