[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] searching

[Jerry Frank]

At 08:54 AM 26/04/2002 -0400, Marlo wrote:
>I am new to this group and perhaps it is the wrong one to ask.  I hope
>someone can help me.

You are definitely in the right group, at least as it applies to the short 
time frame your family was there.


>My husbands grandparents were married somewhere in Pommern. The first
>I have of them is their marriage listed in records of Lubben Kreis
>Rummelsburg.  Other villages listed were Wolschewitz, Neu Kolziglow
>all in Rummelsburg.  Some time between birth of Robert in 1878 and
>Bertha in 1882 they emmigrated to Volhynia.  The village we found was
>Alt Dubisoke (we think).   With the help of Library of Congress they
>determined there was a village Alt Dubiszcze in Volhynia slightly
>northeast of Rozyszcze.
>I want to know if this was in Russian Volhynia or Polish Volhynia?

Russian / Polish division of Volhynia only applied between the 2 World 
Wars.  Before WW I, the entire region was part of Russia.  Between the Wars 
this village was in Polish Volhynia.

Dubiszcze is a reasonable alternative to Dubisoke though the two don't 
really sound alike.

You forgot to mention the surname.  Of interest is that my Girschewski 
family (yes, they were Germans) were also from Lubben in 
Rummelsburg.  Unfortunately that is a very difficult part of the world to 
do research in, almost impossible as far as church records go.  I would be 
interested to learn more about the Lubben records in which you found the 
marriage.


>They emmigrated to USA in 1888.  Bertha was my mother-in-law and the
>only thing she ever said was they left and came to America because
>they would have been killed if they had stayed.
>Is there anyway to know if there were pogroms there in the 1880's?
>If you can't help me do you know of any place I can find the
>information.
>It is not vital but would be so nice to know.  We watched the movie
>"Fiddler on the Roof" recently and in the end when they left because
>of a pogrom made us wonder if this is what our ancestors lived thro?

There was no specific pogrom at that time against the Germans.  However, 
the late 1880s was the time frame when the Russians started to insist on 
only Russian being used as the official language in the schools, that the 
German immigrants serve time in the Russian army, etc.  It was the 
beginning of the hardships that the Germans that remained would endure over 
the next 20 years or more, culminating in the first of the expulsions 
eastward in 1905.  Migration outward to North America started in earnest in 
the early 1890s so your family was among the very early ones to 
leave.  Where did they go to in North America?

Volhynia was definitely in the region of what is known as the Pale of 
Settlement, an area where Jews of Eastern Europe were somewhat confined 
to.  That is the setting for "Fiddler on the Roof" but I don't know what 
its time frame is.




Jerry Frank - Calgary, Alberta
jkfrank at shaw.ca