I usually do a screengrab of the page and then use the sharpening tool in a photo editor Bruce Drake Silver Spring MD

#records #poland #translation

Yom Kippur begins Sunday evening. This excerpt from the Yizkor book of Podhajce, Ukraine about the observance of the holiest day of the year needs little introduction other than saying that its accoun

#yizkorbooks #ukraine

Rosh Hashanah begins this evening, and here I bring you two excerpts from Yizkor books about the holiday, one from Gorodets in Belarus and the other from Podhajce in Ukraine. The sounds of the shofar

#belarus #ukraine #yizkorbooks

This week’s excerpt, “Shabbosim, Holidays and Weddings,” from the Yizkor book of Klobuck, Poland is a charming snapshot of the arrival of the Sabbath — the women and girls hurrying to the baker with t

#yizkorbooks #poland

“When the month of Elul arrives, you immediately sense the special atmosphere that has enveloped the town, the atmosphere of the approaching Yamim Noraim, or Days of Awe.” So begins “On the Holidays,”

#yizkorbooks #poland

I found it intuitive to use. It did improve the photograph I was studying, but the original resolution was so bad it was beyond improving Bruce Drake

#photographs #general

In early April, the prisoners of Buchenwald could hear the distant sound of artillery from General George Patton's advancing Third U.S. Army, At about 2 p.m. on April 11, American tanks appeared in th

#ukraine #yizkorbooks

The beis midrash (“House of Learning”) was a central part of Jewish communities described in the Yizkor books, and many chapters are dedicated to memories of them. It was a place to study Torah that c

#yizkorbooks #poland

“Woronow Jews observed ancient religious traditions that had been handed down from father to son… Without this religious base and these customs our lives were meaningless… God was the foundation of th

#yizkorbooks #belarus

Those of you versed in the practices and protocols of a respectable marriage in the shtetls of Eastern Europe also know that the path to the wedding involved more than a quick trip to City Hall or a v

#yizkorbooks #ukraine

In 1827 Nicholas I issued a statute making Jews in Russia liable to personal army service and canceling their prior privilege of providing money ransom instead of conscripts. Conscription often was ti

#lithuania #ukraine #yizkorbooks

The husband of Ala Gamulka, who has translated many Yizkor books for JewishGen, has passed away. He was born in Kovel, grew up in Rokitno, and survived the war by hiding out in the forest with his mot

#general

In addition to what I said before about Ancestry and My Heritage feeding data from my own tree back to me, I have found most of their “record match” emails useless because if you have been on those se

#general

In one record from Kovel that a researcher found for me my great grandfather Itzhak David appeared as Izhuk

#names

I started with Ancestry and later subscribed to MyHeritage. Sometimes, I'll find something on My Heritage that I didn't find on Ancestry (although it may have been there and I missed it). But there's

#general

Full-fledged doctors were few and far between in the shtetls of Eastern Europe and the gap was filled in large part by feldshers (alternatively spelled as “feldschers”). Feldshers were old-time barber

#poland #belarus #yizkorbooks

According to the Kolmyaa Yizkor book, Lemberg-Chernowitz train line was completed with a station in Kolomea. https://www.jewishgen.org/Yizkor/kolomyya/kol013.html

#ukraine

In curating these weekly excerpts, I try to strike a balance between the powerful but brutal stories of the Holocaust and other sufferings of Jews in the era covered by Yizkor books, but it can be cha

#yizkorbooks #poland

One of the bitterest divisions among the Jews of Eastern Europe — which persists among Jews to this day — was the clash of beliefs between the Hassidim and Zionists. The very religious were concerned

#yizkorbooks #poland

Two very different things loomed large in Zalman Wendroff’s memories of growing up — his hard-to-approach but awe-inspiring mother and the centrality of the family’s large samovar. (Wendroff went on t

#belarus #yizkorbooks