The Pinkas Hakehilot, Encyclopaedia of Jewish Communities: Slovakia as written in its Hebrew version has almost 600 pages and covers over 260 communities. What is written about each of these communities varies in length. The names of many people appear and may show up in more than one of these communities.
In many instances since the writers transliterated names into Hebrew we did not know what the original spelling of the name was and it has been difficult to “reverse engineer” back to the original spelling of the name. Much time and effort has been devoted to trying to determine the best spelling of that original name. If errors have been made, our apologies, but if researchers can provide corrections, please contact Lance Ackerfeld so modifications can be made.
Other things to note: Sometimes references have been made to people who did not at the time have family names at all. If they were known by a single first name, these names are listed in parentheses, as example, (SHIMON), (IZAK/YITZCHAK), or in the case of a king, it might appear as (HABSBURG). Since many given names appeared to be “Biblical-type” names, it was not clear if there was a direct translation to another European version. For instance, someone with a Hebrew name of Mordechai, might have been a Marcus, Markus, or Marek. In many instances we simply don't know. So in searching for such names, it helps to be alerted to these possible variations.
The index of names is presented in two versions:
- As listed originally per the Hebrew alphabet in the book, but arranged alphabetically within that Hebrew letter. The most problematic would be names listed under “Alef א” since corresponding secular names could begin with, A, E, I , O , or U.
- As sorted and listed simply according to the English alphabet. To view this version, open this PDF
Note: The page numbers in the rightmost column, starting with 569, are the numbers of the pages in the Hebrew version of the names index. This might only be important if someone wants to check the Hebrew version to know how the name was written in Hebrew.
It is our hope that people researching names from these Slovakian towns will then be encouraged to help with the translation efforts of the remaining (as of July 13, 2014) 240 towns.
Alef 
Bet 
Gimmel 
Dalet 
Hey 
Vav 
Zayin 
Chet 
Tet 
Yod 
Kaf 
