Miriam Weiner Routes to Roots Collection: Bessarabia Records

Introduction to Miriam Weiner Archive Database for Bessarabia

The Miriam Weiner Archive Database for Bessarabia/Moldova is an indexing of names that appear in the summary translations Weiner created from documents that she researched in her 25+ years of working in the Moldova archives (in addition to archives throughout Eastern Europe). Data entries also came from various archive inventories and lists that Miriam received directly from the archives in Moldova as part of their collaborative efforts in creating a comprehensive database of archival holdings, first appearing in Weiner’s book, Jewish Roots in Ukraine and Moldova and now appears at the publisher’s website, www.rtrfoundation.org. Miriam has generously donated this material to JewishGen.org.

Sources of information

Example includes information for 5 families in the 1874
Revision List for the town of Khotin. The summary document usually includes the following:

• Archival Source
• Person or family (group) members with Age,
• Registration number from the Revision
• Town or towns person was registered or live
• Additional comments

Other types of documents may include different information, like Date of death, date of illegally crossing border, etc.

Original Police Interrogation document, first page from 4-page document

The document is written in the Romanian Language.
A Police Interrogation document includes genealogical data: town where the person was born, lived, profession, spoken languages,
education, religion, reason for interrogation. It also has information on family members, where they lived, date of birth, death, professions, etc. Other types of documents may include different information, but our goal was to add all genealogical information into the database, and
display the original documents as well.

Types of Documents

The project of translating and transcribing information is in progress. Here are types of documents found so far:

• Revision Lists
• Birth Records
• Army Registrations
• Zionist Lists
• Family Lists (similar to Revision List, but from different time period)
• Alphabetical list of people with Orchards
• Confirmation of Sale of Property
• Complaint-Civil Suit
• Border Crossing Russia to Bessarabia (Romania)
• Confirmation of Contracts
• Payment Owed

See more on Types of documents at http://www.rtrfoundation.org/webart/Archdata3.pdf
And on Archive Codes at http://www.rtrfoundation.org/webart/Archdata3b.pdf

Languages

Miriam's summary translation of the documents is in English; the original archival documents are in Russian, Romanian, Hebrew/Yiddish.
Key for Russian Terms for Genealogical Research see at http://www.rtrfoundation.org/keyrus.shtml

Project Progress

The document copies and summary translations received from Miriam cover the following towns and
districts: Akkerman, Ataki, Beltsy, Brichany, Faleshty, Kalarash, Kishinev, Khotin, Lipkany, Orgeev,
Secureny, Skoreshty, Soroki and Soroki Uezd, Teleneshty, Tiraspol, Vertuzhany, Yedinets, Zguritsa and
surrounding towns.

List of sets of documents in the Collection

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Acknowledgements
This project was made possible by the hard work and dedication of many people who translated, transcribed and
validated the records. The project was started by members of a local Bessarabia SIG group at Jewish Genealogical Society of Greater Boston: Fay Bussgang, Roberta Jaffer, Jill Roff, Gilda Brookman, Helaine Livingstone, Florence Schumacher. Also working
on the project are Inna Vayner and Ana-Maria Nica. Project Leader: Yefim Kogan.