SORROW,
RAGE,
FRUSTRATION AND RESTITUTION:
THE
REASONS BEHIND A SHTETLINKS
PAGE
by Michelle Frager,
Snitkov Webmaster
Not an
Intellectual Exercise
Being neither a
writer, historian, or a member of a notable family, I always believed
there was
little I could do about these family issues , common to virtually all the greater 20th and 21st
Century Jewish family. I wrote checks
in support of those who support Jews in need, wrote letters, signed
petitions.
And in the 1970s, tiptoed into genealogy.
That brought more open
discussions
with our elders than anytime before, uncovering formerly covert parts
of their
old lives. But surprisingly, instead of
‘closure’, the more we learned of our family’s unwilling role in
history’s
vilification, the angrier and more frustrated we American generations
grew.
Then,
two years ago, while
researching online at ShtetLinks, something ‘flipped’. From one moment
to the
next I was not looking at a research screen, but at a personal opportunity. A mind-boggling
opportunity when I thought about it, to reverse history’s efforts to
obliterate
our family, its background, it’s honor, its unassuming but legitimate
place in
history.
It alone could not undo the violence
of centuries, but it could give back the respect stolen. At the very
least it
could restore, for my family, for their town, and for as many relatives
and
neighbors as I might name, their own lives as Russian Jews in their
piece of
the Pale - they lived once, in this way. Here. In Snitkov.
Politics is
Always Personal
An unrecognized
impetus had appeared months before, while the ideal was still personal
research. Miriam Weiner and her
Routes to
Roots research firm had presented us with a movingly specific document:
the
first page of the 1892 Jewish tax list for Snitkov - headed by my
great-grandfather, Pinchias Treiger. With help we read how, like the
other ten
families on the page, he lived in a “wooden house”, had this “income”,
and paid
these “taxes”. More than any of my late father’s stories, more than the
several
Russian-imprinted, nearly sacred, photos of strangers, this official
specificity stunned us.
I think
now that, more than anything else, it was the column listing extra
Jewish taxes he and his neighbors paid simply for being Jews that
smoldered. Talk about making the theoretical concrete, about linking
the
personal to the political with real anger. We kept thinking about the immediate
context for this life in this place - little Snitkov
in the
south-western depths of the Russian Empire which my father remembered
so
warmly. (Well, at 9 years of age, he wasn’t coping with the degradation
of that
tax.)
This paper, added to
the loss of our
last immigrant elder a year earlier, this insult in permanent ink to
our oldest
known ancestor, this eventually became the underpinning of ShtetLinks
Snitkov,
and the making of our own restitution.
The Unanticipated
Dynamics of Researching Shtetls
Taped interviews
with my late father provided an idea of life there from a child’s
perspective -
the house, the neighbors, the trades, the inter-religious relations and
so on.
With these for a foundation, I confidently began looking around for
scholarly
resources to provide the historical background I was sure existed. No.
There
turned out to be barely anything re: Snitkov. And of course, I was
limited to
English. Yes, we’d uncovered a path through our history, but it
seemed
the one to our Treiger family’s milieu remained hidden.
Weeks of research produced only a
short list of information scattered over various archives and
collections: a synagogue photo here, a
pre-Holocaust
paragraph somewhere else. Then - an entire poetic reminiscence of the
town by
one of its émigrés, Y. L. Melamed, published in the
1930s, available at
specialized libraries in New York! Halevai! It was in Yiddish.
Oh.
Obviously, without a ShtetLinks page, only impassioned researchers like
ourselves would ever see these.
The long plod went like this:
=First search: a Yizkor book. If
there is one, I’ve failed so far to learn of
it.
=Then: JewishGen. Using the home
page search box produced a couple of excellent statistics from the
terrific
Litin ShtetLinks page. But photos or deeper information on my small
town were
not scattered freely around JewishGen like freiliche sweets.
And I
thought: If JewishGen has so little.... But after a while, this
let-down
actually energized me - when I finished the page, there would
be
information out there.
=Posting to the JewishGen Ukraine
SIG and searching the JGFF for Snitkov families, identified some other
Snitkovites, some already familiar. I
now knew not to be surprised when they also had only slight knowledge.
But
theirs added to my limited information. There was one bad experience,
an email
from someone unfamiliar who sounded suspect, who seemed to have posted
to the SIG
only once or twice. After two exchanges, rightly or wrongly, I cut off
communication. I don’t think he’s posted since. Online, even here, I
felt
caution was the best bet.
=Despite being a native New York
Jewish genealogist, only now did I come to appreciate the public
library’s
Dorot Jewish Division. Not least it’s online catalog:
in English or not, their onsite books, pictures collections and
titles, were educational simply by the catalog entry descriptions. If
anything
looked promising, I’d go up to see it. (The novel experience of
protracted
physical proximity to the ultra-Orthodox men who frequent the Dorot
reading
room was unexpectedly helpful, too. Despite our vast worlds of
difference and
careful indifference, their presence, their various regional headgear,
their
span of ages, illuminated my research surprisingly.)
=Other critical search tools: the
rest of the New York Public Library (NYPL) online catalog, librarians
and
departments; the Center for Jewish History in NYC, web search and image
queries
re: Snitkov (not limited to Google and Yahoo), which had led to the
poetic
memoir, as well to online catalogues of Jewish universities and
Holocaust
museums or centers otherwise unknown to me. There are more of them, in
more
places, than I’d expected.
=The
poetic memoir -- the biggest
thing I’d learned of -- was not
at NYPL. But through the valuable,
nearly
universal, library service, InterLibrary Loan (ILL), they borrowed the
book on
my behalf as a cardholder, from a Pennsylvania university. Fee: $1.00
(Once I
have it translated, and check copyright issues, the hope is to upload
some of
the pages to the site.)
Technology
Novices Can Build Web pages
I knew almost nothing of HTML beyond
boldface, italic, and paragraph. So, simultaneously with the sleuthing,
I began
learning the basics of web page design. I didn’t work where the
expertise
existed, and I didn’t own a web design program. Either would have
lessened the
pressure considerably, but the family didn’t want to help buy a program
(pricey) though they’d willingly paid larger amounts to cover the
overseas
family research.
It was hard, and had this been some
other project I might have let it stretch out much longer. But I did it
over
the same months as the research because I wanted any part of the site I
was
working on to be created directly in that format as I went along. Time
wouldn’t
be saved, but I’d see what I had as it went along. My teachers?
ShtetLinks Help
pages, and various online pages found through searches, devoted to
explaining
the process simply with examples. Learning to control the copy and
typefaces,
add a background to pages, insert a photo or table, was thrilling.
The Thrill of
Snitkov V.1.0.
Last year, I had
little material compared to some ShtetLinks sites, and more than
others. It
seemed imperative to keep researching
and learning HTML. I dreamed of a magnificent testimonial.
But the delay in publishing began to
bother me, us - the whole intent was to
honor the lives and struggles of our forebears, which meant
publication.
Otherwise, everything would stay in the family, on my hard drive and in
my
pocket-paged binder, till some future unknown golden moment of fullness.
Quite honestly, I had trouble coming
to grips with the obvious conclusion to this: upload an in-process
project. I’d
never submitted an in-process project as complete. But then I realized
this
wasn’t a proposal or a book. It was ‘Snitkov.Version 1.0.’
Once this sank in, given my
still-low technology capabilities, the help of ShtetLinks’ aptly named
Help
Desk and its volunteer web master was critical. Although we had false
starts on
both sides, they ultimately moved the project through the final, and
thus for
me simple, aspects of sending my computer files to the web itself. To
my
relief, the web master first uploaded them to JewishGen’s intranet,
excluding
the public, where I could see them ‘live’ and make any related last
minute
changes. A very few changes, and then he uploaded them to the public at
ShtetLinks. Really live.
Restitution
“Really live.” One
runs from the desk shouting at innocently engaged family members in
other
rooms, or grabs the phone. No one who does this in the workplace can
understand
that it’s not like completing an email, memo or plan. No one who’s
never done
this for this reason can understand the amazement and
fulfilling sense
of completion.
How amazed are my oldest relations,
who like me were raised by former inhabitants of what had in their
lifetimes
been the Pale and then a bleeding ground.
Despite the tireless efforts and
murders of the Russian Empire, and the Holocaust and USSR in its wake,
at the
last the bastards failed. They did not erase the existence of our
family and
it’s world. At ShtetLinks Snitkov today is nothing as grievous as a
pogrom
record from a kahal, a list from Dachau, the tortures and
murders by
Einzatsgrup D of my great-aunts, Golda and Bella who were exterminated,
and my aunts
Ennye - captured and killed when she left her Christian-hidden
family
because she felt she looked too Jewish for their safety, and young
Surah, who
died of
infections while fleeing to the east, nor does it contain purge reports
or
gulag records. It is an innocent community’s return to the
light of
recognition, memory and honor. And love.
One hundred and twelve years after
my great-grandfather Reb Pinchas Treiger paid his 1892 taxes –
his
punitive Jewish taxes, so carefully recorded – he, his family,
and his neighbors are at least partially restored, as respected elders
of our worldwide family. §