THE GALITZIANER Volume 7, Number 3 Spring 2000 Volume 7, Number 3 Spring 2000 In This Issue [insert postcard photo of Czortkow] Coordinator’s Corner Departments Town Updates Tidbits In Every Issue Letters to the Editor Yizkor Book Update Steering Committee Update Features Halicz and Galicia by Alexander Sharon A JewishGen Tale . An Unknown Cousin Found by Phoebe Kassenoff 1913 Business Directory—Przemysl, Lezajsk, Pruchnik, Przeworsk by Leon Gold and Barbara Urbanska-Yeager THE GALITZIANER Volume 7, Number 3 Spring 2000 English language microfilm reels, books, and COORDINATOR’S maps. FHL staff members will be on hand to CORNER help us translate documents in Polish, German, Russian, and other European languages. (Bring Are you planning to attend the IAJGS 20th copies of foreign language documents you may Summer Conference in Salt Lake City in July? already have, but do NOT bring original Have you started organizing your files, data, and documents! ) family charts? Be well prepared and you will make the best use of your time and energy at the You can prepare for your trip to the Conference conference as you network with other Galicia in July by identifying the microfilms you want to researchers and do your research! use at the Family History Library before you come to the conference. There is no need to go What will the Conference offer Galicia to a local Family History Center because the researchers? Family History Library Catalog is located on the Internet at The annual Gesher Galicia SIG meeting will be http://www.familysearch.org/search/searchcatalo held from 1:00 - 2:00 PM on Sunday, July 9. In g.asp . addition to reports from the Gesher Galicia Steering Committee (GGSC), we will introduce You may already be involved in indexing or coordinators (or representatives) of Galicia transcribing data or translating documents found town-based research groups. If you have recently in LDS or other records for Galicia. You will formed a group or wish to, or if you wish to be surely want to do your personal research at the town historian for your town, please let Shelley FHL. In addition, you may consider profiting know. We have asked these groups to provide a from your time at the FHL to volunteer to create handout for conference attendees. a surname index of a reel or two of microfilms (or books) of interest to you and relevant for the The Kolbuszowa (KRRG) and the Suchostav SIG.. Later you can announce your results to the (SRRG) Region Research Groups are also Galicia SIG Discussion Group and have them scheduled to meet on Sunday. Others are published as finding aids in The Galitzianer and planning Birds-of-a-Feather sessions for later in on the GG web site. the week. Please let me know about your plans. Please let us know if you are working on Gesher Galicia (GG) will sponsor one of the indexing, transcription, or translation projects conference luncheons on Tuesday, July 11 from that we may not be aware of. We hope that you 12:15 - 1:45 p.m. GG webmaster Mark Heckman and others are not duplicating each other’s will be our speaker and his topic will be “A efforts. Whether you are a shtetl group leader, Galitzianer’s Journey.” The luncheon will be town historian, or just “doing your own thing,” open to any conference attendee and will not be keep our membership informed and current by limited to our membership. We hope that some submitting quarterly updates (however in-depth new researchers will be there. or brief) to the editor of The Galitzianer, and to Melody Katz, Research Chair. In addition to the conference sessions related to Galicia listed elsewhere in this issue, this is a I hope that the research opportunities at the FHL golden opportunity to meet, network, share our and the excitement and enthusiasm of sharing research with others researching Galicia, and use information at the conference will serve as a of one of the finest genealogical resources in the springboard for a more intensified and dedicated world—the LDS (Mormon) Family History focus on Galicia research this coming year! Library (FHL). At the FHL, one entire floor consists of its European collection of non- See you in Salt Lake City! Shelley Kellerman [email protected] TOWN UPDATES 2 THE GALITZIANER Volume 7, Number 3 Spring 2000 BORISLAV/DROHOBYCZ/ organization of the Yizkor Book translation, and Alex Sharon, the research on the towns and the SAMBOR business directory. Of course, these tasks have expanded as new contacts are made and new Who would have thought that four people in material unearthed. But we also have offers of Canada and the USA, who in the summer of help from many new friends all over the world. 1999 had never heard of one another, would by In this lies the great reward for all this effort, November be in contact through e-mail daily, new friends and of course, a greater sometimes several times each day. This is what understanding of the lives of our forebears. the genealogy bug does. Since the summer of 1999, we have found a Our interests started with Drohobycz but with colleague in Israel who has the Yizkor Book and Alex Sharon on board, it quickly moved to will be our translation expert, a most generous Borislav where he had grown up. The two cities American who has been researching this area for were linked. Borislav was once a small village years and has generously shared his knowledge, just outside of Drohobycz but when oil was and many others who have written their stories discovered in the mid 19th century, it became a and offered their assistance. boom town. Jews started the oil and ozokerite (paraffin) industries and in the early days many We have not yet set a date for the launch of our Jews found employment. A few made fortunes. new web site, but we have established an on-line discussion group mailing list on JewishGen. Go It soon became apparent that we needed a web to: http://www.jewishgen.org/listserv/sigs.htm site to help Jewish genealogists explore the Click on Borislav, Drogobych, Sambor & history of this special area in the Carpathian Vicinity. foothills of the southern part of Galicia and to capture reminiscences of the lost Jewish Valerie Schatzker community that lived there. As we continued and Toronto, Ontario made contact with others who had ancestors in [email protected] this area, we realized that concentrating on the two towns was too limiting. These two busy towns were magnets for people from surrounding, smaller villages. People moved from town to town. Girls from one village GORODENKA married boys in another. It was an area interconnected by families and businesses and Mark Heckman and I have been working on the names kept reappearing. We decided to enlarge Gorodenka Web Site for a couple of years. We our area of research and include even the larger are now in the process of trying to get Sefer town of Sambor, which did not yet have a web Horodenker (the Yizkor Book) translated. At the site.We realized that to create our web site, much 1999 Summer Seminar on Jewish Genealogy in information needed to be collected, translated, New York City, we—along with other and entered into databases. The Yizkor Book for Horodenker researchers and Joyce Field—set up Drohobycz, Borislav and surrounding towns had the fundraising project and we are beginning to not been translated and a treasure trove for get people to contribute. I have sent an e-mail to family information found in the 1929 Business all those in the Family Finder who are Directory for Poland is not yet available on the researching our town. Mark suggests that we use web. the Gesher Galicia site to find others who might be interested in our project. The four of us divided the tasks. Laurel White took on establishing the web site, Carole Glick The project to translate “Sefer Horodenker” is Feinberg, the mailing list, Valerie Schatzker, the now under way. We have translated the Table of 3 THE GALITZIANER Volume 7, Number 3 Spring 2000 Contents and the Yizkor List of Holocaust Emmer saved the day by stepping forward to Victims. Sefer Horodenker, published in 1962, is help Jonathan Ansell and the web site is now over 400 pages long. The vast majority of the well in progress. book is in Yiddish and Hebrew with only a small English preface describing the town. FAMILY TREES: The book contains a wealth of stories about the I would urge you all to submit your family trees history of Jewish life in the town as well as first to the Family Tree of the Jewish People (FTJP), hand accounts of its destruction in WW II. where they will get the largest exposure and remain as a record for future generations. We have set up a fund-raising project through the “Yizkor Book Translation Project” that is SHTETL LEADERS: part of JewishGen in order to find a professional translator to complete the project. Some of our members have graciously accepted the task of serving as Shtetl leaders for their If any of the members of Gesher Galicia who are shtetlach. These are some of them: researching Gorodenka/Gorodenka are willing to make a tax-deductible contribution you may do BARANOW—Mike Swidler so by accessing: [email protected] http://www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/yizkortrans.ht MIELEC—Howard Leib ml [email protected] At this site you’ll find the appropriate forms and RADOMYSL WIELKI—Bennett Weinstock procedures for making donations.