Update on Czernowitz cemetery project

<x-flowed>Dear Czernowitzers:

As most of us already know, the Jewish Genealogical Society of Ottawa
coordinated a project to digitally photograph the Jewish cemeteries
of Czernowitz, Sadagora, and Chotin in 2001 and 2002. While there as
part of the team, Alti Rodal and others were able to acquire copies
of the cemetery registers recording burial dates and locations for
the Czernowitz Jewish cemetery from 1866 until recent years. (These
registers were found across the street with the caretakers of the
Christian cemetery.)

The project to create a searchable database matching names with
tombstone images will begin with the creation of an Excel spreadsheet
with information from the burial registers. This will eventually be
linked on the web to images of each tombstone. Last week I spoke
with Hymie Reichstein, President of JGS Ottawa, about this project,
and have a bit of news to pass along.

During the last few weeks, one inidual from Ottawa already entered
15,000 names into a spreadsheet. These comprise all the names that
were written in Russian, presumably from the post-WWII era. Cyrillic
characters were transliterated into the Roman alphabet.

Hymie has asked for our group to help with the next phase of the
project. The rest of the registers are in either German or Romanian.
If clearly readable, these should be straightforward to type into an
Excel spreadsheet. I'll be seeing Hymie next week in Montreal, and
he has promised to deliver to me CDs with digitized images of the
remaining registers. I'll then begin to distribute sections to
volunteers who are willing to help.

It will take quite a bit of time before this project is completed,
but our efforts will result in an amazing database helping to
preserve the memory of our ancestors and the Jewish community of
Czernowitz.

Bruce


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Received on 2003-05-15 10:26:19