Luc,  thank you.  It is good to know the roots of the names.
Couple of comments:  1) Balta in Podolia was in Russia Empire from end of 18 century to 1918, after that from 1918 to 1941 and from 1944 to 1991 was part of the Soviet Union, and now it is part of Ukraine.  Just want to let you know that Russia and Soviet Union are different countries.
Also Baltsi in Bessarabia were part of Moldova Principality  (Romania did not exist yet!) until 1812, From 1812-1918 part of Russian Empire, 1918-1940 and 1941-1944 - part of Kingdom of Romania, 1940-1941 and 1944-1991 part of Soviet Union.

One more thing about Beltsy, Bessarabia...  The "Uezd" or county Beltsy was a center, was named Yassy until late 19 century, even town Yassy was part of Moldova Principality and later Romania.

All the best,
Yefim Kogan

Dear researchers,

Here is an update for the Bessarabia Research Division projects for the month of November 2020. 

See also at What's New at Bessarabia website.

Bessarabian Databases. Updates in December of 2020:

 

Our Bessarabia group is preparing a load of records to JewishGen. It will include following these or more:

• Vital Records. Bendery and 21 shteitle in uezd - 3012 birth records for some years from 1874 to 1899; Soroki uezd for 11 shteitle - 395 birth records for 1909 and 1910; Beltsy and 12 shteitle in uezd - 770 records for 1911 and 1913. See the list of towns, shteitle

• Jews in Public Life in Bessarabia. New addition is for 1916 and it includes 74 records for town of Kishinev.

• Business Directory, 1897. Includes 1423 records from all Bessarabia.

• All Kishinev, Business, 1916. Includes 608 records of business, small and large for Kishinev.

• Revision Lists. There are already 10306 records completed. See progress...

Please let us know if you have any questions, ideas of how to make our Bessarabia Research group and Bessarabia website better.
 
Yefim Kogan and Inna Vayner
Bessarabia group Leaders and Coordinators

Alain Farhi of the Farhi family website "L'Fleurs de Orient" can help you with all Farhi family questions.

Schelly Talalay Dardashti
New Mexico
tracingthetribe@...
dardasht1@...

I just found my great-grandmother, traveling with two children, one of them my grandmother, despite some daunting handwriting and transcription problems, but only because of a lucky break.  The family surname is Zarov (Zharev or Joroff) but the bursar wrote Barov.  You can see that there was an attempt to correct it by hand with a Z written over the B.  But it was transcribed Barow in the database.  To add to the problem, the bursar's elaborate handwriting caused the transcriber to render my great-grandmother Dora into Gora and my grandmother's name Ida into Jola (the lowercase d became ol).  The lucky break was that the three were traveling with other Zarovs, whose names were transcribed correctly in the database.  It also helped that one member of the second family had the same given name as my grandmother's brother.  Thus the results for Zarov produced one likely entry, Abram Zarov.  When I looked at the manifest I was initially disappointed to see his mother identified as Feige,  Luckily, I still have sufficient peripheral vision to notice the other cluster of Z/Barovs nearby.  I don't know that any of the search modes (soundex. etc.) will help with mistakes in the first letters of a name or mitigate a radical change like Z to B.

A friend of mine who likes slogging through records was able to find one of my great-grandfathers' manifest record by brute force.  His name in Bialystok was Menachem Mendl Sztejnsapir but he changed it to Stein in the US.  Despite the fact we had purported ship name and arrival date from his naturalization petition, no amount of searching on likely variations of the two names could locate him.  My friend went page-by-page through manifests until she found a candidate – Mendel Sapir – who matched my great-grandfather on enough points to make him the likely target.  Again, I don't think there is a reliable way to conduct a database search that would retrieve a Sztejnsapir if you didn't already know or guess he was traveling as Sapir.  

Sometimes your only options are luck (and a touch of peripheral vision) or brute force labor.

Lee Jaffe
JOROFF / SZTEJNSAPIR

I have location information on two burials from 1903 and 1904 at Trumpeldor Cemetery, Tel Aviv-Yafo for which I would appreciate photos of gravestones. Please reply privately if you are able to help. Thank you.

Beverley Davis in Melbourne, Australia

I have location information on two burials from 2005 and 2011 at Yarkon Cemetery, Tel-Aviv-Yafo for which I would appreciate photos of gravestones. Please reply privately if you are able to help. This couple had a daughter who died in 2015, when she was living in Hod Hasharon, but I do not know in which cemetery she was buried. Any advice gratefully received.

Beverley Davis in Melbourne, Australia

A probable relative of mine is listed on a Yad Vashem Page of Testimony submitted in 2007 by a "researcher" named Xavier Messalati. On further checking, it appears that Mr. Messalati has submitted almost 14,000 pages over the years - most of them with virtually no sourcing on the Pages that would aid in verifying the accuracy of the information. Frustrating, and not just for me - there is at least one other post from someone on this very list who had questions for the same person about his "research."

Does anyone know precisely what Yad Vashem means for Testimony to have come from a "researcher"? Do they have any procedures in place for vetting such testimony?

There is a specific scenario I am wondering about in this case: some Googling for the name "Xavier Messalati" suggests that a person by that name is (or recently was) a tour guide, especially for Francophone tour groups, in Jerusalem. So I am curious about the possibility that Mr. Messalati is not a "researcher" in the sense that folks on this list generally think of it - someone whose job, or serious hobby, is to pore through various sources in an attempt to answer specific research questions, and habitually submits Pages to Yad Vashem on people who he has incidentally found were Holocaust victims in the course of his research.

Instead, I wonder if the reason this "researcher" has submitted such a huge number of Pages of Testimony is actually just that he has contact with an enormous number of victims' friends and relatives in the course of his job as a tour guide, and when he takes his tour groups to Yad Vashem, he asks if anyone knows of any victims and submits Pages with zero corroborating info (possibly on computer terminals Yad Vashem has set up onsite to facilitate easier submission) on their behalf at that time.

My only experience with the layout of Yad Vashem was a brief visit as a tourist in 2015. Is the scenario I've guessed at plausible - that a tour group leader could potentially submit tons of Pages on behalf of his clients, and yet still be categorized by Yad Vashem as a "researcher"?

Adam Turner

Fran,

Wreschen is known today as Września, Poland.
https://www.jewishgen.org/Communities/community.php?usbgn=-537153
Września, Poland
Alternate names: Września [Pol], Wreschen [Ger], Vreshne [Yid], Vřesno [Cz], Vzhes'nya

Sawin, Poland.
https://www.jewishgen.org/Communities/community.php?usbgn=-527389
Alternate names: Sawin [Pol], Savin [Yid, Rus]

Try searching https://www.jewishgen.org/databases/Poland/
for records of your family from those towns.  You can search by surname, or search by town alone to see what records are available.

Also, consider doing a soundex search on the surnames.  Names are often spelled in various ways.

Good luck in your search,

Sherri Bobish

Steve,

Try searching for info on Brooklyn Roumanian-American Congregation First Beth Tphilah synagogue, and also Rabbi Morris Schachter in old digitized NY (& other states) newspapers at this free site:
https://fultonhistory.com/Fulton.html
Try different spellings of the words, i.e. Roumanian / Romanian, etc.

Keep in mind that in earlier times the title of "Rabbi" may have been substituted with "Reverend" or "Rev"

Hope this is helpful,

Sherri Bobish

Maureen,
the text is all in Russian.
---
Voucher
Issued by Kovno governor 1905 May 17, #943 Russian meshchanin [urban dweller] of Kovno governorate Sima s.o. Isaak Vaynshtok with children: Abram 10 yo, Shifra 12 yo, and Mera 8 yo.  Marked with the stamp to leave the country. [the area for return to the country on the right is not stamped] 
---
The stamp has a date of June 4 1905.  The upper portion of the stamp says that it was stamped in Libava, which refers to the old name of Liepaya/Liepaja in Latvia, a major Russian Empire port at that time.

Mike Vayser

Marilyn,

My ggf's shtetl of Ustrzyki Dolne did have a Jewish mayor, and he was mayor of the entire town.  This was in Galicia, in today's Poland, not in Russia though.

According to: 
https://uncoveringjewishheritage.com/category/jewish-culture/synagogues/page/2/
In the town of Dukla "the associate mayor used to be selected from among the Jewish population."

Regards,

Sherri Bobish

George,

Both Genowefa Korc and Alexander Lorski are listed on page 157 of this USHMM document:
https://collections.ushmm.org/findingaids/RG-15.270_01_fnd_pl.pdf

And, both names also appear on this site:
http://muzeumkonstancina.pl/681_marychna__historia_jednej_z_najstarszych_willi_konstancina?page=2
You can use Google translate to read it in English.

Hope this info is helpful,

Sherri Bobish

I have posted several old handwritten German postcards written by my grandparents about 100 years ago, and would appreciate having these transcribed within the next few days since they will only be online for a limited time period.  

Please advise me if you can also help me with other German documents, some of which are originals and others from archives.

My current documents are shown on ViewMate as VM88414, VM88415, VM88416, VM88417

Thank you,

Ellen Lukas Kahn

If you access the page using Google Chrome, it will translate the headers into passable English. Note, for example, "Revision List" translates out to fairy tales or auditory tales. 

Chuck Weinstein
JewishGen Ukraine Research Division Towns Director
chuck1@...  

I am trying to find the naturalization petition and records for my grandfather Max Glasser.  From Ancestry, I have found an index card (#4982428)  indicating that it is petition number 291649 from the US District Court at Brooklyn (Eastern District of NY).  It was issued January 23, 1941.  I did find find the record at Family Search.

Thanks very much.

Mark Weinberg
Wilmington, DE

Searching Wielodroz, Glasser, Levine, Weinberg, Gartner

Line 318 looks like Schaje - sometimes spelled Szaje or Szaja.

Linda Cantor
NYC

The family of Jewish Senator Jacob Javits from New York (1904 -1984) came from Zbarazh in Ukraine, and I recall reading that his grandfather had been a mayor of the town. In Zbarazah, the name was "Jawetz."

Susan J. Gordon
New York
BIALAZURKER - ZBARAZ(H), BUDAPEST
LEMPERT - SKALAT, LVOV, CZERNOWITZ

I think, p.i.  means "pod imieniem" = "under the name" 
If you think this answer does not fit, please send me an example under my PM and I will try to clarify this.

Ruth Leiserowitz
Warsaw / Berlin