[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] Shitomir archives: questions

[kenkrell at comcast.net]

Edie, 



I will attempt to address each of your questions. 



I have been to the Zhitomir archives three times, the last two in 2004 and 2007 with Don Miller's "Roots Tour". The archives building is old, in my estimation, and run by a staff without adequate funding. If they run out of money at the end of the month they just close up. Very limited hours. The staff in 2007 only knew Ukrainian or Russian and if you did not know the language you would need a translator. In the past the director changed every couple of years. Typical of Easter Europe, very slow and you must fill out forms for everything. Reservations are required for doing research. I would rate this archive no better than the ones in Poland or Germany. 



The expropriation of property circa 1915 is what Brent Mai and others translated to German. SGGEE published two Journal artices, by Dwayne Tiede, on this subject. September 2003 and September 2004. These articles should answer most of your questions. 



I don't know specifically about the 1858 census, however census do exist. I have never found the year and village that I was after, however they are listed in the card name file. If the archives did rewrite, it would have been to the Russian language. Don Miller could have more info.  



Ken Krell 



Note: The Zhitomir archives has many records and will allow copying, for a price. 



----- Original Message -----


From: "Edie Adam" <edieadam at gmail.com> 
To: ger-poland-volhynia at eclipse.sggee.org 
Sent: Tuesday, December 27, 2011 6:50:32 PM 
Subject: [Ger-Poland-Volhynia] Shitomir archives: questions 

Hello and Happy New Year! 

In my catch-up reading this holiday season, I came across an article in the 
1997 AHSGR Journal written by Richard Rye. He describes visits to archives 
in Russia at the time including Shitomir. He wrote that this archive was a 
modern building and competently run by a friendly and helpful staff. And 
notes some of the records he saw including what he calls detailed files on 
the expropriation of property from Germans in Volhynia 1915-1919. And also 
mentions an 1858 census that was too fragile to be copied or filmed but 
that archive workers were rewriting and indexing. 

Would those expropriation files have the details of the material indexed by 
Brent Mai? And is that 1858 census still extant or now available outside 
the archive? And finally, has his description of the archive as being 
well-run and helpful been overrun by events in the last 15 years? 

Thanks, 

Edie Adam 
Fairfax, VA 
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