KORSUN-SHEVCHENKOVSKIY, Kiev region, Ukraine.

East and West

Moderator: Global Moderators

Shonastaffie
Posts: 19
Joined: Thu Dec 08, 2011 4:30 pm

KORSUN-SHEVCHENKOVSKIY, Kiev region, Ukraine.

Post by Shonastaffie » Fri Apr 13, 2012 9:28 pm

Looking for any info on this town. Especially Jews who emigrated to Scotland around 1890-1910

Shonastaffie
Posts: 19
Joined: Thu Dec 08, 2011 4:30 pm

Re: KORSUN-SHEVCHENKOVSKIY, Kiev region, Ukraine.

Post by Shonastaffie » Sat Apr 14, 2012 6:30 pm

Anyone know what would have been the most likely route taken by the Jewish people to get to the uk. To Scotland, Glasgow, in particular?

LesleyB
Posts: 8184
Joined: Fri Mar 18, 2005 12:18 am
Location: Scotland

Re: KORSUN-SHEVCHENKOVSKIY, Kiev region, Ukraine.

Post by LesleyB » Sat Apr 14, 2012 6:51 pm

Hi Shona

I had a bit of a google and came up with the following sites which may be of interest if you have not already seen them:

Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of ... in_Ukraine general overview of Jewish population in Ukraine

KORSUN-SHEVCHENKOVSKI - Jewish virtual Library
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jso ... 11498.html

Jewish Gen KORSUN-SHEVCHENKOVSKI
http://data.jewishgen.org/wconnect/wc.d ... y~-1042950

The East European shtetl
http://www.economist.com/node/151977

A potentiallly interesting book to get more idea of what life was like there in the early 1900s
http://muse.jhu.edu/books/9780817381318?auth=0
Anna's Shtetl
Written by Lawrence A. Coben
Publication Year: 2007
A rare view of a childhood in a European ghetto. Anna Spector was born in 1905 in Korsun, a Ukrainian town on the Ros River, eighty miles south of Kiev. Held by Poland until 1768 and annexed by the Tsar in 1793 Korsun and its fluid ethnic population were characteristic of the Pale of Settlement in Eastern Europe: comprised of Ukrainians, Cossacks, Jews and other groups living uneasily together in relationships punctuated by violence. Anna’s father left Korsun in 1912 to immigrate to America, and Anna left in 1919, having lived through the Great War, the Bolshevik Revolution, and part of the ensuing civil war, as well as several episodes of more or less organized pogroms—deadly anti-Jewish riots begun by various invading military detachments during the Russian Civil War and joined by some of Korsun’s peasants. In the early 1990s Anna met Lawrence A. Coben, a medical doctor seeking information about the shtetls to recapture a sense of his own heritage. Anna had near-perfect recall of her daily life as a girl and young woman in the last days in one of those historic but doomed communities. Her rare account, the product of some 300 interviews, is valuable because most personal memoirs of ghetto life are written by men. Also, very often, Christian neighbors appear in ghetto accounts as a stolid peasant mass assembled on market days, as destructive mobs, or as an arrogant and distant collection of government officials and nobility. Anna’s story is exceptionally rich in a sense of the Korsun Christians as friends, neighbors, and individuals. Although the Jewish communities in Eastern Europe are now virtually gone, less than 100 years ago they counted a population of millions. The firsthand records we have from that lost world are therefore important, and this view from the underrecorded lives of women and the young is particularly welcome. show less

A rare view of a childhood in a European ghetto.
Book appears to be downloadable if you have an Athens log in (generally FE & HE institutions) but it can also be bought, maybe ordered from your local library(?) and there may be other sources on t'internet.

Best wishes
Lesley

LesleyB
Posts: 8184
Joined: Fri Mar 18, 2005 12:18 am
Location: Scotland

Re: KORSUN-SHEVCHENKOVSKIY, Kiev region, Ukraine.

Post by LesleyB » Sat Apr 14, 2012 7:26 pm

Book seems to successfully download from here:
http://morefreeebooks.net/book/Annas-Shtetl_53755.html
-click on the link that says
http://depositfiles.com/files/rxfs4gdce
Go for free downloding option.
You may see some ads - close the ad window if it is all you can see.
It is as slow as a slow thing, no doubt to make you give in and pay! You should get a countdown thingy with about 30 secs before download even starts. Then you need to type a couple of security words which you see.

Just going to run the anti-virus check though.... just in case!!

Shonastaffie
Posts: 19
Joined: Thu Dec 08, 2011 4:30 pm

Re: KORSUN-SHEVCHENKOVSKIY, Kiev region, Ukraine.

Post by Shonastaffie » Sat Apr 14, 2012 8:54 pm

Hi Lesley. Thanks for all of this info. And leads. I have seen some, but not all, of them.
The 1901 scotland census puts my ancestors as being born in "Russia Shby"
My great grandfathers(Samuel Sigalls ) death cert says born Kiev. I know that this probably means the kiev region.
His naturalisation cert ( they moved on to New Zealand from Scotland ) says born Charkov, followed by some almost illegible handwriting which I thought read Shemenchkoviy.
Now this is all so confusing. I reckon that it's actually Khirkova, KORSUN-SHEVCHENKOVSKIY.
Not sure how familiar you are with the Ukraine! What's your thoughts on my theory?
Ideally I'd like to see some birth of marriage records from that town - or even cemetery records but none are available on line. I will certainly enjoy following up your leads. Many thanks.

LesleyB
Posts: 8184
Joined: Fri Mar 18, 2005 12:18 am
Location: Scotland

Re: KORSUN-SHEVCHENKOVSKIY, Kiev region, Ukraine.

Post by LesleyB » Sat Apr 14, 2012 9:10 pm

Hi Shona

I'm not at all familiar with the Ukraine - I just could not resisit a wee google to see what could be found.
Are there maybe some Jewish genealogical sites or archives which may be of help? Again, this is an area I know nothing about, so I'm just guessing here.

I did not find anything useful about how one would travel from Ukraine to Scotland under the conditions your relatives probably found themselves in - I'm guessing you would go any which way you could, not necessarily by the most obvious or the quickest route. It may even have been the case that you made the final destination up as you went along depending on what opportunities arose en route, unless they already had contacts or relatives in Scotland?

Best wishes
Lesley

Shonastaffie
Posts: 19
Joined: Thu Dec 08, 2011 4:30 pm

Re: KORSUN-SHEVCHENKOVSKIY, Kiev region, Ukraine.

Post by Shonastaffie » Sat Apr 14, 2012 11:14 pm

Hi Lesley. I think you are right. They would have been fleeing from the pogroms (over 200,000 Jews did during that period) and they may not have had a destination in mind. Border controls, immigration records,passengers lists etc would have been rare. They escaped but there was worse to come - for those who remained. It's all so interesting and horribly sad.
..... And here I am in Scotland at the end of the day!
Thanks for your input - the Wiki page has some great links. =D>

LesleyB
Posts: 8184
Joined: Fri Mar 18, 2005 12:18 am
Location: Scotland

Re: KORSUN-SHEVCHENKOVSKIY, Kiev region, Ukraine.

Post by LesleyB » Sun Apr 15, 2012 12:00 pm

Hi Shona

I seem to remember one of the who do you think you are programs featured a Jewish family who had had to flee from the small town in which they were living, I think somehere in Poland, maybe?? As far as I remember they ended up in Turkey, which led to some interesting and potentially misleading birth details (!) and I think it may have been the program featuring David Suchet. These was still a Jewish cemetery in the village which he visited, as I think I saw that there was an old Jewish cemetery in KORSUN-SHEVCHENKOVSKIY. If you have not seen the program, it may be worth keeping an eye out for as I seem to remember there was quite a bit of interesting background info about their escape and journey.

Best wishes
Lesley

p.s. no problems with viruses with the book which I downloaded, so if you are not able to download it and you wish a copy, send me a PM with your email address and I'll send it on.

LesleyB
Posts: 8184
Joined: Fri Mar 18, 2005 12:18 am
Location: Scotland

Re: KORSUN-SHEVCHENKOVSKIY, Kiev region, Ukraine.

Post by LesleyB » Sun Apr 15, 2012 12:02 pm

It was Lithuania...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/whodoyouthinkyouar ... it_3.shtml
- maybe some tips there for searching too!

Shonastaffie
Posts: 19
Joined: Thu Dec 08, 2011 4:30 pm

Re: KORSUN-SHEVCHENKOVSKIY, Kiev region, Ukraine.

Post by Shonastaffie » Sun Apr 15, 2012 12:31 pm

Brilliant Lesley. I'm going to watch this later on [cheers]