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| Vital records include birth, marriage, death, and divorce
records. The czarist government issued a requirement in 1826 that rabbis, generally elected by a variety of Jewish communities, keep registration books of births, marriages, divorces and death. Jews in Kovno and Vilna Guberniya were required to go to the synagogue to which they were assigned to register life cycle events, and each year, the government authorities went to the synagogues to copy these registers. The records were written in Russian (Cyrillic.) Some, but not all records were then duplicated in Hebrew or Yiddish. Today, all vital records stored in archives today are copies. The original records, kept in synagogues were destroyed by 1942, primarily by the Germans. For Jews in Suwalki Guberniya, the life cycle event was first recorded in the Synagogue. The record was then copied and recorded at the Civil Office, either in Polish or Russian.The Vital Records Database is split into separate tables. Birth Records:Births were usually reported by the father. The Kaunas Archives has Abstracts of birth records for Rokiskis, which were used to prove identity, and some copies of birth records for Kaunas, for the late 19th and 20th Centuries. Fields included in Birth Records:
Deaths were reported by relatives who came to the Civil Office accompanied by one witness. Occasionally, only witnesses, but no relative, appeared to report the death. The Kaunas Regional Archives has Abstracts of death records used for Rokiskis. The Lithuanian State Historical Archives in Vilnius has 19th century Vital Records. The Lithuanian Central Civil Archives in Vilnius has 20th Century Vital records. Fields included in Death Records:
Marriages were usually recorded immediately following the Synagogue ceremony. The Rabbi, the bride, the groom, and two witnesses, usually the fathers of the bride and groom, all went to the Civil Office.. Marriage records within this table contain 2 lines for each record. One for the bride and one for the groom. Because we have so few Divorce records, those we have are included in the Marriages Table. The Kaunas Regional Archives contains late 19th Century copies of marriage certificates in Kaunas, and abstracts of marriages for Rokiskis. Fields included in Marriage and Divorce Records:
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