The Radautz Jewish Cemetery Documentation
Bondy Stenzler & Yossi Yagur
This
article was first published in Sharaheret Hadorot Vol. 22 No 1, February 2008,
a publication of the Israel Genealogical Society (IGS)
The Town of Radautz
Radautz[i]
(in the Austro-Hungarian
original, Radauti in Romanian today, Radevitz in Yiddish) lies in the southern
part of the Bukovina District, which was once part of the Austro-Hungarian
Empire and today is part of
The Cemetery
The
Jewish cemetery is situated about four kilometers from the city – on the way to
the
The
cemetery is divided into twenty-six sections of various sizes and also contains
a ritual purification facility along with several
ohalim[ii]
of rabbis and families. Paths
separate the sections from each other. Some are clearly defined, while others
are in such poor condition that the boundaries between sections are completely
obliterated. Regarding the number of graves in each section, some are still
completely empty, some are small sections with only several dozen tombs and
some, for example, are as large as section 23, which has 17 rows, with about 80
graves in each for a total of about 1,250 graves.
The
headstones in the cemetery are of different kinds. Some are made from hard
stone, beautifully carved and have stood the test of time for 150 years or more;
there are limestone headstones, a portion of which have crumbled a little with
time; headstones of concrete and plaster which are badly deteriorated and
finally headstones made of metal, completely rusted now and of course,
undecipherable. There also are beautiful marble headstones dating from the
second half of the 20th
century.
The
text written on the headstones varies with each period. The oldest headstones
are totally in Hebrew containing only the Hebrew date and without family names.
Subsequently there are a few last names inscribed in Hebrew. Later there are
family names and non-Hebrew names along with the traditional Hebrew text, first
on the back of the stone only, then on the stone itself, on its lower part.
Still later the Gregorian date of death and even date of birth appear. As the
community deteriorated, mistakes appear in both Hebrew dates and spelling and
some have only Romanian inscriptions.
The
cemetery is in generally good condition, although it has suffered from the
ravages of time. Even though there is a watchman on behalf of the community,
marble plates, candleholders and so on have been stolen. Part of the fence of
the cemetery has been fixed, thanks to the project of conservation and
documentation.
The Project of Conservation and Documentation
In
2004 a group of former Radautz residents and their children joined together
with the intent to conserve part of the material and spiritual values of the
community. A detailed account of their activities can be found at http://radautz-jewisheritage.org/, built and maintained by Bondy
Stenzler. Documenting the cemetery has so far been the principal concern. An
early and partial version of the database is available at the site mentioned
above. The site also has an extended bibliographical list of sources for
information about Bukovina Jewry in general, Radautz in particular and details
about the project of restoration and conservation of the main synagogue of the
town. Apart from the documentation project a few steps have been taken to
improve the general state of the cemetery. Using money donated by former
residents of
The Raw Material
The
burial data of the cemetery is based on three kinds of sources: photographs of
headstones, burial maps and a partial index. The following paragraphs describe
each of these sources in detail.
Photographs
of Headstones: in
the spring and summer of 2005 Bondy Stenzler, with the help of his wife Sidi,
photographed about 3,600 headstones in the cemetery from sections 1 through 23.
Sections 24 and 25 were very partially photographed and section 26 was not
photographed at all. In total, about 5,700 photographs were processed. In many
cases more than one photograph was taken of each headstone either from
different angles, concentrating on a particular part or of the back of the
stone if it contained additional information. The pictures were taken with a
digital camera, using quite high resolution, so each picture has a volume of
1.5-2 Mbytes. Using high resolution made the deciphering of the photographed
data easier, especially with those headstones that were in poor shape. In some
cases the headstones had to be cleaned first with a brush - this too was done
by Bondy and Sidi. Some 3,600 names were deciphered from the pictures of the
headstones. The overwhelming majority are in Hebrew with the name of the
deceased and of his/her father. Some of them contain the foreign first name and
family name as well. Very few stones have only Latin lettering and they date
from the middle of the 20th
century on. The greater part of the names on the headstones also appear
on the burial maps and most of those inscribed in Latin letters only are also
in the index. Furthermore, the pictures of the headstones are a unique source
for about 360 first and family names engraved on other peoples’ stones,
recording of those who perished in the Holocaust especially in Transnistria and
elsewhere.
Maps
of the Cemetery: there
is a map of the entire cemetery as well as one for each section. In certain
cases there are two maps for one section, with minor differences between them.
On the comprehensive map a separate section where victims of cholera were
buried is indicated but there are no headstones and no map of the section. The
maps were filled by hand, some of them in pencil, by several writers, all of
them anonymous. The name of the deceased is written in Hebrew in the usual way
“Elazar ben Aharon HaKohen,” and sometimes, especially in the 20th
century, the first and last
names are in Latin letters. Some of the names written in the map in Latin
script use only the foreign version, for
instance, Sally instead of Sara. In a small number of cases the date of death
was also written on the map. The systematic listing on the map was almost
completely discontinued in the middle of the 20th
century and few burial data have been entered
since. The authors of this article are of the opinion that the maps were
originally made in the first half of the 20th century, listing the graves of the cemetery and
using no other sources. Pictures showing headstones that have fallen down
substantiate this assumption. Even though according to the map those graves are
supposed to be occupied, the names of the deceased are not filled in. Bondy
Stenzler photographed the maps in the summer of 2005, using a hand-held digital
camera, under far from optimal lighting conditions, but using high resolution.
The maps of the large sections were photographed piecemeal, with some
overlapping, to make it possible to decipher every name.
Partial
Index of the Cemetery: Between the years 2001-2003 the late Ms. Tania Grinberg, the Jewish
community’s secretary, made a partial index of the cemetery. The index is
written in Latin script and is alphabetical according to last names. It
contains the following columns: last name; first name; Gregorian date of death;
section; row; number in the row; number of death certificate and notes. The
index contains some 2,850 names with about 18 names on each page. In a large
number of cases, only the name and the section number are spelled out. It is
our opinion that the main source of the index is the names written on the maps
in Latin letters. As Ms. Grinberg did not know Hebrew, she could not read the
Hebrew names. Beginning with the 1940s there are detailed lists of deaths
including the number of the death certificate. These data were probably taken
from the community’s archives. A special subgroup of this collection consists
of names without the place of burial, section or row. No parallels of this kind
of list were found either in photographs of the ground or in the maps and it is
doubtful that those listed are buried in Radautz. The names listed in the index
are mostly written using German spelling with the balance in Romanian
especially towards the end of the period. Bondy Stenzler also photographed the
index in the summer of 2005, using a hand-held digital camera, under far from
optimal lighting conditions but using high resolution.
Analyzing the Sources of Information
In
principle, the photographs of the graves are the fullest and most abundant
source of burial data and probably also the most accurate of all three. In
reality, some of them have been hard to decipher, for one or more of the
following reasons: part or all of the headstone has fallen; partial
deterioration of headstones made out of concrete or soft stone; sinking of the
stone into the ground; trees making the text invisible; peeling paint;
non-optimal lighting conditions; non-optimal photographing angle; spots and
sediment on the stone, etc.
The
second-best source is the maps of burial sections. Because of the
incompleteness of the data on the maps their main function is to support the
evidence provided by the photographs. This takes one or several of the
following forms: adding a family name if it was not written on the headstone;
adding non-Hebrew first names and the date of death if it was not deciphered
from the headstone. In addition, the photographer’s route was “tracked” on the
map. This tracking has made possible the completion of names in cases where
headstones had been completely destroyed and not photographed but were still in
good condition when the map was made and the name of the deceased was recorded
on the map. The maps are the best source of information for those cemetery
sections not yet photographed.
The
third-best source of information is the burial index. Its basic incompleteness,
in that names written only in Hebrew are not included, spelling mistakes,
double entries, as well as missing entries all render it less than optimal.
Nevertheless, this source has been used for completing information in quite a
few cases in addition to the pictures and maps of one or more of the following:
adding non-Hebrew first names; date of death, if not deciphered from the stone
and additional information drawn from the notes. Above all, as mentioned above,
the index added names that do not appear in the maps or photographs.
Principles of Listing
In
view of all this, it was decided to adopt an inclusive attitude in listing the
data. This means all the accumulated data on every deceased person from
different sources shall be written down. It holds true for data occurring in
one source and not in others, family name and so on and data occurring in
markedly different forms in diverse sources, especially in the columns of first
and last name.
The
justification for this is that it provides every researcher access to all
information using the data that he knows. For example, a person whose first
names are Ya’akov Eliezer is listed under them on the Hebrew part of the
tombstone. If the non-Hebrew part exists he might occur as Jakob (German) or
Iacob (Romanian). In this case the name will be written as Ya’akov Eliezer
Jakob Iacob.
The Structure of the Database
An
Excel spreadsheet was used for building the database, because of its
availability, the ease with which it can be converted to HTML and for the sake
of its posting in an Internet site. The data taken from the raw material has
been transferred to the database with one row for each record of a deceased
person. The (-) sign in any cell means absence of any information. The (?) sign
means doubt about the correctness of information, both because of difficulties
in deciphering and because of conflicting data. Between 2006-2007 Yossi Yagur
deciphered the data, cross-referenced it and entered it into the database.
On
every row, the data has been set in 34 columns as follows:
Name
(Latin
lettering): last name, if known; first name; Hebrew name (for example Elazar
ben Aharon HaKohen); in the column of last name the (/) sign is used for
dividing two transliterations of the same name and the (-) sign for dividing
between two family names. In the first-name column the (-) sign is used for
differentiating between two first names and additional (non-Hebrew) names occur
at the end without any sign.
Additional
Names (Latin
lettering): father’s name, including last name if known and different from
deceased’s name; mother’s name and additional family names, if recorded.
Dates
and Localities (Latin
lettering): Gregorian birth date; place of birth; Gregorian death date; Hebrew
death date; place of death; Gregorian date of burial, if known and not
identical with date of death and age at death, if explicitly stated in the
information sources. Gregorian dates are recorded by day, month and year. Where
there was a contradiction between the Hebrew and Gregorian dates in the sources
of information, it was solved by finding the origin of the mistake and entering
the correct date in the record. If unsuccessful, the information is written
down as it occurs, with an appropriate comment in the notes column.
Name
(Hebrew lettering):
last name (if known), first name.
Additional
Names (Hebrew
lettering): maiden name, father’s name, mother’s name, spouse’s name.
Dates
(Hebrew
lettering): Hebrew date of birth, Hebrew date of death and Hebrew date of
burial, if known and different from date of death.
Other
Data (Latin
lettering): number of section, number of row in section, codes used for sources
of information: H=Headstone; M=Map; I=Index and T=Tablet. This last item
indicates that the source of the information is from memorial inscriptions
engraved on the headstones of other deceased persons identification of the
pictures of the headstone, up to four per record and notes. The notes column
provides annotations on family relations such as grandson of Rabbi xyz,
profession, ritual slaughterer/doctor, etc.; mention of two persons buried in
the same grave; an indication of conflicting information and so on.
This
database includes as a subset all the data types defined in the JewishGen
Online Worldwide Burial Registry (JOWBR) data entry template. Identical columns
are called by identical names. This has been done to enable future support of
some “shrinking” of the database to JOBWR template.
Statistical Data
At
this point, the database includes the following:
•
About 5,700 names with family name for about 3,800
•
About 360 names of people who perished in the Holocaust
•
Record of about 3,700 headstones, in 5,700 pictures
Summing up
This
article sums up the work done so far on registration of the