The Vital Records of Kremenets

Vital Records for Towns of the Kremenets District


Kremenets was part of Poland before the last partition (1795) and during the Interwar period (1919-1939). Between those periods, Kremenets was a town and uyezd (district center) in the Pale of Settlement within the Russian Empire. Records about Jews in the District’s villages were collected there. After WW2, Kremenets became part of Ukraine. The LDS microfilms of vital records for the town of Kremenets are for the period 1870-1907. The Kremenets Shtetl CO-OP translated these and supplemented them with translations of birth records obtained from the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People (CAHJP, at Hebrew University in Jerusalem) for the towns of Belozerka (1905), Katerinovka (various years from 1885-1938), Oleksinets (various years from 1878-1913), Velikiye Berezhtsy (various years from 1878-1913), and Vyshgorodok (various years from 1878-1900).

Originals of both the LDS and CAHJP sets are held at the State Archive of Ternopil Oblast, Ukraine. A complete inventory of the LDS records is available on the Kremenets KehilaLinks website. Select the “Inventory of Jewish Records” menu item. The microfilmed vital records are handwritten in Russian and in a combination of Hebrew and Yiddish. Most records in the original ledger books are recorded in Russian on one side of the page, and in Hebrew and/or Yiddish on the other side of the page. Sometimes the information in one language differs from the information in the other language. The Kremenets Shtetl CO-OP translated both languages. The LDS provided CDs containing images of all the Kremenets vital records that appear on 7 microfilms, about 15,000 records. The CAHJP provided about 35,000 vital records on CDs for the towns of Belozerka, Katerinovka, Lanivtsy, Oleksinets, Velikiye Berezhtsy, Viushnevets, and Vyshgorodok. Translation of the LDS records is complete. Translation of the CAHJP records is in progress.

Transliteration


Volunteers and paid translators translated the records. Most of the translated records were proofread and edited before being posted on the JRI-Poland database for Kremenets. During the proofreading/editing process, efforts were made to standardize the transliteration of Hebrew/Yiddish names to English, using a system based on YIVO’s transliteration schema. (See item 5 on this webpage.) Alexander Beider’s transliteration schema was used for Russian. (See Beider’s book, “A Dictionary of Ashkenazic Given Names”, page 237.)

However, transliterations often cannot be exact. Researchers should be aware that in some cases, our translators applied common American usage to the spelling of names. Commonly interchangeable letters include /h/ & /g/, /p/ & /f/, /o/ & /a/, /o/ & /u/, /y/ & /i/, and /i/, /ay/ & /ey/. Researchers also should note that such differences in spelling might occur for any specific name. Consequently, be sure to search for spelling variations of the surnames you are researching.

How to Read Source and Location Information


The Kremenets record entries you locate will provide information that allows you to locate your records on microfilms in the catalogs of the Mormon Family History Library and the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People.

  • Each record is on two ledger pages, one page written in Russian and the other in Hebrew/Yiddish. In your search results each name column has both the Russian name and the Hebrew/Yiddish name, separated by a forward slash (/).
  • There are two date columns associated with each event. The first column is the date on the Julian calendar. The second column is the Hebrew date. The rule of thumb for converting Russian Julian (JU) dates to Gregorian dates is as follows: In the 19th century (from 1 March 1800 JU through 28 February 1900 JU), Russian Julian dates are 12 days before the Gregorian dates. In the 20th century (from 1 March 1900 through 28 February 2000 JU), the Julian dates are 13 days behind. (There was a difference of 11 days in the 18th century.)
  • Town names are modern names for the town as displayed in JewishGen’s Communities Database.
    The “Microfilm” column (e.g. 2086060) provides the LDS Microfilm Catalog number. The CA prefix indicates that the record was from the Central Archives collection.
  • The “Year” column is the year of the event reported in the record.
  • The “Type” column identifies the type of record you have retrieved (B=Birth, M=Marriage, V=Divorce, D=Death).
  • The “Location on Microfilm” column is an identifier that locates the record in the source document. For example, in an 1871 birth record, F43 indicates this record is the 43rd female birth of the year.
  • The “File Number” column is a file number that helps us locate a record in our translation spreadsheet. For example, File Number 271 for 1870 birth records tells us to look in file 0000271 in the spreadsheet containing 1870 birth records.
  • The “Line Number” column also helps us locate a record in our translation spreadsheet.

Master Surname Index

In addition, an “Indexed Concordance of Personal Names and Town Names” serves as a searchable master index to all the records that the Kremenets Shtetl CO-OP has translated. The Concordance is available on the Kremenets KehilaLinks website. In addition to vital records, the Concordance indexes surnames and town names from many other resources translated by the Kremenets Shtetl CO-OP: Russian Revision Lists (Censuses), Yizkor Books, Kahal documents obtained from the Central Archives, and many more. The Introduction and Guide document lists all the sources of our translated data. The lists are not complete as translation activities from additional sources are still underway. Yizkor Book translations are posted in the Kremenets section of JewishGen’s Yizkor Book website after they are edited. Links to these sites and other Kremenets information are available at the Kremenets KehilaLinks website. Additions are made to the Concordance as further translations are completed. The Concordance is searchable using Steve Morse’s One-Step search engine. Please send questions or comments about the Kremenets datasets to Ron Doctor.