CURRENT PROJECTS:
This is the heart of the SIG - what we are doing to make records available to
our research community. You are needed in all kinds of volunteer efforts to make these projects work. Help us
find and identify records in every former Russian guberniya of the Ukraine!
The Interactive Databases of the
Ukraine SIG
Go to this page to see Databases and Town Pages that you and your fellow JewishGenners are creating by sharing
information! These are browseable databases where we list all the families that we know in a particular town Town
and Family List or all of the individuals whose occupations in the Ukraine that we know Occupational
Survey. An important component of the InterActive Databases is the list of towns that are
themselves Collection Points for known information about particular towns. These are the sites for which
Ukraine SIG members have donated photos, records, etc. about individual towns. Click here to see Links
to the Collection Points for Ukrainian Towns We have grown again, October 2005!
Click here to participate in visual database of Portrait
Photographers and Picture Postcard Makers of the Jewish Ukraine.This material will allow us to
help date your photographs taken in the Ukraine.
Bubbe's Ukrainian-Yiddishe Noshery
The Pictures, the Recipes, and the Memories of our Grandmothers who cooked for us the recipes they learned
from their Yiddishe grandmothers. Send us the pictures and food stories for this unique interactive database.
Please note that the name of this page does not restrict who you can talk about. Some of those who shared
their hearts and food with us refused to be called "Bubbe," I have received notes about those who
loved the Hebrew language and would only be a "Savta." Others are Mom to generations, still others
Mom-Mom and Nanny even to their adult grandchildren. Granny, Grandmama, - they will all be here if you send a
story of what made them and their cooking special. Should we talk about all the things you called your
grandfathers who made everything from pickled herring to rye bread? Remember them and let us learn about them
too.
Translations, Transliterations, and Images of
Russian and Hebrew Words by the Kremenets Vital Records Project
The Kremenets Shtetl CO-OP translates vital records (1870-1907), Yizkor Books, Cemetery gravestones, and
many, many more documents. When a translation is completed, we add all personal names, town names, and source
document information to our "Indexed
Concordance of Personal Names and Town Names" (http://www.shtetlinks.jewishgen.org/Kremenets/web-pages/master-surnames.html).
Start your search in this document. To get the most benefit from your search, please be sure to read the
"Introduction and Guide to the Concordance" and the instruction page, "How to Use the
Indexed Concordance". It tells you how to use the Concordance, identifies the source document
abbreviations, and tells you how to access the source document. Each document is available for downloading as
an Excel spreadsheet and also as a pdf file (for those of you who do not use Excel).
If you ever have wondered how your family surnames were written in the old country, take a look at our
newly updated "Surnames:Hebrew
and Russian Images and their Transliterations" document. This document contains image of both
Hebrew and Russian surnames extracted from the 19th century vital records. Currently we have extracted more
than 1,100 different surnames, many with multiple spelling variations. The Surname image document is at http://www.shtetlinks.jewishgen.org/Kremenets/web-pages/images-from-VR.html
. Similar documents on this web page contain image extracts showing given names (male and female), town
names that appear in the Kremenets records, plus causes of death and keywords (with their English
translations).
All of these research tools were created as part of the work of the Kremenets-District Research Group (Kremenets
was in Volhynnia Guberniya) under the direction of Dr. Ronald D. Doctor and Sheree Roth. By creating a
pictorial dictionary of Russian and Hebrew words, abbreviations, and idioms used in these records, they have
created a set of tools that researchers can apply to every former Russian town. Images of Russian and
Hebrew/Yiddish handwriting as used in official documents, pictures of particular instances of Hebrew
abbreviations and expressions, are tied to the translations and transliterations. These are the tools that
will help you decipher official documents of the Russian jurisdictions of town, district and gubernia as well
as the vital registers of Jewish community organizations.
The organization which managed this project is the Kremenets Shtetl CO-OP. which is part of JRI-Poland and
of the Kremenets-District Research Goup. The Co-Coordinators are Dr. Ronald Doctor and Sheree
Roth. Clearly their efforts depend on a diligent group of people. For information on their other projects,
visit the Group's Shtetlinks home page (http://www.shtetlinks.jewishgen.org/Kremenets/web-pages/index.html
).
You are invited in each of these documents to contact Ron Doctor
to make additions, comments, and to ask questions. These documents will be augmented and updated as new
materials become available, so continue to look for updates and new information about them on this page.
Shtetls and Town Pages
Do you know of a Webpage on a Jewish Community anywhere in the Ukraine? Whether it is stored on
JewishGen's servers or is hosted elsewhere, we would like our members to be able to find it and to share their
findings on how they were able to use it. When you help us build a list of these sites, we will post it here!
The first one that I'd like to recommend to you is Kolki
a shtetl site on JewishGen for this Volhynnian Gubernia town. Take a look also at Poninka
which was also in Volhynnia and Snitkov
which was in Podolia Gubernia. We invite webmasters for Shtetlinks communities that were in the nine
gubernias of the Russian Enpire's Ukraine to help us inform the membership about what they are doing. Tell us
about what you have posted so we look at your site more frequently. Let us know about volunteer projects that
you are trying to organize. Make sure that our links to your sites are working - from each gubernia page, from
this project page, and from any relevant page on the Ukraine SIG's site. Members who are interested in
creating new Shtetlink pages will receive all of the support that the Ukraine SIG can muster so it is
important that we know the efforts that you are making! Please click on the first words of this paragraph or
on the Shtetls of the Ukraine Page
GDP (Geographical Dictionary Project)
The goal has been to create a comprehensive geographical dictionary of the major Jewish communities within the
region of the former Russian Empire gubernias, providing both the present names of shtetlekh (townlets),
oblasts/uyezds/gubernias (districts/provinces), and what they were called under the Russian Empire. Art
Hoffman single-handedly took on the Podolia Gubernia and we need people to follow his lead for the other
gubernias as well. Judy Tarail has just taken the baton and completed Poltava. Someone grab it from her! Click
here to go to Art's description of that process - Geographical
Dictionary Project You can go directly to the two Gubernia data spreadsheets that we have so far
Records Giving Ukrainian Birthplaces and Last Residences, outside the Ukraine
This is another Membership-created file. We are looking for information on the kinds of documents created in
the countries where our relatives born in the Ukraine, settled. We currently have very little information
about the Russian Jewish settlement of the many countries of South and Central America, Africa, Asia.
Non-residents are equally in the dark about access to records that can identify Ukrainian origins in Europe,
North America, and Australasia. You can change this. One member's response has started our report so we begin
with a little bit of information about the settlement in Brazil from the 1880s of the Russian Empire to the
1920s and 1930s of the Polish and Ukrainian Republics. What makes the Russian Jews' cemeteries special? Where
were the ports of entry and where can you find the immigration records? Assisted Immigration in the form of
Jewish Agricultural Colonies or other. The Ukraine's SIG's interest is in identifying the records that will
help us traverse oceans and centuries, bringing together far-flung members of families that in the nineteenth
century lived in Podolia, Volhynnia, Kherson, Kiev, Kharkov, and the remainder of the Ukrainian gubernias.
Look in the corner of the world in which you live to help us find more clues to our shared heritage in the
Ukraine.
Guides to Jewish Archival Material
Judy Tarail's organizational skills have given us another tool. She has looked at the catalog of the Family
History Library and arranged the information so of most value to researchers of the Jewish communities of the
Ukraine, providing a valuable finding tool. It is organized first by gubernia then by town. After you have
located a film for your town, you can then contact the Family History Library of the Latter Day Saints to
obtain particular microfilms to borrow at their local research libraries. If you can make a similar
outline of available materials for Ukraine Jewish Research at other libraries, we will publish it here.
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