The Jewish Families of Dvinsk

Latvian: Daugavpils · German: Dunaberg · Vitebsk gubernia

This database is an amalgam of information from three separate sources held in the collections of the State Historical Archives in Riga, Fond 4936. The earliest entries date from 1876, but the lists were worked on and updated throughout the period up to 1917, the eve of the First Latvian Republic. They were originally compiled for the purpose of establishing liability for tax and/or military service. In addition, information has been added from lists of Jewish merchants and petit bourgeois — small shopkeepers and business owners — who were registered as part of the Dvinsk/Daugavpils Jewish community during this period.

The database consists of some 8,300 entries and refers to some 14,000 named individuals, once fathers’ names (patronymics), maiden names and other family connections are included. The data was professionally extracted in Riga from the original lists in Russian handwritten Cyrillic. These lists give good coverage of the Jewish families of the period; they are not fully comprehensive, but they are an excellent starting point for anyone searching family connections in Dvinsk or the Dvinsk area.

The database contains a number of “fields” which set out the data contained in the original list.

Because the list is transliterated from Russian, it is useful to use the Daitch-Mokotoff Soundex search option to ensure that all family names with a similar sound are identified. Russian makes no distinction between the “G” and “H” sounds, so the surname Hurwich may be spelled Gurwich, and each form is accurate depending on the transliteration system used.

The Residence field repays attention. The great majority of entries are listed as Dvinsk/Daugavpils, as most people both lived and were registered where they actually resided. In a number of cases, however, the person is listed as resident in, say, Courland, though registered for tax and recruitment purposes in Dvinsk. Discrepancies of this kind can point to new geographical areas to pursue, and they also indicate that despite Dvinsk being within the Pale of Settlement — unlike Courland — there was more movement of people in and out of this important commercial settlement than has sometimes been assumed.

Dvinsk (now Daugavpils, Latvia) was one of the leading Jewish cities of the Russian Empire and a centre of high Jewish culture and debate. At the time of the lists forming this database it was part of the Russian gubernia of Vitebsk, and its commercial importance was well established. Jewish gravestones found in the area date from the 17th century, evidence of an early Jewish presence. In 1910 the city numbered 111,000 people, of whom 50,000 were Jews. Unlike its immediate neighbour Courland, Dvinsk was within the Pale of Settlement, and its ethos derived more from Russian, Lithuanian and Polish influences than from the broadly German character of Courland.

According to the Jewish Encyclopedia (Funk & Wagnalls), commerce and manufacturing in Dvinsk were largely in Jewish hands. The 1893 census showed 330 industrial establishments owned by Jews and 99 owned by non-Jews. The census records only 741 Jewish artisans, but this figure was challenged by Herman Rosenthal in his 1916 article on Dvinsk, which cites “private investigations” for the claim that in 1898 there were 4,862 Jewish artisans, including 2,193 masters, 1,700 journeymen and 909 apprentices. The most important trades were tailoring (1,210) and shoemaking. Some 32 factories are identified — button manufacture, a sawmill, a match factory, a tannery — all owned by Jews, with a total of 2,305 employees recorded and a further 684 day-labourers noted. Dvinsk was one of the chief artillery depots of the Empire, and many troops were garrisoned there.

The poverty of the Pale was a feature of Dvinsk Jewish life; it is estimated that 30 per cent of Jewish families applied for aid from the community in 1898. Numerous Jewish aid societies are recorded, including a Mutual Aid founded in 1900 with more than 1,200 members by 1901, and a loan fund established in memory of the merchant M. Vitenberg which advanced interest-free loans secured by personal property. Other institutions included a society for aiding the poor founded by the Jewish governor, with an income in 1899 of some 8,917 Roubles, soup kitchens, a charitable dining hall, a bikkur holim, a dispensary and a lying-in hospital, all organised and run by the community. These testify to traditions of self-help and community organisation that reflect the high value placed on charity.

Dvinsk was an important centre of Jewish thought and culture and nurtured a number of rabbis known and respected throughout the Jewish world. Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Kuk [Kook] of Palestine was a pupil of Reb Reuvele Dunaburger; Meier Simcha HaKohen was Rabbi of the Mitnagdim for 39 years, while Rabbi Yosef Rosen served as the Chassidic rabbi for 50 years. Both were formidable Talmudic scholars and vivid personalities. Finally, the important American painter Rothko was born in Dvinsk from a Dvinsk family, and a family portrait of the Rothkowitz family from which he was descended can be seen at the National Gallery of Art website.

A wonderful account of Dvinsk Jewish life and culture, seen through the eyes of the young Sarah Feige Foner who lived there for part of her childhood, can be read on line: her “Memories of the Days of My Childhood, or a Look at the City of Dvinsk”, published in Hebrew in Warsaw in 1903. It gives a lively account of the impact of the Haskalah, and her account of the struggles between the followers of the Hassidim and the Mitnagdim, and the extremes these sometimes took, is a treasure. It contains many references to specific individuals and rabbis of the period, including many names found in this database.

Further reading on this important and most Jewish of Russian cities can be found in the Latvia SIG Newsletter, Vol. 1, Nos. 1–2 and Vol. 5, Nos. 1–3, which contains “Jews in Dunaburg”, extracted from Jews of Dunaburg, published in 1993 by Z. I. Yakub. See also Dvinsk, the Rise and Fall of a Town, by Yudel Flior, translated from the Yiddish by Bernard Sachs (Johannesburg, Dial Press, 1965). Unfortunately out of print, it is an excellent evocation of the flavour of Jewish life in Dvinsk at the turn of the century, and above all a record of the enduring affection of a writer for his home town following his emigration to South Africa in 1928.

This database can be searched via the JewishGen Latvia Database or the JewishGen Unified Search.