Ron Doctor

JewishGen Ukraine SIG Coordinator

Janette Silverman

JewishGen Liaison/Advisor

Avraham Groll

Project Synopsis

The Kremenets District Research Group, with more than 480 researchers, is dedicated to the task of acquiring, translating and making freely available translations and indexes of documents and records relating to Jews who lived in Kremenets.

We acquire, translate and index vital records (birth, marriage, death, divorce), Russian revision lists (censuses), Yizkor Books, landsmanshaft records, historical and other documents. Our master index has almost 180,000 entries, as of 20 November 2014. These entries date back to the mid-1500s and mention more than 815 different towns and areas. See “Document Acquisitions and Status” on our Kremenets Kehilalinks website. It describes each project (past, current, and prospective) and its status.

Researchers seeking information about their ancestors in towns that are or used to be in the Kremenets district of Volhynia, Ukraine are the key audience for this project.

The Kremenets district was a significant center for Jewish life beginning in era of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, before the partitions of Poland in the late 1700s. (Two gravestones in the Kremenets Jewish cemetery date to the mid-1300s, and many more date to the 1400s and 1500s.) Written documents that mention Jews date back to the mid-1500s. The records we have acquired and translated and their associated indexes, plus the records we will acquire with funds from this project will enable us to continue building a database that connects families in towns throughout Kremenets district. The database also will display the movement of families from one town to others.

We acquire, translate, and index digitized copies of original documents from various sources. We began in 2000 with vital records for Kremenets (1870-1906) that the LDS Family History Library digitized and provided to us under a written agreement. We continue today with records obtained through a cooperative agreement with the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People (at Hebrew University, Jerusalem). We also have identified are documents to be acquired from Yad Vashem and from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. Processing and indexing of translated records are done by volunteers at no cost. After processing and indexing we will submit the translations and index to JewishGen for posting.

We already have acquired and translated about 60,000 records. In cooperation with the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People (at Hebrew University, Jerusalem), Yad Vashem, and the US Memorial Holocaust Museum, we continue to identify, acquire and translate previously unknown records.

Images of the original documents from this scanning project are not available through JewishGen and can be obtained through the Family History Library and the Center for Jewish History.

We have identified but have not yet acquired about 4,000 pages of documents and/or. At an estimated $0.60 per page, acquisition of these documents will cost about $2,400. In addition, we have identified, but have not yet acquired 109 documents. We do not yet know the page or record count in these documents, so they are not included in our estimate of required funding.

So far, we have acquired, but have not yet translated documents that contain about 8,000 records. At $1.00 per record, translation of these records will cost about $8,000.

We also have acquired about 18,000 pages (files) of documents/records (not counting Yizkor Books), but have not yet identified the number of records in these documents. At an average of $2.50 per page, translation will cost about $45,000.

Translation of the 4,000 pages of records/documents that have been identified but not yet acquired will cost about $10,000, at an average estimated cost of $2.50 per page.

Estimated Cost

Details regarding the page and record counts used to estimate costs are in the “Document Acquisitions and Status” spreadsheet on the Kremenets Kehilalinks website.

Total required funding for this long-term project is about $65,400. Although this is a large sum, based on our experience since year 2000, it is do-able over a 10 to 15 year period. As mentioned above, from year 2000 to date, we acquired and translated about 60,000 records. To pay for this activity we raised a total of $43,000. To accomplish the acquisition and translation objectives we have identified for the future, we need to expand our fundraising activities. This proposed project will raise funds to pay for continuing acquisition of digitized documents and for the services of professional translators.

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Updated 11-AUG-2015 by AG