Credits

I would like to thank all the people who have talked to me over the years. Starting with my family who in the 1970's began an across the world conversation piecing together the stories of Myadel and Kobylnik. They followed the lives of the three generations before them who had lived, married and worked in the region of Belarus, just outside of Vilna Gubernia. Their lives were influenced by religion, at first traditional and orthodox, later Hassidic and, later still, more influenced by political ideas. Families in the second generation moved on from the Myadel Region to Vilna and to Berlin. From Myadel and Kobylnik in the beginning 1870's the young women were sent to Ekaterinaslaw. In the 1880's, the young boys were sent, one at a time, to the United States. From Germany, just before the second world war, some found their way to Scotland and then to America; from Berlin to South America and to Australia. Some did not manage to escape and most who did not survive perished in the Vilna Ghetto, the mass murders in Kobylnik and the death camps.

I have visited with and collected family trees from many of the families that originated in Myadel. I thank them for their generosity and the time we spent comparing notes. Also, I am grateful to the many people who lived and grew up in the area who gave me an understanding of family life both in peacetime and in war.

Also to the Gordon family that now resides in Myadel, I am so appreciative of the time they spent with me, showing me around and allowing me to experience part of their life in Myadel today.

The Myadel-Kobylnik Association has sent me information through Chaya Lupinsky and Meyer Svirsky and his sister Anna Jaffe. This site would not have the personal remembrances without Chaya's contacts with Myadlers and her collection of memories and photographs.

Hopefully this site will bring correspondence between us that will further connect all the families that have Myadel roots. That has always been my hope.