Proposal
Yekaterinoslav-Dnepropetrovsk Memorial Book
Project Name Translation of Sefer Yekaterinoslav-Dnepropetrovsk - A Memorial Book for the Jewish Community of Yekaterinoslav-Dnepropetrovsk
Project Coordinator
JewishGen Yizkor Book Project Manager: Lance Ackerfeld
Project Synopsis
This project is being initiated in order to fund the translation of the 167 page Yizkor Book for Yekaterinoslav. The book is written in Hebrew. The goal is to provide a complete published online on the JewishGen website, at: http://www.jewishgen.org/Yizkor/Ekaterinoslav/Ekaterinoslav.html
Key Audiences
Jewish genealogists seeking to trace their roots in this town constitute an important audience for the material. However, due to the importance of Yekaterinoslav as a Jewish commercial and industrial center, its significance as an intellectual center for both Zionist and Socialist movements the book provides a window into the most crucial social issues facing all Jews within the Pale of Settlement during the late 19th and early 20th century. Yekaterinoslav was also an important center of rabbinic study and those seeking information regarding rabbinic scholarship and personalities will also be interested in this book.
Project Importance
Yizkor books are unique sources of information on once vibrant towns, primarily in Central and Eastern Europe whose Jewish populations were destroyed in the Holocaust Written during or after World War II by émigrés and Holocaust survivors, yizkor books contain narratives of the history of the town, details of daily life, religious and political figures and movements, religious and secular education.
Yekaterinoslav (today Dnepropetrovsk) is located southeast of Ukraine's capital Kiev on the Dnieper River, in the south-central part of the country.
Jews settled in Yekaterinoslav shortly after its founding in 1773. The first Jewish community was formally established in 1793 and built its first wooden synagogue in 1800. By the second half of the nineteenth century the Jewish population of Yekaterinoslav, a quickly developing trade and industrial center, numbered more than 40,000and in 1889 Jews comprised the third largest ethnic group in the city.
Yekaterinoslav in 1905 had the following Jewish educational institutions: ten private schools, a Talmud Torah (400 pupils) founded in 1857, a yeshiva (74 students) and ninety-two hadarim (885 pupils). The Zionist movement had made great progress in the city, the propaganda being carried on by several societies under the leadership of Michael Usishkin. The anti-Jewish outbreaks did not spare Yekaterinoslav. In 1881-1882 and in 1905 pogroms reached the city. Unwilling to remain without protection, Jewish self-defense groups were formed.
Yekaterinoslav was a mining and railroad center. In 1905 and thereafter it was the scene of many workers' strikes and revolutionary activity.
The translation of the Yekaterinoslav yizkor book, as seen by the already translated Table of Contents, will weave together the stories of our ancestors' daily lives against the backdrop of socialism, Zionism, pogroms, and rabbinic study.
Estimated Cost
The estimated cost of this project would be 5,000 dollars. JewishGen will be responsible for paying the translator, and donations to the fund will be tax-deductible for U.S. citizens.
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Updated 25 Feb 2013 by LA