The first fruits…

Posted by admin on Nov 25, 2012 in Announcements, Research | Comments

I am happy to announce that our project to retrieve documents from archives related to Kańczuga is beginning to bear its first fruits.

Cover Page from 1819 Kanczuga Landowner Record Book

We’ve identified several important records in the L’viv archives, including landowner records from 1819/1820, 1833 and 1850. The records from 1833 and 1850 were not known to exist for Kańczuga before, so this is really great news. Now we need to organize the indexing of these records.

Excerpt from 1850 Landowner Records

There are also some documents connected to the Jewish community of Kańczuga, such as a community charter from 1889. These kinds of documents do not have as many names as property owner lists, but do provide us with very interesting information on what the community was like in those days, and how it was organized.

Excerpt of 1889 Kanczuga Jewish Community Charter

There are some additional documents we believe exist, but we have not yet been able to locate. This can happen when a document is listed in the local inventory, but is not where it is supposed to be. It’s possible a mistake was made and the document doesn’t actually exist, or it’s possible they were just misplaced. In either case we may never locate them, but we will continue to try to find what we can.

We are currently working to make these documents viewable even before we index them, to those people who donated to the project. The index, when ready, will be freely available, but we don’t know when that will be finished. We expect to have the images viewable by donors online in the coming weeks. Donors will be contacted directly with instructions on how to access the files. If you are interested in viewing these documents and have not donated to the project, we of course welcome you to contribute now (minimum of $50) and we will send you the image access instructions as well (when the images are ready). If you are contributing to this project, please make sure to write in the donor note that it is for the Kańczuga Archival Records project.

We will be moving next on to the Przemysl archives to discover what records exist there for Kanczuga. We already know of the Birth, Marriage and Death records there that have been indexed by JRI-Poland (for which we are very grateful to JRI-Poland), but we will be checking to make sure no other documents exist there that may be of interest.

Introducing Kanczuga.org

Posted by admin on Nov 17, 2012 in Announcements | Comments

Welcome to Kanczuga.org. This site is set up to consolidate research into the Jewish community of Kańczuga. Up until WWII, Kańczuga, although a small town, had a very large percentage of Jewish residents. Kańczuga also served as the center point of the Jewish community of a number of surrounding towns and villages. All of this was destroyed during WWII, when the Nazis either deported or shot all the remaining Jewish residents of Kańczuga and all the nearby towns by 1942.

This site has several goals:

It is intended that anyone looking for information on the Jews of Kańczuga will be able to either find the information here, or be directed to the right place to find what you need. Consult the Existing Resources page, and the Organizations and Web Sites sub-pages for this information.

New research into the Jewish community of Kańczuga is being initiated through this site. There are currently four different original research projects in process or planned, and we will add more as ideas for original research are submitted. To see the big picture, see the Research page. Current projects include:

• Landsmanshaft Cemeteries project, where we have already photographed hundreds of gravestones from sections of cemeteries purchased by Kańczuga Landsmanshft organizations, and will be fully indexing those gravestones in the future.
• Archival Records project, where we are creating an inventory of Kańczuga records that exist in the archives in Przemysl (Poland) and L’viv (Ukraine), and will then copy and index records that are not already available through other sites.
• Nearby Villages project, where we will be creating an inventory of records in the Przemysl (Poland) and L’viv (Ukraine) archives for 21 different towns and villages which surround Kańczuga.
• CAHJP Project, where we will be copying and translating documents held by the Central Archive for the History of the Jewish People (CAHJP) connected to Kańczuga.

Collecting photographs and stories related to the town of Kańczuga, and the Jewish community that existed there. In addition to creating whole albums of photographs from contributors, we will also seek to have photo essays written, stories contributed as articles on the site, and we will allow visitors to upload images directly to our Public Album.

Building a complete family tree of the Jewish community of Kańczuga before WWII back through the beginning of the 19th century. This will be achieved through collecting sections of people’s trees that intersection Kańczuga and combining them all into a merged family tree.

The site welcomes suggestions for new research, new site features, content, etc. If you want to make suggestions for the site, or volunteer to work on research projects or on the site itself, please Contact Us. If you can help fund any of our research projects, or just want to donate to our general operating fund, please Donate.