Soviet Repression Records - Information, Photos and More

Those who lived in the Soviet Union could be arrested and even put to death for various perceived or actual infractions.  Several different sites have been collating information on these individuals to document these victims of Soviet repression, with information ranging from simple names to full trial transcriptions and photos.  More records are being added to most of these sites regularly, but that means searching each of those sites individually to check for updates.  But there is a site that acts as a master search engine for all of these sites, allowing you to search in just one place.

Record for my third cousin three times removed, Isai Lefand

Lefands in 1822--More Females Found--but Russian Handwriting Help Needed!

The indefatigable Alex Krakovsky posted of an interesting record set that included--among other things--many family lists of both Jews and Christians in Chernigov Guberniya.  So of course I went Lefand hunting--and I had success (although it does have their name here as "Lefan").

Lefand Family List Entry, 1822

Soviet Records Via JDoc (Some Declassified!)

When I shared a recent post on Facebook, I was asked why there aren't more Soviet-era records available online on JewishGen and similar sites.  I believe much of the reason is that pre-Russian Revolution, records were kept by religion, so JewishGen has been able to concentrate on acquiring and indexing records that will be all (or predominantly) Jewish.  However, post-Revolution, all religions were kept together, so it's a much larger task to extract Jewish records, and it means searching entire towns, not just the Jews of an entire town.  But there are resources for Soviet-era records online (including many found via Архів and directly on local archive branch sites).  And there are also records on sites that are more specialized or obscure.  I recently found one such site with information on some of my relatives, so I'll share what I found and how you can see if there are records about your relatives or ancestral towns available there as well.

A page from an investigation into Alexander Lefand, suspected of Zionist activities; 1925-1926

USHMM Online Resources

I have a scheduled research appointment at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), and I've been preparing for what I'll want to see while I'm there.  But one thing I've noticed is that not all USHMM research needs to be done in person, as there are documents that are scanned and available remotely from the comfort of your home.  And it's also important to note that not all collections housed by USHMM are Holocaust-related--some documents that the museum has are from events that took place well before the Holocaust.

Below I'll show an example of a document found that mentions one of my relatives in 1919, and then I'll explain how you can see if there are documents relating to your ancestral town or relatives.

List of 1919 Pogrom Victims for Nezhin; Derz︠h︡avnyĭ arkhiv Kyïvsʹkoï oblasti via US Holocaust Museum Memorial

Jewish Eviction from Towns within the Russian Empire

My second cousin four times removed was Feiga Lefand, who lived in Drozdovka, near Nezhin in Chernigov Guberniya, Russian Empire (currently Drozdivka, Ukraine).  My 5th great grandparents (and Feiga's great grandparents) had received permission to move there based on an 1853 request (which led to the authorities trying to draft Lefand kids and multiple years of petitions that I've written about here).

In 1885, Feiga married Meir Lieberman, and they lived in Drozdovka as well.  In the 1888 census, they had two young children, Simon and Dvora.  But then in 1889, Meir was evicted from Drozdovka because he didn't have permission to be living there.  He appealed his eviction and left us some insight into what Jews needed to deal with when living in the Russian Empire in the 1880s.

Part of the case related to Meir Lieberman's forced eviction from Drozdovka

Chava Lefand Appeals to Another Czar

My 5th great grandmother Chava Lefand left quite the paper trail. I've made several posts about her legal journey to try to get her sons out of being conscripted (after having lost at least 2 young sons to the draft). You can read about some of her previous attempts here, here and here.  In that first post, she wrote to Czar Nicholas in 1854.  Nicholas died in 1855, and in 1858, Chava was still pursuing her case, and she appealed to Czar Alexander II.  Don't mess with Chava's kids!

Chava Lefand's Case (on Alexander II's Letterhead)

My 4th Great Grandfather's Russian Army Draft Date

Last week, I showed how to potentially find reference to your own family's cases within the Russian Empire that could be stored in the Russian State Historical Archive in Saint Petersburg.  I just got the actual documents from some cases relating to my family (yes, I yelped with joy when I saw the first batch had arrived).  I'll have to get everything translated, but my skimming the Russian showed many references to my 5th great grandmother Chava Lefand (who never took no for answer) and many other Lefand family members.  One item included in the file was a copy of the family's revision list as of 1851.  I already have one from 1850 from another similar file; there are no additional names here, but there are some comments added after 1851 that directly relate to my 4th great grandfather and one of his brothers.

Lefand Family as of 1851--with great comments on the right side

Supreme Court, Russian Empire Style (Don't Mess with Chava Lefand, Part 2)

In January, I wrote about my 5th great grandmother, Chava Lefand, and the lengths to which she tried to keep her sons from being conscripted into the Russian Empire's military.  (You can see that here.)  Well, this past week I got another file related to Chava, and it shows once again that she was a very persistent woman, bringing her concerns to the highest levels of government.

Chava Lefand generated lots of paperwork!

Finding Missing Census Records

Sometimes you just can't find someone in the US census, even if you're sure they're there.  Sometimes they were just missed (I believe this to be the case for my 1-year-old grandfather and his parents in 1920).  But sometimes there's a transcription or other issue, and they're there.  Here's how I was able to locate a relative who I knew HAD to have been recorded in the 1940 census, but whom I just couldn't find.

Samuel Isadore LaFond (yes, they used that spelling) was my third cousin three times removed.  He was born in Detroit to Louis and Bessie LaFond and was their only child for whom I have found a record.  Bessie died when Sam was very young.

I have Louis and Sam living in Detroit in the 1930 census.  I have Sam registering for the draft in 1942, also in Detroit.  But I simply could not find the two of them in the 1940 census, even using all sorts of wildcards to try to find LaFonds.

Samuel Isadore LaFond WWII Draft Registration, 1942; Ancestry.com

Prison, Conversion and Reprimanded Rabbis!

My third great grandfather had a brother named Meir Leib Lefand.  I have Meir Leib's 1862 birth record and his 1883 marriage record.  But then he disappeared from records.  I couldn't find birth records for any children, I didn't see any death records for Meir Leib or his wife, and they didn't seem to have emigrated.  So what happened to them?

Marriage of Meir Leib & Sheina Freida Lefand; Nezhin, Russian Empire; July 5, 1883

"I humbly ask you not to recruit my own sons, but take the sons of my husband's brother"

I've mentioned how I got various cases relating to my family from the Chernigov Archives, thanks to J-Roots tipping me off to their existence.  I just finished getting the largest case (nearly 100 pages) translated, and it reveals a tale of betrayal, ancestors being arrested, relatives illegally traveling to far-away districts to hide from the draft, and an ancestor of mine who was set on protecting her remaining children, whatever it took.

Life for Jews in the Russian Empire under Czar Nicholas I was very difficult.  There were many difficult edicts that impacted where they could live, what professions they could enter, and how much they were taxed.  One of the most hated edicts was the mandatory military service that took Jewish boys from their families, with the ultimate intent of converting them to Christianity.  Jewish boys were taken as young as aged 12 (and sometimes younger, illegally) and conscripted to military institutions until the age of 18, at which they were mandated to enter the regular army for a 25-year term--which started at that point, meaning that if they survived, they were serving until the age of 43.  These boys were called Cantonists, after those military institutions.  Each Jewish community had a quota to meet, and everyone knew that once a boy was taken, he'd likely never be seen by his family again.  There are lots of stories of what families would do to try to protect their sons.  (You can read more about this era here.) In a document I've recently had translated, I've learned part of my own family's story.

And I've learned that you should not mess with my 5th great grandmother.

One page of correspondence

My 5th Great Grandfather's Signature - And How I Found It

Finding names and dates are great and are the foundation of genealogical research.  But I love finding documents that tell the stories and show that my family actually interacted with those documents.  So how excited do you think I was to find my 5th great grandfather's signature?

Meir Lefand's Signature

Following the Clues to A Grammy Winner and a New Year's Rockin' Eve 2020/2021 Performer

I started writing this just this past Thursday, based on a trail I latched onto the previous day.  When I started, I expected to write about a huge mystery behind how a branch of my solidly Russian Empire family ended up in Hungary.  Just a few days later, I've likely figured out why they emigrated to Budapest--and I've discovered that I'm distant cousins with a Grammy Award-winning cellist and a performer who was on New Year's Rocking Eve (but of course I only found that connection the next morning when it was too late to watch it, but I did watch on YouTube).  I have not discovered why that musical talent did not make it into my DNA.

This is another tale of why you need to use multiple sources to fully flesh out a family.  Keep track of how many different resources I use in figuring out these connections.

A Marriage Record With A Mistake - Keep Reading to Find Out More!

Multi-Source Research - Connecting Chana Lefand

People often want to know which genealogy company's database they should subscribe to in order to best research their family.  There's no one right answer; while some records are common across multiple platforms, some are only on one.  And sometimes the answers can be scattered across different platforms.  Here's a puzzle I solved this long weekend, and the resources used.

Women often disappear into the genealogical ether upon their marriage.  Name changes wreak havoc on building back families.  But sometimes records can help reconnect them and their descendants to their families.  And there are some great online resources that might be able to help with that.  No one resource is necessarily the best--sometimes you get a tip-off from one but need to use lots of different sites to find all of the pieces.

Chana Lefand, 1850 Revision List, Nezhin

The Patriotic Lefands - Soviet WWII Records

My Lefand great-great grandmother came to America in the early twentieth century.  But she left many cousins behind in what was then the Russian Empire (and currently Ukraine).  And while my branch of the family fought for the United States during World War II, other branches fought for another one of the Allies--the Soviet Union.  And some of them left a paper trail--and sometimes photos as well!

Volf Lefand, Order of the Red Star

How I Discovered My Family's Request to Move in 1853--With Ancestors Pre-1776

A few weeks ago, I posted a copy of the 1850 revision list (Russian Empire Census) for my Lefand family, with the head of household my born-in-1776 6th great grandfather.  Since the revision listed his patronymic (father's name), I likely hae my family back to the 1750s or earlier, which for Russian Empire Jews is huge.

This revision supposedly no longer exists for Nezhin.  So how did I find it?

j-roots Search Results

How I Discovered My Cousin was a Victim of Stalin's Purges

Have you used one of the post powerful genealogy resources, Google?  Well, you should.  And don't just search in English, search in the language that was used by your family.

My Lefand family lived in Nezhin and some surrounding villages, so I periodically search (and have some automated searches running as well--you can set up alerts here) to look for things like Лефанд Нежин (Russian for Lefand Nezhin).  and I got a new hit that led me to a really sad story about a relative.  And a photo of him as well.

Isai Lefand Death Certificate

The 1850 Revision (Census) That Didn't Exist. Spoiler Alert--It Does (For My Family)

My grandfather's father's family came from what's now Nizhyn, Ukraine (then Nezhin, Russian Empire) and some small surrounding villages. Nezhin Uezd (district) has tons of great records available online, thanks to FamilySearch; I even did a post cataloging the Jewish metrical (vital) records available online for Nezhin here.  With some small gaps, metrical records are available online from the 1850s through the Russian Revolution.  And the Chernigov Archive has some metrical records back into the 1840s.

There is less available census-wise, though.  FamilySearch does have family and tax lists from the 1880s and early 1900s that have been helpful.  But it seems that the revision lists of the 1850s, 1830s and earlier are just missing, at least for Nezhin's Jewish community, which has been a source of frustration.  (Miriam Weiner's site does list some available revisions, but they are not full and only are catch-ups on a few households.)  It seemed that my Lefand family had been in the area for quite a while; my 6th great grandfather died there in the early 1850s.  I was pretty sure that all of the Lefands in the area were his descendants, but with the records I had, I couldn't quite figure out how they all connected.  Wouldn't it have been nice to have a revision list from the 1850s to help me connect that?  Well, look what I've got!

Lefand Family 1850 Revision / Left Page - males

Colwell Coincidence

My sister grew up in Baltimore; her father grew up in Baltimore and her mother grew up in McKeesport, Pennsylvania.

My brother-in-law grew up in Monsey, New York; his father grew up in Monsey and his mother grew up in Columbus, Ohio.

There's no reason to think their families would have had any previous connection.

My sister and brother-in-law now live in Baltimore with their 4 children.  I've done some research on my brother-in-law's side of the tree for those 4 children.  And it turns out that these two families may have known one another a century ago.

"Yallen" Family; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; 1910 Federal Census

My 5th Great Grandmother, Chava Lefand

This past summer, I found the death record for my 5th great grandfather, which gave me his father's name.  I've also found the name of his wife, my 5th great grandmother.

My great-great-great-great-great grandmother was Chava Lefand.  I do not know her maiden name, but her father's name was Volko/Volf.

Chava Lefand, 1882 Poll Tax, Nezhin