New Project: Jewish settlements in Kherson Province (Ukraine)

Dear Friends,

We are proud and excited to announce a new project. The Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People (at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem) has collected documents relating to selected towns in Ukraine and their Jewish populations. We have identified various documents relating to Novopoltavka and nearby Jewish settlements in Kherson province: Novopoltavka, Beryslav/Bereslav, Dobre/Dobroye, Lvove/Lvovo, Malaya Seydeminukha, and Romanovka

Some of these records are:

o Correspondence regarding the establishment of Jewish Settlements in Kherson, Lists of Jewish settlers, life in the colonies, etc (1843-1849)

o Industrial Department, Police (1881-1904) “Jewish matters” regarding the situation of the Russian Jews.

o In the process - the account of the Jewish colonies in Dobraye and Novopoltavka; verification of the establishment of educational agricultural farm and professional institution in Odessa;

o correspondence of activities in Russia with England Jewish colonial organization, about opening local immigrant committees, about immigration, relocation, etc.1891-1902

o List of ships and immigrants to Argentina.

We will use both professional and volunteer translators to translate these documents from Russian to English. We have created a JewishGen Ukraine SIG Fundraising Project to acquire the documents and to pay for professional translators (http://www.jewishgen.org/JewishGen-erosity/projectdesc/DB_Novopoltavka.html). We also need volunteers to translate these records. To volunteer please contact Project Manager Sylvia Walowitz at ruthw95@yahoo.com and help us to help you!

Funds raised for this project will be used to acquire digitized copies of these documents and others for associated towns; to translate the acquired records; and to prepare the datasets for posting to the JewishGen Ukraine Database and the Ukraine SIG Master Name Index. Full translations will be posted on the appropriate KehilaLinks websites. A JewishGen spreadsheet template will be available to contributors well before posting on the JewishGen Ukraine Database

The key audience for this project is people whose ancestors lived in or near these towns, including many whose ancestors emigrated from these towns to Argentina.

Project Importance

The Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem is a rich source of archival documents. Acquiring, translating, and making available documents and datasets relating to Jews from these towns will benefit genealogical researchers and will help provide context for the lives of our ancestors. The data also will help us understand patterns of Jewish population growth and migration.

If you have roots in any of these places, this is your opportunity to help yourself, as well as many others, now and in the future! We need to raise money to acquire these documents. Without your support we will be unable to pursue this project. If you are researching family from any of these towns please join in and help!

How to Donate

To donate, please point your browser to the JewishGen-erosity webpage for Ukraine SIG Projects:

http://www.jewishgen.org/JewishGen-erosity/v_projectslist.asp?project_cat=22

Scroll down the page to the project:

Kherson Settlements Document Acquisition and Translation Projects

Fill in the amount of your donation and click the Donate button. Follow the directions on the page that pops up. When you click “Checkout via our secure server”, you will be offered several choices for payment.

Because there is up to a two month delay before we get the financial report and we want to get the documents as soon as possible, please write to Sylvia Walowitz at ruthw95@yahoo.com and tell us how much you have donated. We will send regular progress reports to all donors.

Sylvia Walowitz