This website contains links to two separate databases. The first one is a listing of the third class railway fare from all of the train stations in Germany, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and Switzerland to le Havre and Hamburg when paid in U. S. dollars in New York or Chicago. The second database is a gazetteer of all of the locations in the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1905.
Further resources will be added to this website from time to time.
To view, click on Useful Resources by Edward David Luft. The site is managed by Eli Rabinowitz
Eli Rabinowitz is involved in Jewish community activities, filming events, photographing, researching, lecturing internationally and blogging on Jewish life and heritage; he presented a talk at the IAJGS 2015 conference in Jerusalem. Rabinowitz manages over 70 KehilaLinks for JewishGen. and led the first JewishGen Virtual Heritage Tour of Europe. He lives in Perth, Australia.
Marijampolė is an industrial city and the capital of the Marijampolė County in the south of Lithuania, bordering Poland and Russian Kaliningrad oblast, and Lake Vištytis. The population of Marijampolė is 48,700. Wikipedia
I travelled with my friend, Laima Ardaviciene, the English teacher at Kedainiai High School, to Seta, Jonava, Vandizogala and back to Kedainiai
Šėta
Lithuania
Quick facts
Šėta is a small town in Kaunas County in central Lithuania. In 2001 it had a population of 1025.Wikipedia
Population:
1,025 (2001)
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Jonava
Quick facts
Jonava is the ninth largest city in Lithuania with a population of ca 30,000. It is located in Kaunas County in central Lithuania, 30 km north east of Kaunas, the second-largest city in Lithuania. It is served by Kaunas International Airport.Wikipedia
Municipality:
Jonava District Municipality
Area:
13.67 km²
Jewish buildings, including the former synagogue. Information posters on the buildings.
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Former synagogue Former synagogue
The Jewish Cemetery
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The amphitheatre and holiday entertainment
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Vandžiogala
Quick facts
Vandžiogala is a small town in Kaunas County, Kaunas district municipality in central Lithuania. It is located 29 km north of Kaunas next to Urka brook. A Holy Trinity church was built in Vandžiogala in 1830.Wikipedia
Population:
946 (2001)
The Holocaust site on the outskirts of the town.
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Kėdainiai
Quick facts
Kėdainiai is one of the oldest cities in Lithuania. It is located 51 km north of Kaunas on the banks of the Nevėžis River. First mentioned in the 1372 Livonian Chronicle of Hermann de Wartberge, its population as of 2008 was 30,214.Wikipedia
Municipality:
Kėdainiai District Municipality
Population:
26,080 (2013)
Area:
4.4 km²
A cultural festival and concert hosted by Rimantas Zirgulis
Eli’s entertaining and informative presentation takes us on a pictorial journey of his research activities and his numerous visits to Poland and the Baltics. This leads to a discussion of the demographic changes in the Australian Jewish community. Eli calls for a re-evaluation in the way Australians connect to our shtetls and educate about Jewish family and cultural history. Eli proposes some ideas on how to do this. It’s about the legacy we can leave!
Eli is involved in many Jewish community activities. He films, photographs, researches and lectures internationally on Jewish heritage and cultural history. He brought the memories of Muizenberg exhibition to Australia, manages 60 websites for JewishGen.org and arranges Litvak heritage tours.
I visited Pakruojis to see the wooden synagogue in the city.
As you can see from the images, it is currently being restored. We previously saw that the wooden synagogue in Ziezmariai is also under restoration.
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Other views of the town
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My visit to my wife’s family town of Shavlan or Siaulenai was not so successful.
Her maternal grandfather’s family name was Saevitzon, in Israel, Shavei Zion.
I searched for the Jewish cemetery, asked at the Christian cemetery and was told by locals that there was a Jewish cemetery on the other side of town. I couldn’t find it and I ran out of time.
I later emailed Sandra Petrukonyte of Maceva, who kindly replied:
Dear Eli,
It is so pity that you could not find. I tried to search for exact location. The map is attached (for your future journey!).
It is seems that the way to the cemetery is not marked by any sign, the path is not paved and the cemetery itself is in a small distant forest. Not surprising that you got lost.
MACEVA does not have own photos, therefore I am adding links to another websites with general view of the cemetery:
My friend, Owen Ogince, was born in Johannesburg, but lived in Theunissen in the Orange Free State in South Africa. He went to boarding school in a larger city, such as Bloemfontein, typical of the many first generation of South African born Jews who lived in the country areas. Their parents often spoke only Yiddish and Afrikaans, creating an interesting sub culture which in many ways reflected their previous lives in the shtetls of Lithuania. They were often referred to as boerejode. For more information on boerejode, see the end of this post.
I took the opportunity to visit the shtetl of Vabalninkis in Lithuania, where Owen’s family came from.
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The Jewish Cemetery and the memorial to the Resistance.
A visit to Cape Town is not complete without a drive to one of the towns in the Boland.
From Wikipedia:
Boland, Western Cape
The Boland (Afrikaans for “top country” or “land above”[1]) is a region of the Western Cape province of South Africa, situated to the northeast of Cape Town in the middle and upper courses of the Berg and Breede Rivers, around the mountains of the central Cape Fold Belt. It is sometimes also referred to as the Cape Winelands because it is the primary region for the making of Western Cape wine.
Many of the Jews who came to Africa from Europe settled in rural areas and small dorps. They formed a subculture within the Afrikaner environment of these towns and many were known as Boerejode, Afrikaner Jews or more literally “farmer Jews”.
These towns could be regarded as Africa’s version of the shtetl back in Eastern Europe.
In the earlier years of settlement, there was the Jewish pedlar or smous, who travelled from town to town, farm to farm, selling his wares. Here is a memorial to the smous or pedlar on my new Graaff Reinet KehilaLink:
Below you will find a selection of my images of Stellenbosch, one of the main towns of the Boland with its striking mountains, rich winelands and outstanding Cape Dutch architecture.
I have also included some interesting articles which I found at the Kaplan Centre archives at UCT, the Univeristy of Cape Town, my alma mater!
A big thank you to Juan-Paul Burke, the librarian at the Kaplan Centre, always so obliging and helpful, for allowing me to use them.
And on a tangent – on campus there was no sign of Cecil John Rhodes, except for the old signs!
Boerejood
in Wikipedia, die vrye ensiklopedie
Afrikaner-Jews
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Afrikaner-Jews or Boere-Jode as they are sometimes known, are an offshoot of Afrikanerdom and Judaism. At the beginning of the 19th century, when greater freedom of religious practice was introduced in South Africa, small numbers of Ashkenazi Jews arrived from Britain and Germany. They established the first Ashkenazi Hebrew congregation in 1841. Between the end of the 19th century and 1930, large numbers of Jews began to arrive from Lithuania and Latvia. Their culture and contribution changed the character of the South African community.
According to the South African Jewish Museum, “Many of the later immigrants arrived with no resources other than their wits and experience. Most could not speak English when they arrived. Often they would learn Afrikaans before English. Their households were often multi-lingual, with parents speaking Yiddish and Afrikaans, and the children learning English at school.”[citation needed]
The University of Cape Town Jewish Studies library has a comprehensive collection of South African Yiddish books. Its collection of Yiddish periodicals is, however, not as comprehensive.
My interest in family history started in 1992, after my cousin wrote seven ancestors’ names down on a scrap piece of paper.
I have had many genealogical success stories since then. This is due to my often unorthodox, multi focused approach, described by my daughter in law as “tangential”!
In 2011 I visited Eastern Europe for the first time. My heritage travels have taken me back four additional times. I have visited Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Poland, Hungary, Germany, the Czech Republic and Turkey.
I started writing KehilaLinks in 2011, the first being for Orla, near Bialystok in Poland in 2011.
JewishGen KehilaLinks (formerly “ShtetLinks”) is a project facilitating web pages commemorating the places where Jews have lived. KehilaLinks provides the opportunity for anyone with an interest in a place to create web pages about that community. These web pages may contain information, pictures, databases, and links to other sources providing data about that place.
Kehilaקהילה [Hebrew] n. (pl. kehilot קהילות): Jewish Community. It is used to refer to a Jewish community, anywhere in the world.
Sites are hosted by JewishGen, the world’s largest Jewish genealogical organisation, an affiliate of the Jewish Heritage Museum in New York City. JewishGen provides amateur and professional genealogists with the tools to research their Jewish family history and heritage.
People are invited to send in their own stories, photos and memoirs. There is no cost in participating in a KehilaLink and it is a great way to share one’s family history
My list has grown to 63 websites with 3 more in the pipeline.
Ironically, the one place I have not been to is Shanghai! Yet, I have been drawn to it by its connection to the Jewish people and especially because of the story of Chiune Sugihara, the Japanese consul in Kovno, the capital of Lithuania during WWII. Against his government’s wishes, Sugihara issued transit visas to Jews, enabling them to get to Shanghai, and therefore saved many lives. The story only surfaced in the 1970s. See Rabbi Levi Wolff of Sydney Central Synagogue:
Amanda’s grandfather’s uncle, Hermann Wertheim, his wife Mathilde, and children Julius, Max, Fanny and Fritz who lived in Graaff-Reinett. It was taken in about 1892
The general store, Wille & Wertheim, formerly Baumann Bros., where Amanda’s grandfather, August Katz came to work for his uncle Hermann Wertheim.
August Katz, Amanda’s grandfather, in his British Boer War uniform
Grave of Fritz Wertheim, son of Mathilde and Hermann Wertheim. Hermann was a brother of Amanda’s great-grandmother, Mathilde Wertheim.
