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Births in Pinsk, 1927-1935, as recorded by Rabbi Grushko

Rabin A. I. Grushko
Pinsk

Two notebooks by Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak Grushko were donated to the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People by his wife Haia Dvora. Their call number at the archives is PL-480.

In additional material, which was placed in the early notebook, is an advertisement in Yiddish for the Rabbi’s services, which was probably distributed in mailboxes, in which he says he has lived in Pinsk since 1919, having moved there from Plotnitsa. At the time of the ad, his address was 47 Honcharska Street in Pinsk.

Rabbi Grushko immigrated to Israel in 1935; there is evidence of this from the Pinsk Memorial Book [Volume I, part 2, Hebrew, page 257, table], in which it states that Rabbi Grushko was budgeted for the sum of 1500 zloty by the Jewish Community Council for immigration to Israel.

The notebooks are ordinary school notebooks, filled in by hand, presumably by Rabbi Grushko. They are written in Hebrew, with a Yiddish spelling of names and street names. Dates are both the Hebrew date and the Polish one, written in Hebrew. In the notebooks is one consecutively numbered, chronological listing of primarily of births, licenses to marry and marriages, all together, from May 1927 until June 1935. (However, at entry #690, Rabbi Grushko went back and repeated numbers as if 690 were 670, and at 904 he jumped to 924.) The registry appears to be somewhat random, not a comprehensive list of all these events in Pinsk. According to Rita Margolin, formerly from the Pinsk archives, the addresses are mostly from one particular neighborhood. Apparently, this registry had an official meaning, because of the wording with regard to the licensing of marriages.

The first and earlier notebook is in good condition. It contains entries from number one to number 452. The last four entries were copied into the second notebook and crossed out in the first, but they are much more legible in the first. The second notebook is in poor condition, and therefore some of the events have illegible parts.

In the database, there are records of births, licenses to marry, marriages, some divorces, and validations of earlier marriages. Where the register of a license has a later entry for the marriage, they have been combined into a single entry, and the date given is the date of marriage. Validations of earlier marriages are also found in this database. In the case of a validation, dates and ages given are at the time of marriage. The date of validation is not included, as this does not seem relevant. In the second notebook only, there are a few cases of divorces. Interestingly, many brides were older, some even five years or more older, than the grooms.

There are some records of licenses to marry, for which there is no marriage entry. This does not mean that the marriage did not take place, but this is simply not confirmed in the notebooks. Where there is only the license entry, the date of the license is given. In a few instances of licenses, there is only the name and data of a bride or a groom, not both.

The amount of information in the entries is not always uniform. Some give addresses, others don't. Earlier registries tend more often to have addresses. Some are missing other data, such as the mother's name. This translation has listed every legible bit of information of importance for people searching for their families.

The dates do not always match. I have never changed a date, so that the Gregorian date corresponds to the Hebrew one, or vice versa, because it is not for me to decide which is the correct date. In cases where only one date is used, that is the only date I have recorded.

We express our gratitude to Hadassah Assouline, for permitting us to use the material from the Archives. I also wish to thank the other volunteers who have helped translate these records: Shira Golandsky, Vera Novitskiy and Riki Shefi-Vered.

Ellen Stepak, translator

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