Tag Archives: Moldova

Isidore in the Czar’s Army

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Recently, I was able to find Isidore Scheshko’s WWI draft registration. This, of course, complements the photo of Isidore in his U.S. Army uniform that was recently colorized.

The family story from the gardener’s father was that Isidore served in the “Czar’s army” before immigrating to the United States–and that he then signed up four years after arriving in the U.S. to fight on behalf of his new country in WWI.

This document does confirm that story.

If you notice, it says that he was a private in the Marine corps in Russia for 3 1/2 years.

Now, I will say that it’s unlikely that he, being Jewish, was in the actual Marines in Russia.While the Russians were very thorough about making sure young Jewish men were forced to serve, they generally would be in the army and serve under very awful conditions.

I found this information from The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe:

Between 1874 and 1914, there were more Jews in the Russian army than non-Jews in proportion to the general population. For example, in 1907, Jewish soldiers constituted almost 5 percent of the entire military but only 4 percent of the population of the empire.

Isidore was born in 1887, although January 26, not December 28 as listed here, making him almost a year older than he may have thought. I say that because it’s likely that he didn’t actually know the date of his birth. So let’s say he was conscripted at age 16 (the age at which Jews were conscripted ranged from age 12!!! to 25 and the term could last for 25 years or more! To give you a sense of the whole picture, non-Jews could not be conscripted until age 18!) and served for 3.5 years. He would have been done by age 20. If he was conscripted at 18 he would have been 22 when he was discharged. (I use discharged loosely because we have no way of knowing how he left the Russian army).

During the period that Isidore would have served, the far right in Russia was arguing that Jews should be banished from the military; however, it did not happen. I suspect it could have made things even more difficult for Isidore, though, because it could have fueled anti-Semitism toward Jewish soldiers.

If you have information to share on this subject of Jewish soldiers in the army of the Russian Empire, I would love to know more.

 

The Ellis Island Legend

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When I was young I was caught up in the Ellis Island legend, probably because of the books I read and the movies I saw.* I thought all immigrants came to the United States through Ellis Island until it closed in 1954. When I got a little older, I realized that people–a large portion of Chinese immigrants–also came through San Francisco.

At some point, the gardener and I found out that Ellis Island records were online through The Statue of Liberty – Ellis Island Foundation, and we tried to find his paternal grandparents, Isidore and Celia. Alas, we could not find them.

Now I know that there are several places immigrants arrived when they came to this country, and that Ellis Island didn’t open until 1892. Still, what did that mean for the gardener’s relatives?

 

Let’s start with Celia Goodstein. Although we weren’t able to find her on the Ellis Island records years ago, now that I know she came into this country with the surname Gutstein, it was very helpful. Also, that her name was listed as “Civie.” I can find her now as Cisvie Gutstein, arrival date 20 November 1909 on the ship, the Caronia. An image of the ship is available, but I am expected to purchase the image if I want it.

A little trip over to Wikipedia solves that.

Here are the stats:

Name: RMS Caronia
Namesake: Caro Brown
Owner: Cunard Line
Builder: John Brown & Company, Clydebank, Scotland
Yard number: 362
Launched: 13 July 1904
Maiden voyage: 25 February 1905
Homeport: Liverpool
Fate: Sold for scrapping, 1932
General characteristics
Tonnage: 19,524 GRT
Length: 678 ft (207 m) p/p
Beam: 72 ft (22 m)
Propulsion: Steam quadruple-expansion engines, twin propellers
Speed: 18 knots (33 km/h; 21 mph)
Capacity:
  • 1,550 passengers
  • (300 first class, 350 second class, 900 third class)

Then I read something very cool. About 2.5 years after Celia arrived on board the Caronia, the Caronia was the first ocean liner (wow, I didn’t realize a steamship was also an ocean liner) to send the Titanic a warning about the ice ahead. I imagine that the ship has been depicted in some way in one or more movies about the Titanic.

So, Celia did arrive through the portals of Ellis Island. She is part of the Ellis Island legend.

Max Goodstein, Celia’s uncle, arrived 10 June 1906 on the Umbria. He can be found on the Ellis Island Records under the name Mordche Gudstein.

Max’s wife Neche/Anna and the children came in through Ellis Island on 20 July 1907 (a few months before Malke) on the Celtic. On the Ellis Island records search I find Neche listed as Nuche Gutstein.

Isidore’s sister, Malke, is listed on the Ellis Island records under the surname Schiskin, rather than Scheshko. She arrived on the ship Patricia 23 November 1907.

What about Isidore himself? He arrived in 1913. UPDATE: I have the ship manifest records for his arrival, thanks to Inna. See line 16 on both pages.

Ellis Island, 1902, from Wikipedia

I do think that we were right to begin with, that all the gardener’s paternal relatives came to the United States through Ellis Island.

There is a legend that someone in the gardener’s father’s family had been in the United States since Civil War Days. That would be a real stretch if it were true since they all came from the Russian Empire. So far what we have found is that Malke came before Isidore and Max came before Celia. But who came before Malke and Max? Berl Silberberg and Max XXXXX. If you recall, Max XXXXX has a last name that we have not been able to decipher. And no luck so far with Berl Silberberg. It would be fun to find them and see who was here before they were!

###

* Think about this a minute: Above I mentioned books and movies. Most of what we read and see has been “reconstructed” history–that is, we experience history through stories written by our contemporaries or at least not by individuals who lived through the period. These are secondary sources.

Primary sources can be fascinating. I’d like to “argue” that fiction that was written as contemporary fiction, but is now in a historical period, is a great primary or first-hand source.

Have you ever heard of the writer Abraham Cahan? He wrote books about the Jewish immigrant experience while it was happening well over 100 years ago. Cahan was born in Belarus in 1860, and as a young man and teacher he immigrated to the United States. In the 1890s and into the early 1900s, Cahan published novels and short stories. Yekl: A Tale of the New York Ghetto and The Rise of David Levinsky are two of his most famous. I also recommend the story “The Imported Bridegroom.” I haven’t read it in years, but I think I need to re-read it!

Postcards from Abroad

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Once upon a time I posted on my other family history blog, The Family Kalamazoo, a story about Isidore Scheshko. I am going to repost it here so that has a home where it best belongs.

The gardener’s paternal grandfather, Isidore Scheshko, was born 26 January 1887 in Odessa, Ukraine, but ended up serving the United States army in WWI (and survived the war).

A little over a month before his 27th birthday, Isidore arrived in New York City, planning to become an American citizen.

Four years later, on 23 November 1917, Isidore joined the U.S. Army and two months later was sent overseas for 13 months. His discharge information states that he was not wounded.

What the paperwork doesn’t say is that he was gassed during WWI–something that happened to a great many soldiers during that war. After that, he had a bad stutter. The only person he could speak to without stuttering was his wife, my husband’s grandmother, Celia. Originally, my research didn’t show that the long-term effects of mustard gas include neurological problems, but now I find that indeed it can cause debilitating neurological symptoms.

The gardener says that Isidore was also in the Czar’s army before he immigrated to the U.S. I think he’s a hero for joining up so soon after coming to this country, especially since he had already served in Russia. After all, he was trying to support himself and learn English and he had a girlfriend (yes, Celia).

When I posted about this subject on the other blog, readers seemed sure that this is a U.S. Army uniform from WWI.  His legs are in puttees (thank you, Su Leslie).

 

We have a couple of postcards he sent to Celia while he was away. Here is one from 8 September 1918.

Then two months later:

Notice that he spells Celia’s name Sealie. And his own first name without the E at the end. The fine print legible underneath Isidore’s handwriting is the printed card itself, not postmark information. I don’t know where he was when this was sent, but it was in the middle of the period where he was “overseas.” It might seem surprising that after only four years in the United States, Isidore could write so well in English, but we do believe he wrote these cards himself. In fact, the gardener is sure he wrote them himself. From the first card to the second, he apparently learned that it’s “I before E except after C.”

There is no way to tell from these upbeat notes to “Sealie” that Isidore had been gassed or had, in fact, seen any “action.”

Isidore’s trade as a young man in America was a house painter, and when I think of the fumes he dealt with after he had gone through the gas in the war, it makes me wonder how he lived until 1953. But he didn’t stay a painter; within a few years, he and Celia owned a candy store in Sutton Place in Manhattan where his daughter (my husband’s aunt) went to school for a time with Anderson Cooper’s mother, Gloria Vanderbilt. That didn’t make him rich, but considering what happened during the famine and then WWII in Odessa and Tiraspol, he did well by immigrating to the United States.

Frustrations in Genealogy (What’s New?)

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This post is just to mention that I’m at a frustrating point. Now that we have the names of the Goodstein cousins of Celia, it should be easy to track the families down to the present.

Inna made headway finding the descendants of Rose and Isidore, but they have not responded to our attempts to contact them. Rose’s son Stanley is about 92, and he could possibly have information to share since he is the oldest family member that we know about.

It was also quite a bonus to find that Max traveled to the United States to meet his brother-in-law Max, but the other Max’s surname continues to elude us. Here is a cropped version–Max’s name is on the third actual dotted line. I want to know what the surname says AND what the street name and number are.

Here is the complete document that the cropped portion comes from.

Anna’s relatives in the United States (if that is what is meant by brother-in-law of Max) will continue to be a brick wall until these two words can be deciphered. Any ideas? The street is not Stone, after all.

Yet another frustration is that the DNA match attempts with Scheshkos from Vasilishki has been inconclusive. One of them was compared on Gedmatch, and there is a DNA match, but so small it could be “noise.” The other person has been “unavailable” since I asked for a Gedmatch comparison.

Further Tiraspol and Odessa records continue to elude Inna at this point.

But we know there was family alive in the sixties because Celia was writing to them. The only clue we have is this headstone for Khaim Gutstein, 1897 to 1974. It’s in Tiraspol.

Inna translated the inscription:

To dear father from grieving children, grandchildren, daughter-in-law, and nieces.

That would mean a large family alive in 1974, possibly in Tiraspol. Will we ever discover if there is a connection to Celia?

All that trouble Celia and her relatives took to write to each other, although the censors cut out huge portions of their letters. I like to think Celia would like it if we can find the descendants of her relatives.

Celia’s Cousin Rose

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That is Celia, standing in the back row, second from left. To her left (our right) is her cousin Rose (born Reisel).

Let’s take a look at the 1910 census (originally posted in “Celia’s Uncle Max and Family”). Seventeen-year-old Rose is an “operator” in a “waist shop.” There is a second page, where Celia is listed as “Jennie” and 19-years-old. She is also listed as an operator in a waist shop.

So what was a waist shop? Think of it as a blouse shop. They sold shirtwaists.

What was an operator then? Did the girls work together in this shop? If so, did they make the shirtwaists or did they sell them? I’m guessing that since this was right after Celia arrived, and the family trade seems to have been seamstress/tailor, that the girls sewed the blouses.

Because of something that Amy Cohen mentioned below, I am adding a link here to information about the infamous Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. History: Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire. It is possible that the place where Celia and Rose worked is similar to this place or a smaller version perhaps. The fire that killed 146 people (mainly young women) occurred in 1911, just one year after the 1910 census. Just one or two years after Celia arrived. I hadn’t put it together until Amy mentioned Triangle, but family lore is that Celia became a bit of an Emma Goldman, standing on a crate and lecturing to people about the need to form unions.

In order not to be complicated here, I am going to skip to the 1925 New York State census to show you something very interesting and gives an idea of how close Celia and Rose became.

This first one is Max’s census report. It shows Max and Anna living with their children Harry, Grace, and Silvia. Presumably, the others have grown up and moved out.

In this second one, we have Celia living with her husband Isidore and their 4-year-old son, Murray. Daughter Eileen has not yet been born, although Celia would have been pregnant with her when the census was taken.

There is a duplication of names on this document, so be careful. Glance at about halfway down on the left side. Look who is living as boarders with Celia and Isidore! Rose and her husband Isidore Cohen and their 5-year-old daughter Grace!

So the two couples lived together with their first children. Imagine! This information was not passed down in the family at all. In fact, none of us had even heard about Rose or this other Isidore!

One note: notice that Rose has a sister and a daughter named Grace. How can that be, given that Jews name their children after deceased relatives? Anna’s mother was Gertruda Yaglovsky, so we believe that Rose’s sister was named after her, her maternal grandmother. It’s possible that Rose named her daughter after Goldi/Gittel Suskin Goodstein, her paternal grandmother.

Another note: Rose’s age at 28 is a little screwed up on that 1925 census, but we have confirmed that this is “our Rose.”

 

 

More on Celia’s Uncle Max and Family

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Two weeks ago when I wrote about Uncle Max and Aunt Anna (Neche), I didn’t have anything on Max’s own immigration. This week I’m sharing the info.

The manifest is dated 2 June 1906, and Max is on line 3. He is called Mordche Gudstein from Tiraspol. Age 32, a tailor, headed to a brother-in-law in Brooklyn. The BIL’s name is Max something-or-other. It really looks to me like Bharshus, but of course I’ve never heard of such a surname. And find no record of one online either. He lives at 529 Stone Avenue, Brooklyn, NY. Stone Avenue is now Mother Gaston Boulevard. According to Google Maps, the old buildings in that area are long gone.

 

What brother-in-law could Max be going to? If it was someone from his side of the family, it seems that Celia’s family would have known about them. Instead, the story has been that her uncle’s family was the only one. So if it was Anna’s brother, his name would be Leibowitz. What seems left is that perhaps Anna had a sister in the United States.

I wondered where Max and Anna were buried. Then I thought about how Max and Anna were from Tiraspol and that their niece Celia and her husband Isidore were buried by the Tiraspol(er) Young Men’s Benevolent Association. What if they were buried by them also?

I decided to search the records at Montefiore since that is the cemetery where Celia and Isidore are buried. No such luck. Then I mentioned to Inna about my theory about the Tiraspol(er) Young Men’s Benevolent Association. A few minutes later she had the info. The reason I couldn’t find them is that in both cases Goodstein had been misspelled–but misspelled differently.

Anna’s name was spelled GOODSKIN. Good grief. That meant that her name was spelled that way on Findagrave as well.

And Max was listed under GOLDSTEIN. Again, spelled wrong on Findagrave, as well.

I’ve ordered photos of their headstones, but no luck yet. I got the names changed on Findagrave and will try to do so on the cemetery records as well.

By looking at the locations of the graves on paper, it seems that Max and Anna are buried quite close to Isidore and Celia.

Anna’s death was caused by Asthenia, which seems to mean weakness. The contributing cause was Carcinoma of the lung.

Notice that her parents, Aaron Leibowitz and Gertruda Yaglovsky (correct spelling here) came from “Russia.” Not too helpful.

Max died on 18 August 1934. I want to point out something about this date. My father-in-law, Murray Scheshko, was bar mitzvah that year (born 5 June 1921). I found a newspaper article with information dated 18 May 1934 about Murray’s confirmation. This is not to be confused with his bar mitzvah, but is related to Shavuot. It reminded me, though, that Max would have still been alive when Celia’s son was bar mitzvah. I’m sure this made him very happy for his sister.

BROOKLYN EXERCISES

Seventeen young men and women will be confirmed by Rabbi Isadore A. Aaron at the Congregation Mount Sinai, 305 State street, Brooklyn.

The group includes:

Bernard Bernstein, Mildred Dauber, Yetta Finkelstein, Irving Fogelman, Muriel Gans, Natalie Greenberg, Robert Harris, Ruth Katzman, Dorothy Liskin, Mildred Mehlman, Rebecca Pfefferkorn, Maxwell Philips, Helen Sadowsky, Murray Scheshko, Ruth Shapiro, Murray Steinberg and Elsie Strizhak

 

It appears that Max died of Carcinoma of the Head of the Pancreas. Contributing factor was cardiac failure.

Now look at the names of Max’s parents (therefore, they are Celia’s grandparents):

Aaron Gutstein and Goldi Suskin. From Poland! Now, I am not sure what Poland means. Does it mean Poland? or Belarus? Or somewhere else?

If you think that all these areas are “the same” in terms of Jewish culture, you might be wrong. I’ve heard that there is great variation in the food alone. The common denominator besides religion would be that they spoke Yiddish. In the case of many, including Celia and Isidore, they spoke many languages in addition to Yiddish.

 

Celia’s Best Friend

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Previously on Entering the Pale (thanks, Merril!) Celia was living with Uncle Max and Aunt Anna Goodstein.

Before we move forward and look at Celia’s life in the United States in those early years, I want to mention Celia’s best friend.

She and Bertha Coleman met on board on their way to the United States. They were both young women in their late teens traveling alone, without benefit of family or friends. So it makes perfect sense that they would bond as they entered a new country and a new life for themselves.

According to the ship manifest, Bertha was a 19-year-old tailoress who hailed from Warsaw, Poland. She is on line 27 on pages 1 and 2.

This friendship seems important to me for many reasons. I imagine that it was much safer for two young women to travel together rather than to be completely alone. And I would think that they took a lot of comfort from each other. The manifest shows that Bertha was traveling to a friend, not to family, so I would think that Celia’s friendship meant a great deal to her. At least, Celia found a family for herself when she arrived. Celia, though, was 17, two years younger than Bertha, so it’s likely that Bertha being older was a help to Celia.

Do you think they remained friends after they got settled in the U.S.?

They not only stayed friends, but when Celia was elderly and in a nursing home in the Bronx, she lived with Bertha! Now that is a long friendship.

I tried to find records at Daughters of Jacob, but it has been changed to Triboro Center For Rehabilitation And Nursing and they claim to have no records of the “old days.” Celia passed away in 1982.

There are two possible buildings her room could have been in. One is the classic Daughters of Jacob building on Teller Avenue in the Bronx. It’s gorgeous, and the gardener remembers a rather grand entrance.

Here is a pic from Google Maps showing the overall layout of the unique building.

Or she could have been in the high rise that is next to it.

I wish our memories could be trusted to know for sure. But the gardener remembers red brick and not a building as tall as the tan one.

Celia’s Uncle Max and Family

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If you remember from last week (trying to sound like a TV show here), Celia was traveling to the United States to her Uncle Max in Brooklyn. But who was this Uncle Max?

A few years ago, the gardener and I tried to find Uncle Max through Ancestry, but we couldn’t find him, based on the information available at the time. All we had to go by was a copier copy of a photograph that cousin Charlotte had given us. The handwriting is Charlotte’s. We tried to match up the children in the photo with families on the U.S. census reports. Notice that Celia Goodstein is in the back row, second from the left.

This is what it says:

Taken in N.Y. Eileen’s mother [arrow pointing to Celia] her cousins [arrows pointing to the other girls in the back row]

This family were relatives on her side, not my mother’s.

Since Charlotte’s mother was Malka Scheshko (Molly Riskin), and since she was not related to this family, we had to assume that the family was from the Goodstein side of the family. What we didn’t know was what their surname was. This made it very difficult to search.

As luck would have it, Uncle Max was a Goodstein. The surname was Gutstein (Gudstein, Gutshteyn) before it was Goodstein. The man in the photo is Max Goodstein, the brother of Celia’s father. I love how she’s standing just behind his shoulder.

While Max’s immigration records have not yet been located, his wife, Neche Gutstein, and children Reisel, Iankel, Ettel, and Itzchok were on the passenger list from Liverpool to NYC: 11 July 1907. They traveled 3rd class.

 

On the manifest for SS Celtic, which sailed that day, the listing is:

 

Nuche Gutstein and children: Reisel, Iankel, Ettel, Itzchock (Neche?), and Golda

Notice that Golda, an infant, was not listed on the first document. What does that mean? It seems likely that Golda was born on the trip from Liverpool to NYC. Can you even imagine what Neche went through? And baby Golda, too. Makes me sad to think of how hard it was for them.

The name of the nearest relative in country whence alien came:

Mother? Gittel Gutstein K..skiy street Tiraspol, Russia

It looks as if it is possible that Max’s wife’s closest relative in Russia was Max’s mother Gittel Gutstein, located in Tiraspol! If this is the case, Celia’s grandmother’s name was Gittel Gutstein, and that would be the gardener’s 2x great-grandmother.

On this second page, it shows that Neche and children are joining her husband Max Gutstein at 349 Stone Avenue, Brooklyn, New York.

The next document is Max Goodstein’s Declaration of Intention to become a naturalized citizen from 1910.

This document gives some interesting information. For one thing, it gives his birthday as 6 March 1874, and states that he was born in Odessa, Russia! Again, Odessa! That means that both the Goodsteins AND the Scheshkos lived in both Odessa and Tiraspol. That seems like such a coincidence to me. Were there events that occurred that caused them to move from one place to other or back and forth? Maybe we will never know. If we can eventually map out a timeline, maybe it would be easier to research events.

Max was a tailor. He was also 5’6, so not a tall man. His 1910 Brooklyn address is listed. And, as of the filing of this document, Max was still a subject of Nicholas II, Emperor of All the Russias.That kind of makes me shudder.

On the 1910 census (so around the same time as the above document), Max Goodstein is listed at the 617 Sackman Street address of the declaration. His wife’s name is now listed as Anna, so Neche changed her name to Anna. The children are now Rose, Jacob, Ethel, Harry, Gertruda. They have all taken American names.

Look at the top of page 2 of the 1910 census. Nineteen-year-old Jennie Goodstein is listed as a daughter of Max and Anna! Celia must have tried out the name Jennie at the very beginning–or else her name was recorded in error.

So we have Celia now in the household of her Uncle Max and Aunt Anna. I wonder how comfortable she felt with them. She must have known them quite well from Tiraspol, so it wouldn’t have been as if she went to someone she barely knew–or didn’t know at all.

How did she get along with her cousins? Did they become like siblings to her? Or did they grow away from each other? Without a diary to read, some of these questions can never be answered. But I am always searching for clues.

To be continued again 🙂

Celia’s Story

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Let’s move over to the gardener’s grandmother, the wife of Isidore Scheshko. Her name was Celia Goodstein Scheshko. What is her story?

The first document shows her leaving Hamburg for Liverpool. Her name is listed as Civie Gutstein. Of course, that would be an alternative spelling of Goodstein. Goodstein, if anything, looks to be an Americanized spelling. Where does Civie come from? We know from her headstone that her Hebrew name was Tziviah Sheindel (Tzivia Shaindel), so Civie makes perfect sense as a nickname–either how it was pronounced or how the agent heard her say it.

Notice on the above document where Civie was from. Tiraspol! Can you believe it?! All this time, the gardener had thought she was from Odessa and Isidore was from Tiraspol. But it appears that he was from both places and Celia had to be from Tiraspol. The gardener’s grandparents came from the same place? Nothing had ever been said about that–at least in the gardener’s hearing. (Relatives: if you have heard different about this or anything else, please let us know!)

The Ellis Island manifest gives a little more information about Celia.

The SS Caronia sailed from Liverpool on 13 November 1909 and arrived on 20 November 1909 at Ellis Island.

On page 1, it says: Gutstein, Civie 17 yo, dressmaker?,Hebrew from Tiraspol. The name of the nearest relative in the country whence alien came: Borukh Gutestein, Tiraspol, Russia. Final destination: Brooklyn, NY

On page 2, it says: Joining uncle, Max Gutstein in Brooklyn, NY 617 Sackman street.

Celia was detained until the next day after arrival because she was a woman, and the United States government required assurance that she would be provided for. She was being held to hand over, in effect, to her uncle Max who lived in Brooklyn.

These documents show that Celia’s path was from Tiraspol (in what was the Russian Empire and is now Moldova) to Hamburg and then traveling by ship to Liverpool and then to New York City where she was met by her Uncle Max.

If Celia was 17 years old when she immigrated in 1909, she would have been born in 1892. According to her headstone, she was born around 1893. And according to her social security application, she was born 15 Dec 1892. I would say it looks plausible that she really was born in 1892, and that she was 17 when she immigrated.

Another family story that is kind of scuttled by this info is that Celia was a young teen when she immigrated. She really was 17 years old, which is very young, but not a young teen. Of course, when I think of sending my 17-year old across the ocean to a new life and no way to communicate other than slow letters, it defies imagination.

To be continued . . . .

The Places Behind the Faces, Part II: Tiraspol

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Last week I wrote about Vasilishki where Isidore’s father Shimel was born. Today it is Tiraspol, which is in modern Moldova, because that is where Isidore claimed to be from. Yes, his birth record shows his birth and those of his siblings in Odessa, but the family apparently lived in both Tiraspol and Odessa. We don’t yet have the timeline or why all the children would be born in Odessa, but the family had strong ties to Tiraspol.

At first I was very confused because Odessa is in Ukraine and Tiraspol is in Moldova–two completely different countries. They are only 65 miles apart and when Isidore and his family lived in that region, it was all part of the Russian Empire.

When we discovered the Odessa birth index with the Scheshkos listed, I wondered if Tiraspol had been a mistake, but the cemetery where Isidore and Celia are buried recorded that they were buried by the TIRASPOL YOUNG MEN BENEVOLENT society.

Tiraspol can be spelled Tyraspol or Tirashpol, but should not be confused with Terespol, a town in Poland, near Belarus.

This painting was completed around 1900 by painter Mikhail Larionov. It’s called “A Small Jewish Shop in Tiraspol.”

You can find an old and a new photo of the city here.

Tiraspol is part of the International Jewish Cemetery Project. There are graves there that need protecting or, at least, recording. In 2004, over 70 headstones were vandalized, and the city would not clean up the anti-Semitic graffiti. Here are a couple of photos of the cemetery.

The city is the second largest in Moldova (population about 134,000-200,000, depending on the source). The two state languages in the territory of the Transnistria Republic are Russian and Moldavian, but in Tiraspol, the Moldavian language isn’t used much. You can often hear Ukrainian since a large portion of the population has Ukrainian ancestry, but Russian is the main language.

In the middle ages, Tiraspol was a “buffer zone” (Wikipedia) between the Tatars and the Moldavians, and both ethnic groups lived in the city. The modern city really began, though, with the Russians who conquered the area at the end of the 18th century.

I thought this tidbit from Wikipedia is interesting:

In 1828 the Russian government established a customs house in Tiraspol to try to suppress smuggling. The customs house was subordinated to the chief of the Odessa customs region.

From this and other information I’ve picked up over the past few weeks, I think Tiraspol was part of the greater Odessa area during the Russian Empire years. I do think it’s important to remember that Tiraspol is a city, not a village like Vasilishki.

According to JewishGen, the Jewish population in 1897 was 8,659 and in 1926 it was 6,398. The decline could be from emigration, but there is another story about Tiraspol that needs to be told.

Here is an excellent history from the International Jewish Cemetery Project:

Tiraspol [was] founded in 1795 .  .  . . On the eastern bank of the Dniester River, Tiraspol is one of the few cities largely unchanged from Soviet Union rule. (Two statues of Lenin still stand.) As result of the political and economic situation that followed the proclamation of the independent (not recognized) Republic of Transnistria, the population of the city in 2004 was 158,069. Tiraspol had a Jewish population since the 17th century. Tiraspol was founded by the Russian general Alexander Suvorov in 1792. In the mid-19th century, Jews from Russia, Dubossari, and Grigoriopol settled in Tiraspol. By 1897, the Jewish community was 27% of  8,668 residents. Nearly the entire Jewish community perished in Nazi concentration camps.

So there it is. What I hadn’t wanted to read. Most of the Jewish community died in the camps. Were the Scheshkos there at the time of WWII? I think it’s possible to come closer to knowing with the following information.

Our researcher Inna’s own family comes from Tiraspol, so she has collected some documents pertaining to the situation right after the Russian Revolution in 1917.

These documents relate to a terrible famine that plagued the area during the 1920s. The majority of people were hungry, but the Jewish population was worse off than the others.

American Jews with ties to Tiraspol tried to help those left behind. The Tiraspoler Landsmanschaft collected donations and sent money for food, such as cocoa, sugar, milk, flour, barley, and fish. But much of it was diverted elsewhere along the way. I read a ONE INCH THICK collection of documents about the dire situation.

Dr. Bacilieri wrote a report in German of his trip to check on the conditions in Tiraspol. He said the chldren were “the worst sufferers and in terrible condition.”

I saw a child about 8-10 years old searching in a dust heap looking for something to eat. I saw another child about 10-12 years old frying the skin of a dog for food. Many children do not return at night but sleep under a fence or on the streets so that they may be in a position to get something to eat.

The doctor says the entire population was filthy and covered with lice. People were sick (often from typhus) and dying, yet their relatives could not afford burials for them.

The Jewish residents of Tiraspol organized a system of men to receive the goods and distribute them. This is how I know that the Scheshkos lived in Tiraspol at this time.

On a Tiraspoler Landsmanschaft memo, Shimen (Shimel) Scheshko is listed as an alternate to the list of men receiving the goods. He and his family were in need.

So the Russian Revolution had not brought about a relief to old sufferings for the inhabitants of Tiraspol. Instead, they had new suffering and many died during this period.

So that decline in population by 1926 could be from emigration, but it could be from starvation and disease.

I was very upset after reading this thick stack of papers documenting the plight of the residents of Tiraspol during this period. And now to discover through the IJCP history that none of the Tiraspol Jews survived the Holocaust, it’s mind-boggling to me. One trauma after another after another.

Here is a little more info from the IJCP about what happened a generation and beyond after the war:

By the 1960s, nearly 1,500 Jews lived in Tiraspol. Police arrested several skinheads suspected of pipe bombing a Tiraspol synagogue in April and June 2002 on 14-15 April 2001. The building was damaged, but the guard was not hurt. 4 May 2004, vandals threw a Molotov cocktail in an attempt to set fire to a Synagogue in Tiraspol. The attack failed when passers-by extinguished the fire. Since 2001, the Welfare Cultural Center combines welfare and cultural programs for the Jewish community. Current Jewish population: 2,300 people in Tiraspol and 130 people in nine surrounding localities. [March 2009] REFERENCE: Jewish Tombstones in Ukraine and Moldova, 551, bibl. 1153, 7/14/1993, GOBERMAN D., title: Image Publishing House, 1993, English/Russian.Source: Daniel Dratwa;. d.dratwa@mjb-jmb.org Jewish Museum of Belgium

 

I hope that through the IJCP we will eventually find that there are Scheshko headstones in the Tiraspol cemetery. Very few Jewish records exist for Tiraspol, so we were lucky that the Scheshko children and the marriage was recorded in Odessa instead.

There is a site online that I have to mention:

This is a place where all current and former Tiraspol residents interested in their Jewish roots can meet and exchange information about their families.

Click here to go to the site for photos, notable residents, and other information.