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Kremenets Shtetl
Co-op
Activity Reports
Welcome
Welcome to the Kremenets Shtetl
Co-op. This message describes our current
activities and details about our Vital Records Translation Project.
The Kremenets Shtetl Co-op is involved in several major activities:
*Translate to English the vital records of Kremenets (1870-1907), which are on Mormon microfilms, and other records that we are able to obtain.
*Translate to English the Yizkor Books and other materials relating to Kremenets
*Coordinate restoration and documentation of the Kremenets Jewish Cemetery and other Jewish cemeteries in the Kremenets Uyezd.
*Translate the Kremenets Kahal records
*Translate the Kremenets Uyezd Revizskaya Skazka (Census) records and Family Lists
*Gather and post information about Kremenets and Kremenetsers
*Initiate new projects that can help us trace our Kremenets ancestors
In a sense, we are a landsmanshaft for Kremenetsers, successor to the post-WW2 Organization of Kremenets Emigrants.
With regard to the vital records, so far we have translated and proofread the 1870-1871 & 1893 birth records and 1870-1872 death records. They are not yet on-line, but we have posted an index to surnames that appear in these records. The index is accessible through our website (see below).
For more information about our activities (translating Kremenets vital records and the Kremenets Yizkor Books), please take a look at the following websites:
The Kremenets page at JRI-Poland
describes what we are doing. Go to http://www.jewishgen.org/jri-pl/jripldat
Scroll down the list until you get to Kremenets. There you will find an inventory of the 7 Mormon microfilms for Kremenets and a Surname List derived from the 1870 birth and death records. We will post additions to this list as well as translations of the full listings as they become available.
Translations of the two Yizkor Books and the 18 Landsmanshaft Booklets will be posted at http://www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/
as they become available. Click on "Read Translations" and scroll down the list until you get to Kremenets.
The Kremenets ShtetLinks website:
It contains most of the above material as well as additional information about Kremenets (history, photos,
etc.) and links to the other sites.
The microfilmed vital records are handwritten in Russian and in a combination of Hebrew and Yiddish. The Mormons, have provided us with
cd-roms containing all of the vital records that appear on the 7 microfilms rolls. We send extracts from these cd-roms to our translators to ease their translation tasks. The Yizkor Books are in Yiddish and Hebrew, but they are easier to translate because they are printed, not handwritten. We provide our translators/transliterators with translation aides to ease their tasks. Please let
me know if you can help translate from any of these languages. The more volunteer translators we have, the faster we can get our Kremenets materials posted and available for everyone.
I try to send out occasional updates on our progress to our e-mail list. I also send announcements of new items as they become available on one of the websites. Those who donate either time or money to either the Cemetery, Yizkor Book or Vital Records project receive pre-release copies of translations. Information about how to make a tax-deductible contribution is in the "informational message" on the JRI-Poland site, and in the "Donations" section of the Yizkor Book site. Or, just contact me and I'll send the information to you directly.
Once again, please be sure to let me know whether or not you can help translate from either Russian, Hebrew, or Yiddish to English. If you can help, I will send you a set of guides that we have developed to help standardize the translations we do.
If you have any questions or comments, please contact either Sheree Roth (our Co-Coordinator) or me. We'll be happy to help you any way we can. I am looking forward to hearing from you.
Ron Doctor
Co-Coordinator, Kremenets Shtetl CO-OP
KREMENETS SHTETL CO-OP
MARCH 2004 UPDATE REPORT
SUMMARY OF ACTIVITIES
Dear Fellow Kremenetsers,
Once again, this update message is long overdue. I hope the progress we've made since our last update will make up for my tardiness in getting this out to you.
Before I begin, Sheree Roth, our Co-Coordinator and I thank those of you who have sent monetary donations in support of one or more of our projects. We have 211 descendants of Kremenetsers on our e-mail distribution list. Forty-eight of us have contributed to our work. To express our gratitude for your donation, I have sent the latest Master Surname Index to you. If you have donated to at least one of the projects but you have not received the Index please contact me so that I can correct our records. If you have not yet made a donation, now is the time to do it. There is information on how to make a donation later in this message. When your donation is received, I will send you the current Master Surname Index.
As you will see, we have much to report. Rather than sending you a single very long message, I will send the several parts of the Update Report separately. Each deals with a different area of our activities. This first part is a summary of our activities. I’ll send the next one, dealing with our vital records translations, in about one week. Sheree and I welcome your comments and questions.
 | Vital Records – We have about 15,000 Kremenets vital records for the period 1870 through 1907. The records are handwritten in Russian on one side of the ledger book, and in Hebrew/Yiddish on the facing page. Translation is complete or in progress on 7,205 of these records. Proofreading is complete on 3,784 records (the 1870, 1871 and 1893 birth records, and on the 1870 & 1872 death records), and they have been submitted for posting in JRI-Poland’s
searchable database. The 1870 birth and 1871 death records already have been posted.
Transliteration Guides showing actual images of the Russian and Hebrew given names as they appear in the ledgers are available on our
ShtetLinks website.
A Surname Index containing 6,989 entries has been e?mailed to those of you who have made a monetary donation to one or more of our projects. We need additional donations to complete the translation work. See the Donations section, below for instructions on how to contribute to this project. |
| Yizkor Books – We have to translate about 2,000 pages in two Kremenets Yizkor Books and 18 Booklets published by the Organization of Kremenets Emigrants. They are written in Hebrew and in Yiddish. Thanks to our volunteers, we have completed translation of 211 of 271 Hebrew pages from the Tel Aviv Book (published in 1954). The other 60 Hebrew pages are in the translation process. However, only 10 out of 179 Yiddish pages from this book have been translated. And, only 8 out of 468 Yiddish pages in the Buenos Aires Book have been translated. We also are working on Hebrew translations of the Booklets. We desperately need volunteer Yiddish translators. If you can help, or if you know of anyone who can help, please get in touch with me. |
| Kremenets Jewish Cemetery Restoration and Documentation Project – The Kremenets Jewish Cemetery is our heritage and responsibility. It also is a genealogical treasure waiting to be discovered. It has between 1,500 and 5,000 matzevot, most of which are readable. Some of these matzevot date to the 16th and 17th centuries. |
Thanks to your donations, we have begun a Survey of the Cemetery. This will define the cemetery boundaries, identify the legal status of the cemetery, give us a count of matzevot and of trees and brush to be removed, and allow us to estimate the cost of restoration and maintenance. The Mayor and local government of Kremenets and the small Jewish community that has been re-established in town are cooperating with our efforts. After we develop our restoration cost estimate we will have to raise a large amount of money (probably more than $25,000) to restore and document the cemetery. If you are in a position to make a large donation to this project, or if you have connections with an organization that might provide us with a grant, please contact me.
| Other Jewish cemeteries in the Kremenets area – Moshe Landau, from New York, has restored a Jewish cemetery in Yampol. His workmen also recovered 13 Yampol matzevot and matzevot fragments from the River Gorin. I was able to photograph them and now am translating them. The matzevot date to the late 18th century. On my 2002 visit to Kremenets and surrounding areas, I also visited a Jewish cemetery in Vishnevets and photographed the 65 matzevot that were readable. I am translating these. This is another Kremenets cemetery that needs restoration. And, there are others. On my visit there later this year, I will try to identify and photograph other cemeteries in surrounding villages. |
| Kremenets Landsmanshaftn Burial Sites in New York – The website of JGS of New York (www.jgsny.org) has a list of landsmanshaftn cemetery plots in the greater New York area. The list includes four Kremenets landsmanshaftn with five sites, four Yampol landsmanshaftn with five sites, one Pochayev landsmanshaft and two Shumsk landsmanshaftn. There may be others for other Kremenets Uyezd towns. We need volunteers to document and photograph the matzevot at these sites. If you can help, please contact me. In addition, there was a substantial Kremenetser presence in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Perhaps our Argentinian members will be willing to identify burial sites there for Kremenetsers and people from surrounding villages. |
| Kremenets Landsmanshaftn Incorporation Records – Adam Bronstein has donated copies of the New York City incorporation records for several Kremenets Landsmanshaftn. We will place scanned images of these on our website and include names from them in our Master Surname Index. |
| Revizskaya Skazka (Census) records – Census records for Kremenets Uyezd (including surrounding villages) dating back to the 1834 Census have been microfilmed by the Mormons. The 1806 to 1811 Revizskaya Skazka also exists. Although it has not been microfilmed, I obtained records from this Census at the Ternopol Archives in 2002. After we complete the vital records, we will begin a translation project for Census records. |
| Family Lists – Family lists for the villages in Kremenets Uyezd exist at Ternopol Archives, but they have not been microfilmed. On my visit later this year I will get more information about these records. |
| Kremenets Kahal documents at AGAD – At least two Kremenets Kahal documents exist at AGAD in Warsaw. One dates to 1747 and is handwritten in Polish. The other dates to 1784 and is handwritten in Hebrew. Our task will be to find translators who are willing to work on these hard-to-read documents.
| Magnate records – During the time that Kremenets was part of Poland, several different Magnates owned the land in the area. Their records are a valuable link to our past. I will try to locate and get copies of these records when I am in Warsaw later this year. Our task will be to obtain and translate them.
| Polish Aliya Passports – The Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw has a collection of passports used by Kremenets Jews who made aliya in the inter-war years. I was able to photograph the pages of these passports. Along with their translations, the photos will be posted on our Kremenets website. Names from them will be included in the Kremenets Surname Index.
| Polish Business Directories – Since Kremenets was part of Poland during the interwar years, the town and surrounding villages are included in the various Polish Business Directories that gradually are becoming available on-line. JRI-Poland has the 1929 Business Directory on-line. The Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw has copies of the 1932 Business Directory, and perhaps others. We need a volunteer to extract and translate information from these Directories for Kremenets and surrounding villages. The data will be posted on our website and names will be included in the Master Surname Index.
| Ellis Island Database – Using Steve Morse’s search forms it now is possible to extract records that mention Kremenets and other towns from the Ellis Island Database. We need volunteers to work on this project. The data will be posted on our website and names will be included in the Master Surname Index.
| Other Resources – Over the past few years some of you have brought to my attention other resources dealing with Kremenets. I will describe these in a future Update message. They include a book titled, "The German invasion of Poland (Polish Black Book)", the Jewish Encyclopedia (1901-1906 edition, now on-line at http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/), Pinkas HaKehillot series published by Yad Vashem, and Chris Gladun’s website, www.polandsholocaust.org. Many of these resources include photos of Kremenets. We need a volunteer to identify and contact the copyright holders/publishers and get permission for us to post extracts and photos on our website. If you are willing and able to do this, please contact me.
| Kremenets ShtetLinks Website – Co-Coordinator Sheree Roth and her son Max continue to update and add to our website. All of our data are accessible on the website and through links to other sites. We have many, many photos on-line now and are collecting more photos and document images to post there. Do you have any to contribute?
| Upcoming Kremenets "Birds of a Feather" meeting - Sheree will host a meeting of Kremenetsers at the IAJGS Conference in Jerusalem in July. Contact her for details (ssroth@pacbell.net).
| Ukraine Travel Report – I visited Warsaw and Ukraine in September 2002 and spent considerable time in Kremenets, Oleksinets, Yampol, and Vishnevets. I also did some research at AGAD in Warsaw and at the Archives of Ternopol Oblast, where records from Kremenets Uyezd currently are stored. I have written a 118 page report of my experiences (“Ukraine Journal: A genealogical journey to Warsaw and Ukraine”). It is illustrated with more than 160 color photos. The report is in pdf format. Let me know if you want to see the table of contents. For your new donation of $50 or more to the Kremenets Vital Records Project, I will send you this report on cd-rom. The cd-rom also contains the given name image files we have created as transliteration guides. See the Vital Records Update (coming in about a week) for a description of these files. And, see the instructions below for sending donations to support the Vital Records Translation project.
| Fundraising and Budget Report – We have 211 descendants of Kremenetsers on our e-mail distribution list. Forty-six (22%) of you have made financial contributions to our projects. You have contributed a total of $4,132 to our three major projects: Vital Records Translation ($2,646), Kremenets Jewish Cemetery Restoration ($1,005), and Yizkor Book Translation ($481). Your donations have enabled us to pay professional translators to work on our vital records, and you have enabled us to begin the survey work that is a necessary first step in restoring the Kremenets Jewish Cemetery. However, we have to raise another $4,500 to complete the vital records translations. So, please consider making additional contributions now to the Vital Records Translation Project. See the details below.
As you can see, we have come a long, long way since we first created the Kremenets Shtetl CO-OP in the year 2000. Our original goal, to translate the vital records of Kremenets into English and to post the results on-line, has expanded considerably. Our purpose now is to serve as a modern-day landsmanshaft for Kremenets and surrounding villages. In this role, we are trying to gather all materials relating to Kremenets, translate them into English, create appropriate indexes to the materials and to names contained in them, and to make the results of our efforts available on-line and on cd-rom.
Sometimes it seems that every step forward we take leads to two new projects. New resources are becoming available rapidly and continuously. My constant fear is that these resources will be withdrawn before we can document them. Our project has grown beyond my abilities. So, I need your help. If you can assist in any way, in any of the areas I have outlined, please contact me. |
What better way is there to honor our ancestors than to remember them, and to ensure that our descendants will remember them? Let us work together to memorialize those who came before us and to be sure that their names, their lives, are recorded and preserved for posterity. Won’t you please help?
Donating to the Vital Records Translation Project
We have paid our translators $1,600 for translating 3,784 records. (Volunteers did some of the translations.) With the funds remaining from your donations to the Vital Records Translation Project, we can pay for another 2,200 records. This means we must raise about $4,500 to pay for translating the remaining 9,000 records. To ensure that we don’t run short of funds in the middle of this project, will you please make a tax?deductible donation today? Here are the instructions for sending your donations:
Contributions to "Jewish Records Indexing - Poland" may be made by check, bank draft, money order, or credit card. Be sure to specify that your contribution is for the Kremenets Shtetl CO-OP.
To make contributions by Visa or MasterCard, click on the Visa or MasterCard logo, or point your browser to http://www.jewishgen.org/jri-pl/creditcardform
Send your cash, bank draft or money order contributions or questions concerning donations to:
Jewish Records Indexing - Poland, Inc.
c/o Sheila Salo, Treasurer
5607 Greenleaf Road
Cheverly, MD 20785 USA
Telephone: (301) 341-1261
Fax: 1-810-592-1768 (24 hours)
E-Mail: ssalo@capaccess.org
NEW ! JRI-Poland now accepts contributions in some currencies other than US $. Read about how to send funds in your local currency ( http://www.jewishgen.org/jri-pl/contrib-non-us.htm)
Jewish Records Indexing – Poland, Inc. is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization. Contributions to Jewish Records Indexing – Poland are tax-deductible in the U.S. to the extent permitted by law.
Thank you in advance for your donations to this project. And, please, please when you send your donation, don’t forget to specify that it is for the Kremenets Shtetl CO-OP.
Ron Doctor & Sheree Roth
Co-Coordinators, Kremenets Shtetl CO-OP
April 2005 Update
Dear Fellow Kremenetsers,
We have been making good progress on the Kremenets Uyezd Jewish Cemetery Projects. So, I think it is time to update you regarding our activities ... and to ask for a couple of volunteers to enter translated matzeva inscriptions into an Excel spreadsheet.
As most of you know, two of our major projects are to restore and document the Kremenets Jewish Cemetery and the two Vishnevets Jewish Cemeteries. This is what we have done so far:
| We have prepared a grant application and submitted it to a major charitable foundation. We are asking for almost $19,000 for Phase 1 of a four phase restoration and documentation project for the Kremenets Cemetery. Our 34 page proposal includes not just restoration of the main cemetery, but also creation of a memorial at an unmarked mass killing site and recovery of matzevot from the parking lot of the former Gestapo headquarters in Kremenets. The foundation will act on candidate proposals in July. The proposal itself is a rather large file, about 6 MB, including many photos. If you would like a copy of the application and if you have a high speed Internet connection, let me know.
| We contracted for and obtained an official survey of the Kremenets Jewish Cemetery. In addition to showing the boundaries of the Cemetery, we have a contour map of the entire 25,000 square meters Cemetery. The Survey has been approved and signed off by Kremenets Mayor Andriy Andriyevich Huslavskiy. Mayor Huslavskiy has given us a letter of endorsement for this project.
| We are about to contract for an official survey of the two Vishnevets Jewish Cemeteries. This is being done in cooperation with the Mayor and Deputy Mayor of Vishnevets. The Mayor has given us a letter of endorsement for the Vishnevets restoration projects. (By the way, the Vishnevets City Hall used to be the main Synagogue of Vishnevets.)
| We have obtained photos of more than 4,200 individual matzevot that are in the Kremenets Jewish Cemetery, the old Vishnevets and the "new" Vishnevets Jewish Cemeteries, and the old Yampol and the "new" Yampol Jewish Cemeteries. Valeriy Rozenblit, a young Jewish photographer whose family has deep roots in Kremenets, took the Kremenets and the "new" Vishnevets photos. He used digital camera equipment that we obtained on loan from JewishGen.
| We have a half dozen volunteer translators actively translating the matzevot images. So far we have translated about 1,500 of them, including all of the "new" Vishnevets inscriptions. Two of our volunteers are editing the translations. Our plan is to post the edited translations along with links to the corresponding image files on the JewishGen Online Worldwide Burials Registry (JOWBR). We will, of course, make all of this available to you before it is posted.
That brings us to you. We need a few of you to volunteer to enter the translated inscription in an Excel spreadsheet. I have entered about 150 of the inscriptions and it is fairly easy work. If you volunteer, I will provide you with the English translations to be entered and with a sample spreadsheet that will show you how to enter the information. There is nothing fancy involved .. just straight data entry. When the editing and data entry are complete for each cemetery, we will submit the spreadsheet to JewishGen.
If you know how to do data entry in Excel (or any other spreadsheet) will you please volunteer to help us with this project? If you can help, please contact me, rondoctor@earthlink.net.
Best wishes to all of you, and Happy Pesach,
Ron Doctor
Co-Coordinator, Kremenets Shtetl CO-OP
November 9, 2005
Dear Fellow Kremenetsers and Vishnevetsers,
I'm pleased to to advise you that Ukraine SIG has posted prominently on its website our updated Master Surname Index, our new Surnames Graphics file, and many more files that we have developed as part of our vital records translation work. Take a look at www.jewishgen.org/ukraine. This is what we have on the website.
 | Town Names with Hebrew and Russian Graphics |
| Keywords with Hebrew and Russian Graphics |
| Causes of Death,with Hebrew and Russian Graphics |
| Given Names, Male,with Hebrew and Russian Graphics |
| Given Names, Female,with Hebrew and Russian Graphics |
| Hebrew/Yiddish Transliteration Guidelines for use in Vital Records, Yizkor book & matzeva (tombstone)translations |
| Surnames with Hebrew and Russian Graphics |
| Kremenets Master Surname Index |
 | This is an index to Jewish surnames recorded in the vital records and other documents of Kremenets, Ukraine and surrounding shtetlach. It also includes surnames that occur in the two Kremenets Yizkor Books, the series of Booklets published by the Kremenets Association of Emigrants, and the Pochayev Yizkor Book. We also have added names extracted from the Jewish Encyclopedia article about Kremenets (www.JewishEncyclopedia.com). The lists are not complete because translation activities are still underway.
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This is a work in progress. We have completed translation of 7,547 records, about 51% of the 14,863 records that we received from the LDS. The Surname Index currently contains 12,533 entries (11,445 from the 7,547 vital records and 1,088 from the Yizkor Books, Booklets and other sources). The vital records entries include the edited and proofread data, but they also include a large number of entries that have not yet been edited.
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