User:Elliealiese/Sandbox

Historical Background
The history of the Jews in Ukraine goes back over a thousand years. In the westernmost area of Ukraine, Jews were mentioned for the first time in 1030. Jews worked as artisans and merchants while a smaller number were farmers. By the 1760s, the Jewish population in Ukraine had reached about 300,000. Most were clustered in communities near the Dnieper River, and in Volynia Podolia, Braslav, Rus Czerwona, and Kiev guberni. Because of the economic success of the Jews, many Ukrainian peasants resented them. Tensions between Jews and the Ukrainian populations continued throughout the centuries. In 1881, Alexander II was assassinated and rumors circulated that Jews were behind it. A wave of large-scale anti-Jewish violence, called pogroms, swept through the southern Russian Empire, including Ukraine throughout the mid to late 1800s. During the 1917 Russian Revolution and the ensuing Russian Civil War, an estimated 31,071 Jews were killed during between 1918 and 1920. During the establishment of the Ukrainian People's Republic (1917-21), pogroms continued to be perpetrated on Ukrainian territory. In Ukraine, the number of civilian Jews killed during the period was between thirty-five and fifty thousands. Massive pogroms continued until 1921. In September 1939, the first Jews living in the western regions under Nazi control were forced into ghettos, and later sent to death camps, which continued throughout the remainder of the war. After WWII, many surviving Jews left Ukraine for the United States or Israel. After the fall of the Soviet Union, roughly three-quarters of the Jewish population left Ukraine.


 * To learn more about Jewish history in Ukraine, read Ukraine, The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe.

JewishGen Town Finder/JewishGen Communities Database

 * The town finder is a useful online gazetteer for locations in Eastern Europe. Note that wild card searches are not supported. To view an entry page, click on the Jewish star to the left of the town name. Entry pages provide jurisdictions for before WWI, the interwar period, after WWII and modern-day. Alternate names and Yiddish and Russian spellings are also included. In the center, you'll find a map and a list of additional Jewish communities located nearby. Finally, under Additional Information and in the green box at the top, you'll find links to references and additional resources that may help you in your research.

Additional Maps

 * To view the present-day Ukraine at Google Maps, click here.
 * For a Jewish population density map of Europe in 1900, click here.
 * For a map showing the percentage of Jews in the Pale of Settlement and Congress Poland, c. 1905, click here.
 * To view an additional historical map showing the historical percentage of Jews in governments, click here. Definition of "Pale of Settlement" from Wikipedia.org: The Pale of Settlement (Russian: Черта́ осе́длости, chertá osédlosti, Yiddish: דער תּחום-המושבֿ, der tkhum-ha-moyshəv, Hebrew: תְּחוּם הַמּוֹשָב, tḥùm ha-mosháv‎) was the term given to a region of Imperial Russia in which permanent residency by Jews was allowed and beyond which Jewish permanent residency was generally prohibited. It extended from the eastern pale, or demarcation line, to the western Russian border with the Kingdom of Prussia (later the German Empire) and with Austria-Hungary. The English term "pale" is derived from the Latin word "palus", a stake, extended to mean the area enclosed by a fence or boundary.

JewishGen Family Finder

 * The Family Finder is a database of both ancestral hometowns and surnames that have been researched by their descendants world wide. The Family Finder allows you to connect with others who are researching similar ancestors and origins and collaborate your research. To add the surnames and locations you are researching, click on Modify (Edit your existing entries) or Enter (Add new entries). Type in the surnames and/or locations of interest and hit Submit. To search the database and see if you can connect to family members and other researchers, choose Search (Search the database) from the Town Finder home page. You can search for a surname and/or a town. Search results will appear in a chart format giving you the surname, town, country, and researcher information (often includes contact information) and the date they last logged into JewishGen.

1897 Census
The 1897 Russian Imperial Census was the first and only census carried out in the Russian Empire. The census enumerated the entire population of the Empire (excluding Finland), but after statistical data was gathered, many of the census returns were destroyed. There are, however; surviving census returns for many locations throughout Ukraine. Use the resources below to help you determine if census records survive for your ancestor's shtetl and how to access them.

JewishGen
Census returns still exist for the city of Odessa. A JewishGen indexing project of these records is underway. Learn more about the status of the project here. The records that JewishGen is in the process of indexing are located on FamilySearch in the Ukraine, Odessa Census Records 1897 collection.

FamilySearch
Census returns still exist for the city of Odessa. Original images are not indexed, but are available to browse through the Ukraine, Odessa Census Records 1897 FamilySearch collection.

Lipes Genealogy Database
Lipes Genealogy Database has indexed portions of census records from the City of Odessa and the Kiev Gubernia. In order to search a limited version of the database, you will need to create an account, which can be done for free. The full version of the database starts at 10 Euros per day. If you wish to order the original document through Lipes, you will be charged an additional fee.

1897 Census Finding Aids
Census returns may also exist for other locations, but images or indexes may not be available online. Use sites such as Archive Fonds of the First 1897 All-Russia Census or the Catalog of Surviving Census Sheets in Archives of Russia, Ukraine, and Other Countries to help you determine if census records exist for your area. These sites are in Russian, but can be easily navigated using Google Translate. If you are using the Google Chrome browser, just right click anywhere on the page and click Translate to English. If you are using a different browser (Safari, Firefox, Edge, etc.) you can still use Google Translate, but it requires a few extra steps. Go to translate.google.com and change the language settings to translate from Russian to English. Paste the URL of the site you would like translated into the Russian box and then click on the link that shows up in the English box. This will take you a translated version of the site.

Holocaust

 * European Holocaust Research Infrastructure Online Portal offers information on Holocaust archival material held in institutions in Europe and throughout the world.
 * Arolsen Archives, also known as the International Center on Nazi Persecution, is one of the largest archives on the victims of Nazi persecution. Many of their holdings are available to research online.
 * Yad Vashem Central Database of Shoah Victims' Names is a database of victims of the Holocaust.

Yizkor Books
Yizkor books are memorial books commemorating a Jewish community that was destroyed during the Holocaust. Books are usually published by former residents and records the remembrance of homes, people and ways of life lost during World War II. Most books are written in Yiddish or Hebrew, but in recent years, many have been translated and made available online. Take a look at the JewishGen Yizkor Book Project to locate a translation or Yizkor book for your locality of interest.

Additional Resources

 * Get ideas and help with Ukrainian Genealogy at Jewish Genealogy at Ukraine Facebook.

The JewishGen Ukraine Database
More than 1.5 million records for Ukraine, from a variety of sources, including: voter lists, business directories, vital records, diplomatic records, yizkor books, and others. Requires free registration. To search, click here.

AGAD Jewish Records (scanned images)
AGAD Archive (In Polish language. Chrome browser will offer to translate.) AGAD, the Archiwum Glowne Akt Dawnych (The Central Archives of Historical Records in Warsaw), is the repository of about 3,000 Jewish metrical books for the area of the former Lwow, Stanislawow, and Tarnopol Wojewodztwa (now Lviv, Ivano Frankivsk, and Ternopil oblasts in Ukraine). These registers are mainly for the period from 1877-1911 when these areas were a part of the Austrian province of Galicia.

Assorted Jewish Records (scanned images)
Includes records for Volyn province, Transcarpathia, Katerynoslav province, Kiev province, Podolsk province, Poltava province, Stanisław Voivodeship, Kherson province Ukrainian Jewish records -- includes metrical books, revision lists, etc.

Database of the Ukrainian residents born between 1650 and 1920
Pra.in.ua's database contains over 3.7 million individuals. The database is not exclusively Jewish, but does contain Jewish individuals. The site also contains a small library, or collection of digitized records, organized by hashtags.

Volhynia
Volhynian Civil Records Indexes Metryki Wołyń, public registers of Volhynia are being indexed here. To search the database by name, look at the very bottom of the page for "In order to search the database press HERE"

Miriam Weiner Routes to Roots Foundation
Data regarding locations of Ukrainian Jewish records originally published in books by Miriam Weiner is now on this website with periodic updates. Contains articles, essays, maps, archivist insights, and archival inventory for Jewish research in Ukraine. The website also contains a database of documents that is searchable by town. The search for documents in Eastern Europe ancestral towns is complicated, partly because of the destruction of documents during the Holocaust and changing borders and names. Only the first few letters of the town needs to be known, as all towns beginning with those letters will appear in the list. Some towns will even be cross-referenced with spelling variations or name changes. However, to determine the current spelling of a town, consult Where Once We Walked by Mokotoff and Sack (Avotaynu, 1991). The database will note the types of documents that has survived for that town, including army lists, Jewish vital records, family lists, census records, voter and tax lists, immigration documents, Holocaust material, school records, occupational lists, and more. The span of years covered by these documents and where to find them will also be provided. Records in the archives can be accessed on various websites or databases (such as JewishGen) in person at the archives, by writing to the archives directly, or by hiring a professional researcher to do the work. By consolidating data from five Eastern European countries, researchers can easily determine which records are kept by which archives or repositories.


 * See Routes to Roots Foundation and hover over Ukraine for a Genealogical and Family History guide to Jewish and civil records in Eastern Europe
 * See also the book, Jewish roots in Ukraine and Moldova by Miriam Weiner (FamilySearch Catalog call no. 947.71 F2w 1999)

Harkavy Collection of Pinkassim Vernadskiy Library in Kiev, Ukraine
See this document for an inventory of Jewish related resources found in the Pinkassim Vernadskiy Library in Kiev, Ukraine. Various society, memorial books, lists of merchants and other records are available.

Tsal Kaplun Foundation (TKF)
TKF seeks to locate and share knowledge about Jewish communities in Eastern Europe. There are several resources available on their website including:


 * Ukrainian Shtetl Finder
 * Inventory of Jewish Records in Archives
 * Montefiore Censuses of the Holy Land (XIX Century) citizens from Palestine who arrived from the Russian Empire.

Ukrainian State Archives

 * View the Ukrainian State Archives home page by clicking here. Includes a "Contacts" link.
 * Discover over 100 web pages of Jewish information available online at the Ukrainian State Archives by clicking here.