JewishGen Ukraine Research Division
Introduction to Ukraine RD

Welcome to Ukraine RD. We are one of 16 country-specific RDs on JewishGen. Our objective is to connect you to information that will further your Jewish family history research in Ukraine. We are active in seeking out records, translating them, processing them and making them available to you. We strive for improved and personal communication.

Our RD has five ways of interacting with you: by e-mail, through this website, through messages on our Mailing List and Facebook page, and by posting data in the JewishGen Ukraine Database. This All-Ukraine Database is meant to be a searchable repository for all JewishGen information about Jews in Ukraine. Our Mailing List, Website, and Facebook page are the primary ways we communicate with each other. Click on the hyperlinks above to subscribe to the Mailing List or Facebook page, or to bring up a search form for the Database.

What geographic areas does Ukraine RD cover?

You may be surprised to learn that Ukraine RD does not cover all of modern day Ukraine. There is a reason for this. National boundaries in this part of the world have shifted from time-to-time. To recognize this reality, JewishGen assigns some areas that are in modern Ukraine to other RDs. This includes a large swath of western Ukraine which JewishGen's Database Sharing Committee has assigned to Gesher Galicia, and the RDs for Hungary, Romania, and Bessarabia.

This means that we're not allowed to initiate projects involving towns within these areas. However, if another RD develops data for towns that are in present day Ukraine, those data will be included in our All-Ukraine Database (now called the JewishGen Ukraine Database), as well in the database for the other RD. In addition, JewishGen encourages RDs to work together cooperatively. Our objective is to generate data that will be useful for all JewishGen researchers.

Ukraine RD's territory covers nine provinces of the former Russian Empire shown in the map below: Chernigov, Ekaterinoslav, Kharkov, Kherson, Kyyiv, Podolia, Poltava, Taurida, and Volhynia.

There are some towns covered by Ukraine RD that fall into these historic provinces which are actually in Russia today.

Ukraine RD focuses on towns and districts

Our website and our research have a towns and district focus because most of us think of towns when we seek information about our ancestral homes. In addition, almost all available data are specific to towns or districts, not provinces. So, instead of province coordinators, we have town and district leaders. You will find a complete, browsable list of almost 800 towns that we cover on our website. Our website also lists contact information for our town leaders and for "owners" of KehilaLinks websites for Ukraine towns.

Ukraine RD Projects

We list current projects, and the status of each, under Research on the top menu bar. The list is alphabetical by town name. You can re-alphabetize it by any column simply by clicking on the column heading. Most projects are managed by KehilaLinks website owners and by Ukraine RD Town Leaders, but some are managed by RD Project Leaders. This list is a "work-in-progress". We constantly add new projects to the list, so check back frequently. A search form at the top of the page allows you to search for any town that has a project or for any project by using the keyword search. The form contains dropdown lists of provinces, districts, and towns.

How you can help

What we accomplish depends on you and on others doing Ukraine research. We need volunteers with various skills, and we need project leaders to manage our projects. Project leaders may be focused on specific towns, or they may be focused on specific tasks that cover many towns. Check out some of our volunteer opportunities here.

To find out who among us has the skills we need and are willing to volunteer, we have developed a series of online surveys. The Survey Forms are on this website under the section "About Us" on the top menu. It takes less than 5 minutes to complete a survey form. Please take a few minutes to respond to one or more of our surveys.

An organization like JewishGen and its RDs cannot operate only with volunteers. The organization needs funding to acquire documents, pay professional translators who supplement our volunteers, and improve computer systems. That's where "JewishGen‑erosity" comes in. If you are unable to serve as a volunteer you can help by making a tax-deductible donation to the RD and its projects. You can designate your donation for general use or for use by a specific RD. You also can make a donation for any specific town or project.

If you need help or have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me or any of our Board Members. Our contact information is here. We will try our best to assist you.

Phyllis Berenson, Ukraine RD Coordinator
www.jewishgen.org/Ukraine
where Jewish genealogy is personal