Surviving Jews in Bessarabia

INTRODUCTION

The information in this database is derived from the book First List of Surviving Jews in Bessarabia (published by the Bessarabian Federation of American Jews - New York, NY, February 1946), contains the infomration on 1,782 people people from Bessarabia who survived the Holocaust and returned to a Bessarabian village. The list was constructed by the Bessarabian Foundation of American Jews (BFAJ) and its affiliated organizations. The book was constructed in February 1946 and was intended to be the first in a series. No other books like it have been located as of this point in time.

The purpose of the book was to collect addresses of returning Bessarabian Jews so that packages of food and clothing could be sent to them. It isn’t known how much food and clothing was sent and how many Jews were helped at that time. The book gives the names of the people and the town where they were located. It also sometimes gave an actual address, age, occupation and information on other family members.

Not all towns were included and it isn’t known how towns were selected. Somewhat surprisingly the town of Lipcani had 3 times more survivors than any other town and comprised over 1/3 of all of the names in the book.

ADDITIONAL SOURCES

• List of Jewish Survivors in Khotin, Yedintzy and Novoselitzy received from the Jewish ant-Fascist Committee in Moscow by the World Jewish Congress, N. Y. May 15, 1946: These pages are mostly duplicates of the pages in the “Main Book – described above” used for this database. However, there are a few names that are not in the main book. In addition, the names are often very different. It looks like one set was translated from Russian and the other possibly from Hebrew. There are many differences between the two when it comes to the Surname and Given name of the same person. Some are spelled differently and some have obvious errors in them. When the two names are essentially different, but are the same person, both names have been put into the Surname column.
• List of Emigres from Bessarabia - 1945 from YIVO: This is a list of about 190 names of survivors originally from Bessarabia. Very few names match the names in the “Main Book”. Although a few do match, they are listed separately because they were listed in different years and their addresses were sometimes different.

ABOUT THIS DATABASE

The database contains the following fields:

• Name – Name of the survivor
• Age – Age of the survivor
• Father – Name of the father of the survivor
• Family Information – Information about the survivor’s family
  • A Given Name means that the person is with the survivor
  • A Surname (all capitals) is either an alternate name or a maiden name for the survivor
  • Family members (e.g. child, 3 children, wife, etc.) indicates that those people are with the survivor
  • The parenthetical word “(orphan)” means that the survivor is an orphan
• Address – Street address or postal address of the survivor
• The phrase “(Lives elsewhere}” means the person does not live in this town but no address is given.
• The word “dovestrebovania” or “Do vestrebovanya” is not part of the address but means “hold it at the Post Office”.
• ul. translates to “street”
• Town – Current name of the town where the survivor was from
• Country – Current name of the country where the town is located
• Document Town – Name of the town in which the survivor was from, as spelled in the source document. The person wasn’t necessarily living in this town but was originally from it.
• Oblast/Uyezd– Name of the Oblast or Uyezd the town was located in as indicated in the source document, if specified
• Country – Name of the Country in which the town was located in as indicated in the source document, if specified
• MSSR – Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic (one of the 15 Republics of the Soviet Union)
• USSR – Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (one of the 15 Republics of the Soviet Union)
• SourcePage – The alphabetic abbreviation indicates the source and the number indicates the page.
• BFAJ – Source is the Main Book written by the Bessarabian Federation of American Jews
• WJC – Source is the data from the World Jewish Congress
• EMIGRE – Source is the data from the Emigre List from YIVO
• Sequence# - Number indicating the sequential location of the name, useful only for finding the original record

TOWNS REPRESENTED

The following towns are represented along with the number of people from that town.

AFFILIATED ORGANIZATIONS

The following list of affiliated organizations was included at the beginning of the book

• United Bessarabian Relief of Philadelphia
• Bessarabian Relief Society of Boston
• United Bessarabians of Pittsburgh
• United Bessarabian Relief Society of Detroit
• Bessarabian Relief Society of Syracuse, N. Y.
• United Bessarabian Relief Society of Washington, D. C.
• Federation of Bessarabian Jews of Montreal, Canada
• Comile Pro Socorro a los Israelitas de Besarabia of Argentina, S. A.
• Comite de Socorro Aos Israelitas da Bessarabia of Brazil, S. A.
• Comite Pro Socora a los Israelitas de Besarabia of Peru, S. A.
• Comite Hebrev de Besarabia of Colombia, S. A.
• Societas Besarabia Israelitas of Uraguay, S. A.
• Society of Bessarabian Jews of Trinidad, B. W. I.
• Federation of Bessarabian Jews of Palestine
• Les Originaires de Bessarabie of Paris, France

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The project manager and database creator was Terry Lasky of Ruidoso, New Mexico, USA. Thanks to Yefim Kogan for all of his support and advice.

Search the Database

The First List of Sirviving Jews in Bessarabia can be searched via either the JewishGen Romania Database, the JewishGen Ukraine Database or the JewishGen Holocaust Database.