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Ms. Judy Baston
Litvak SIG
Creating the All Lithuania Database
Lithuanian Jewish research has come a
long way in a very short time. Before the breakup of the former Soviet Union in
1991, very few of us had real documentation of the lives of our ancestors in
Lithuania. Prior to 1991, the Lithuanian Archives were not readily accessible to
most people. This changed after 1991, and we learned that one of the ways we
have left to document the lives of our people are through the books and papers
that are housed in the Archives in Vilnius and Kaunas, and, if they can be
identified, in similar archives throughout the former Soviet Union.
To ensure that our past and our history do not disappear, LitvakSIG began pooling information and resources in late 1997 and in 1998, LitvakSIG began raising money by uyezd (district) to acquire and translate records to create an All-Lithuania Database that would be searchable and accessible to Litvak researchers. We started with the 1858 revision list, which was available for most parts of what was considered Lithuania at that time, and we have since grown to include nearly half a million records of many different types.
The All Lithuania Database (ALD) may be
searched by going to the following page:
http://www.jewishgen.org/Litvak/searchald.htm
There is a link to the ALD from the LitvakSIG home page at
http://www.jewishgen.org/litvak
and also from the JewishGen databases page under Lithuania.
You may search for a surname or a town, using the precise spelling
(current Lithuanian spelling in the case of a town) or using the Daitch-Mokotoff
Soundex system to allow for variations in the spelling of a surname or a town.
You may also make a Global Text Search, which allows you to search for word
combinations as well as to search for words that may only appear in the
“Comments” field of a record translation.
Where Did My Family Live?
Towns of Residence and Towns of Registration
If you know the town where your family
lived, and a search of the ALD shows records for your family name in a nearby
town, you may think that isn’t your family because it’s from a different
town. Or if you search the ALD by town and don’t find your family, you may
think there are no records for your family in the database. This is because
there were Lithuanian Jewish records that showed the town where a family lived,
and those that showed the town where a family was officially registered. So it
is important to know which is which. Understanding this will help you make the
most of your searches of the ALD, and if you want to do further research with
the Lithuanian Archives, it will help you understand for which records and which
towns you need to request a search.
All Jews (with the exception of certain
guilds and classes) were required to register officially so they could be
counted for the revizki skazki (revision list) and other census-type
lists. In most cases, even though a family moved to another town, their town of
registration remained the one in which they had initially registered. So
listings for Revision Lists and Family Lists in the ALD will include the town of
registration, which may or may not be the one in which your family actually
lived.
Candle and box tax records were usually
collected from those who lived in a specific town (although smaller towns could
have been grouped together for collection even for this purpose.) So if you see
a town noted in the ALD results for candle or box tax records, it is likely that
is the town in which your family actually lived at the time. On the other hand,
property tax records, postal savings bank records and some others may not be a
good indication of where people lived, but simply of where they owned property
or had savings accounts.
Vital records – birth, marriage,
death and even divorce records – were recorded in the town in which the actual
event took place. In most cases, this was the town of residence. Often a vital
record will give the town of registration if the town is different from the town
of residence.
It is important not to draw conclusions about a family’s town on the basis of one single source of information – the more data you are able to obtain from various types of lists, the clearer and more accurate the answer will be.
Revision /
Family / Census Lists
This
major part of the database contains revision, family, census lists, district
merchants, craftsmen’s guilds, farmers, and town residents’ lists for most
of the districts in the old Vilna and Kovno guberniyas. It also contains lists
for most towns in modern day Disna, Kaunas, Lida, Oshmiany, Panevezys, Raseiniai,
Siauliai, Telsiai, Trakai, Ukmerge, and Vilnius districts. The information that
revision lists supply sometimes includes the family’s address, the surnames,
first names and patronymics of family members as well as their gender and age,
their relationship to the head of household, marital status, occupation or
status, religion, literacy and the places of birth, official registration and
place of residence. The lists may also include the location from which the
family arrived, conscription status, removal from the list of converts from
Judaism, or transfer to another Jewish community or another social or economic
class. Because being on a revision list could lead to paying taxes and possible
conscription of sons, some families tried to avoid being listed and are
therefore missing from certain revision lists.
Tax and Voters Lists
A
large collection of Jewish community candle and box taxes, business taxes,
savings book information, as well as property and real estate taxes will be
found combined in this database. There were a great many different kinds of
taxes that the Jews of Lithuania might have been expected to pay.
They included the box tax, collected by a “tax merchant” who had
successfully bid for the right to collect them and were used to pay for communal
services and for the Rabbi’s salary; Candle tax, on Sabbath candles, which was
usually collected by the Rabbi’s wife and used for the needs of Jewish
education; Real Estate and Property Taxes, which yield information about
specific properties. A comprehensive article, “Box-tax paperwork records as a
source of information about the life of Jewish communities and their personal
structures, is at
http://www.jewishgen.org/litvak/HTML/OnlineJournals/BoxTaxPaperwork.htm
The Voter Lists records come from lists of electors of rabbis, municipal
electors, and those listed as eligible to vote for the Russian Parliament (Duma
voter lists).
This
growing part of the ALD comes from the indexing of Lithuanian Jewish vital
records that were microfilmed by the Genealogical Society of Utah (Mormons). The
indexing is of these vital records is currently taking place on a town-by-town
basis using CD ROMs that were provided to LitvakSIG. A detailed list of the
towns and records available to be indexed is available at: http://www.jewishgen.org/databases/FHLC/VilnaMicrofilmsIndex.htm.
A searchable index of the names and addresses in Volume One of the Vilna Ghetto Prisoners enumerated in the Lithuanian Census of May, 1942.
Indexes
of names appearing within Lithuanian business, street and telephone
directories.
Lists of Lithuanian Jews found to have survived the Holocaust.
Prenumeranten
Lists (Subscriber or Pre-Publication Lists for Rabbinic books from
1835-1913) for almost every Lithuanian shtetl, created by Ed Cohler.
Lithuanian Medical Personnel - Information about Jewish medical personnel, found in two Lithuanian medical directories, 1923 and 1925. Compiled by Harold Rhode.
Citizenship
Papers, Internal Passports, Immigration and Emigration Records.
These records stem from many types of documents authorizing and registering
internal passports, as well as from material in YIVO's Lithuanian
Communities of the Interwar Period Collection.
Cemetery
records and Landsmanshaften
records, including Kovno and Kaidan.
Donors
Lists Published in HaMagid (1871-72)
and HaMelitz (1893-1903)
Sugihara
Database. The names and visa dates of 2,139 Lithuanian, Polish, German, and
Russian Jews, all of whom were saved by passports from the Japanese diplomat
Chiune Sugihara in 1940.
Kelme
Database by Bob Weiss. Indexes to various archival and published records
about the town of Kelme, 1816-1944.
Vsia
Vilna 1915 Database by Scott Noar. This database contains more than
17,400 entries from the 1915 city directory for Vilna.
Some resources to help you discover
what records have survived for your town include Miriam Weiner’s Routes to
Routes Foundation Database http://www.rtrfoundation.org
“Jewish Vital Records, Revision Lists and Other Jewish Holdings in the
Lithuanian Archives” compiled by Harold Rhode and Sallyann Sack (Avotaynu,
1996), and LitvakSIG’s Catalog of the Jewish Holdings at the Kaunas Regional
Archive at http://www.jewishgen.org/litvak/HTML/kaunasix.htm
The growth of the
All-Lithuania Database reflects the support of Litvak researchers who have
contributed towards the acquisition and translation of records. For revision
list, tax and voter lists and other such records, researchers contribute to
their Uyezd (District) Research Group. For vital records, researchers contribute
to their town’s Vital Records Project. Qualifying contributors to the District
Research Groups or Town Vital Records Projects are eligible to obtain preview
copies of their district’s or town’s record translations in Excel format,
providing the opportunity to search and sort the records well before the records
are submitted to the All Lithuania Database for general searching. To find out
what District your town is in, check LitvakSIG’s shtetl/uyezd/gubernia table
at
http://www.jewishgen.org/litvak/HTML/sug.htm.
LitvakSIG is an independent organization that is hosted by JewishGen. Each organization has its own separate administrative and financial structure. Contributions to LitvakSIG http://www.jewishgen.org/litvak/HTML/donor.htm by check or credit card are tax-deductible as provided by law. Mail contributions to LITVAKSIG, Inc., Department 77-9253, Chicago, IL 60678-9253. Contribution forms may be faxed to 661/299-9198. Please include district research group and e-mail address with your contribution. LitvakSIG dues of $36 per year are completely separate from contributions to District Research Groups or Town Vital Records Projects.
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