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INTRODUCTION:
From August 14th through
August 18th, 1999, my guide Regina Kopilevich from Vilnius, her helper, and
I, spent four days in Zeimelis. We spent most of the time
documenting all the tombstones in the Jewish cemetery. Regina is very good
at reading Hebrew inscriptions on tombstones. We examined all the
tombstones that we could. We tried to read every single tombstone.
Altogether we looked at 249 tombstones, out of which 121 stones were
unreadable, either because the inscriptions were too faint or nonexistent,
due to extreme weathering, or because the quality of the original stone
was poor. We found 34 tombstones that had last names as well as first
names. The other 94 tombstones that Regina could read only had first
names. We used shaving cream and charcoal to enhance the letters on some
of the stones, so that Regina could read the inscriptions better. Regina
also read some of the letters, by feel, with her fingers, like someone
reading Braille. I took photographs of most of the tombstones that Regina
could read. The tombstones that I took photos of are indicated in the
rightmost column of Index 1 and Index 2, above.
Stones that were upside down, we turned
right side up, so we could see the inscriptions. For those stones that
were mostly submerged and buried below the ground, we removed enough of
the earth around the stone, so that we could see the entire inscription.
All the tombstones were roughly in about 36
rows, which we numbered A through Z, then AA through AJ. The tombstones
are all facing in the same direction, approximately North. The rows in the
cemetery we defined as going from West to East.
Example: A1 means grave number 1 in row A.
Grave A2 is east of grave A1. (Grave No means tombstone number within that
particular row, going from West to East.)
Barry
Mann
(Please e-mail all corrections to me, at
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| Barry Mann,
, was born in Johannesburg, South Africa.
He graduated with a degree in Chemistry and Mathematics from the University of
Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. In 1968 he lived and worked in Israel (Kibbutz Maagan
Michael). When he was 26 years old he immigrated to the U.S.A. and he has lived in El Paso, Texas, for
the past 30 years.
However, he is very much a "resident" of his ancestral shtetl
of Zeimelis, having visited Zeimelis three times. Barry first became interested in the
Manns of Zeimelis -- and the entire town of Zeimelis -- in 1997 when he became very
interested in genealogy, and discovered a cousin, living in Kaunas, who had survived the
war.
To learn more about Zeimelis, please visit the
Zeimelis home page Barry created which is at http://www.shtetlinks.jewishgen.org/Zeimelis/Zeimelis.htm
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