[Cz-L] Jan. '05 Update on Czernowitz Cemetery Project

<x-flowed>Dear Friends:

First of all, several people have joined the group in the past month
- to each of them, Welcome!

For some of the background on our joint project (with the Jewish
Genealogical Society of Ottawa, Canada) to create a database of
information derived from the Jewish Cemetery on Zelena Street in
Czernowitz, go to our web site, http://members.shaw.ca/czernowitz/ ,
and look for the link to Cemetery Projects.

Earlier this month, I received 3 DVDs from Hymie Reichstein of JGS
Ottawa. Each DVD has over 4 gigabytes of image files derived from
the 2001/2002 project to photograph every existing tombstone in the
Czernowitz cemetery. I've spent quite a few hours studying the
organization of these files in preparation for transcribing
information from the tombstones into a searchable database. The
image files are organized by "Area"; there are separate folders of
images for each Area. These Areas are the post-WWII designation for
burial locations and, from what I can see, they have little numerical
relation with the pre-WWII Parcel numbering system. So most of my
present effort is to determine how the old Parcel numbers match up
with the newer Area numbers.

This information will be useful as we try to match most of the stones
(some of which are unreadable) with pictures of each stone. The
pre-1948 burial registers which have already been transcribed have
been very useful. I'm able to read names and dates on the stones and
I then go to find the individual in the burial register listing,
leading me to the burial location per the older Parcel system. When
I get 2 or more "hits" for the same Parcel in an Area folder, I can
be pretty sure that this Parcel can be found within this Area. But
wait! - there are some cases where one Area has more than one
Parcel, and other cases where a Parcel traverses more than one Area.

It's very exciting to see many surnames mentioned by fellow list
members showing up on the tombstones as I view these files. I'm
taking notes as I see surnames that I recognize and I'll be glad to
share these with you.

By my count, there are 28,123 images of tombstones on the three DVDs.
Primary languages are Russian (or Ukrainian?), Hebrew, and German. A
few are in Romanian. Many stones have writing in two languages -
usually Hebrew/German or Hebrew/Russian. Most of the very oldest
stones are in Hebrew only. Some images show only what's left of a
stone after years of deterioration, while in other cases, even stones
more than 100 years old are shown to be in excellent shape.

That's it for now. Transcription and electronic cataloging of this
collection of tombstone pictures will be starting soon (I hope!).

Best always,

Bruce
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Received on 2005-01-19 08:03:11