Robert E Mitchell
WHY
VISHTINETZ?
By
Robert E Mitchell
131 Sewall Ave., Apt. 48
Brookline, MA 02446
617-505-6003
romitch@comcast.net
August 9, 2014
Copyright Pending
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Robert E Mitchell
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Prologue
page 5
PART I: MY PATERNAL ANCESTORS’ FAMIILY NAMES
AND ANCESTRAL HOME VILLAGE
page 7
PART II: VISHTINETZ IN ITS GEOGRAPHICAL, ECONOMIC
AND CULTURAL CONTEXT AS A MAJOR EXPORTER OF
ITS JEWISH RESIDENTS TO AMERICA
page 27
1. Vishtinetz - - including its location, different
populations, languages and religious groups as they
might have changed over time.
page 31
Location
page 31
Economy
page 33
Population
page 37
Religion and Cosmopolitanism
page 38
Inter-Group Relations
page 41
Moves Closer to Home
page 43
Emigration numbers for Vishtinetz Jews
page 45
Travel routes and carriers
page 48
Life in America
page 49
The Left-Behind
page 52
In Summary
page 53
2. The role and apparent influence of Vishtinetz’s
western neighbor: East Prussia
page 53
Background
page 53
Prussia Tightened the Border
page 57
Russian Concerns
page 57
3. The history and influence that the larger Suwalki
area might have had on Vishtinetz
page 58
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Robert E Mitchell
4. The role that kinship systems played in the social
organization of Jewish families and communities
page 62
5. Political and economic influences on the timing and
pattern of out-migration
page 66
POSTSCRIPT AND RETROSPECT
page 75
ANNEX A: 47 Vishtinetz Jews living in East Prussia during
the 1800s
page 79
ANNEX B: Spreadsheet of 201 immigrants arriving in New
York from Wistiten and its possible spelling variations for
the period 1855 to the first six months of 1873 via
“indirect routes.”
page 82
PHOTOS, MAP, POPULATION AND FAMILY LISTINGS
The eight or more children of Jacob Detomischkofsky/
Mischkofsky and wife living in America based on
scattered and inconsistent sources
page 16
My paternal great grandparents Jacob (?) and
Beatrice (?) Detomischkofsky/Mischkofsky (?) (photo)
page 14
Mordechai (Max) Selinsky (photo)
page 23
Mordechai (Max) Selinsky (obituary)
page 24
Wystyten (photos)
pages 31 and 91
Map of Pale of Settlement
page 62
Map of Poland and East Prussia with
Vishtinetz (Wysztynice)
page 28
Map of Sites of Prewar Jewish Residence
in Lithuania
page 34
Historical Population Estimates for Vishtinetz (table)
page 39
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Robert E Mitchell
Grandfather David Mitchell and his adult children (photo)
page 77
Grandmother Augusta Selinsky Mitchell (photo)
page 78
Brief Overview of Each of David and Augusta’s
Eight Children
pages 79
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Robert E Mitchell
Why
Vishtinetz?
Prologue
Some decades ago my three children asked me why I knew so much about my mother’s
family but so little about my paternal side. My response is this gift to all those who are
in some way linked to my Mitchell ancestors. You are now inundated with more
information than you probably ever wanted.
I am certainly not tethered to the past identities of either my paternal or maternal
ancestries. However, in deference to my children’s questions and my own curiosity, the
past of my ancestors provides one reason among others for this attempt at social
history based on a genealogical tangent.
Nor am I enamored with traditional genealogy and family trees, although both are
essential pursuits relevant to my research. My own interests are more in social history
(especially the quantitative variety that is missing in the following pages).
When my children asked about my paternal ancestors, I and my wife Sylvia were on my
biennial home leave from an overseas posting, a career that kept me away from
documentary and other sources until my Foreign Service mandatory-age 65 retirement
in 1995. Since then I published a number of time-consuming articles and books
unrelated to research on my father’s family. However, when windows of time opened, I
mined various relevant resources at the Library of Congress and the National Archives
and Records Administration. I also contacted the usual public offices for relevant
evidence.
Off and on I summarized what I knew including the current draft for distribution in
anticipation of corrections and comments.
Initiating this social history poses several challenges that include an ability to identify
the likely names of my paternal Jewish ancestors, their home village, and existing
literature relevant to the challenge at hand.
I believe that some future researcher will be able to document that my paternal
grandfather’s family name was some variation of Detomischkofsky, Mischkofsky or in its
Polish version “Myszkowski (pronounced Mishkovsky) from the vicinity of Vishtinetz, the
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Robert E Mitchell
Yiddish name for what is known today as Vištytis. Wistiten and other German and Polish
variations will be introduced later.
My advanced age and limited language skills suggest that I could best use my remaining
days to explore the social history of my grandfather’s life in and travels from his village
on the Lithuanian side of the border with East Prussia in around 1878 to his new home
in Grand Rapids, Michigan followed by Detroit fairly soon after for several decades
before moving to Los Angeles where he died in 1949. I only met my grandfather twice - in 1936 and soon after the end of WW II.
The first section in the following analysis provides information on my paternal
ancestors’ family names and the likelihood that these ancestors came from Vishtinetz.
This documentation helps justify the remaining pages’ focus on the social history of the
general sending area as well as some preliminary information on the experiences that
my ancestors and their neighbors had in departing for America.1
The second section covers five topics:
1. Vishtinetz - - including its location as well as how its different population,
language and religious groups might have changed over time.
2. The role and apparent influence of Vishtinetz’s western neighbor: East Prussia.
3. The history and influence that the larger Suwalki area (in contemporary Poland)
might have had on Vishtinetz.
1
This paper draws on a wide range of information sources that are referenced throughout the document.
Unfortunately, according to my cousin Thelma Fields, my Aunt Belle disposed of her family records just prior to her
death at age 90 in 1979. I began with personal contacts with the small number of my father’s surviving relatives.
One male cousin did not have any information, and he did not know that he was Jewish until around his thirteenth
birthday. The only other surviving cousin, Thelma Fields, had minimal information but reported that one of her
neighbors, Sophie Bob Ross, seemed to know something about the family. In fact she had invaluable information
and leads. Sophie was the daughter of Bella, one of my grandfather’s sisters. Sophie in turn put me in touch with
Dena Abrams, the wife of my second cousin Don. (I had not known that I had a second cousin before my contact
with Sophie). In researching the Mitchell family, Dena went well beyond my limited knowledge and connections as
she successfully mined the memories of several descendants of my grandfather’s siblings. I was also able to
telephone two descendants of my paternal grand uncles. Eventually Dena and I were able to identify the siblings
(or at least most of them) of my grandfather. Both Dena and I then independently began to write appropriate
official sources for records on naturalization, census tract information, death and marriage records, and other
relevant information. I wish to thank Dena for her many contributions.
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Robert E Mitchell
4. The role that kinship systems and residential patterns played in the social
organization of Jewish families and communities.
5. Political and economic influences on the timing and pattern of out-migration,
including influences on my own paternal ancestors.
PART I: MY PATERNAL ANCESTORS’ FAMIILY NAMES AND ANCESTRAL HOME VILLAGE
Detomischkofsky/Mischkofsky and Selinsky/Silensky
from Vishtinetz (Vištytis) in present-day Lithuania on the
border with the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, the former East Prussia
Both suggestive and fairly well-documented evidence exists on the family names and village
origin of my paternal grandfather David Mitchell and his wife Augusta’s parents.
Grandfather David Mitchell, according to some perhaps questionable records, was born on July
21, 1861. Other admittedly incomplete information indicates that at least two of his younger
siblings lived in Vishtinetz although neither may have been born in this village on the current
Lithuanian border with the Russian exclave Kaliningrad Oblast, the former East Prussia.
Prior to traveling from Michigan to visit my grandfather in Los Angeles soon after the end of
World War II, my mother told me that she thought that my father’s father had come from a
place with the sound of Virstinsk or some variation of it. (My father never discussed his ancestry
with me, and I never knew enough to consider this to be of value later in my life.) This one
piece of information remained with me over the decades. Confirming evidence of this early
memory is seen in a ship manifest list for grandfather’s youngest sister Beile. The New Yorkbound Barbarossa from Bremen on May 15, 1899 includes Beile Detomischkowski a Russian
from Mistiten (really Wistiten),2 the German name for Vishtinetz.
2
Dena Abrams discovered this manifest. The written ship manifest appears to indicate that Beile’s family name
began with S, not D. However Dr. Leiserowitz, a leading German historian researching East Prussia and its eastern
neighbors, emailed me on September 2, 2003 that “For people who didn’t know very well German, sometimes
[depending from the script] looks a big German D like an S . . . The document was written by a Prussian clerk - - of
course in German and it is undoubtedly Detomischkowsky.” The US National Archives recorded her family name as
Detamiszkowski. Although the 1900 census report for my grandfather David’s family that included Beile indicated
that she could not speak, read or write English, this did not mean that she was illiterate, for the label did not cover
reading and writing Yiddish. According to Beile’s daughter Sophie, her mother spoke German, Polish and Yiddish.
Also that her mother (Levy or Levi) had a German background whereas my great grandfather had a Russian one,
whatever “Russian” meant to Sophie and her mother.
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Dr. Ruth Leiserowitz, a leading German academic who has been researching early East Prussia
and environs, found the name of Isador Detomischkowski, another of my grandfather’s siblings,
on a list of individuals ordered to be deported from East Prussia in 1895. The records indicate
that he was born in 1878 (the year my grandfather arrived in America) in Wystiten, another
German spelling version or Vishtinetz. His occupation was “Kommis” (a sales clerk).
It is possible, according to Dr. Leiserowitz, that Isador (who later changed his name to Irvin) was
a “Jewish shopkeeper in Tawe . . . a little village near Curonian Ba. I think the young man
emigrated somewhere in the US or SA.”
In the 1910 census, Irvin mis-reported that his own father was born in France and had French as
his native language. Ten years later, his 1920 census form indicated a Russian origin. In what
appears to be his naturalization application (filed with Michigan’s Wayne County) on November
3, 1900, he claims he was a native of Germany. Still later his Social Security Administration
information reported his death in July 1968 with the name Irvin Anthony Mitchell born in 1883
(not 1878 as listed in the East Prussian records). His father’s name was Jacob Detomischkofsky
and his mother’s name was Mary Anschlafsky.
Isador stated on his social security application form that Pavestits was his birthplace. Pavištytis
is a village (today almost a crossroad) about three miles southeast of Vishtinetz. One source,
however, states it was formerly home to around 140 residents.
Irvin also reported that he changed his own name when he was naturalized, although it is
possible that he used Mitchell before that time.
Based on information reported elsewhere in this report, it is obvious that Irvin’s information is
not always consistently reported and not necessarily a reliable guide to his father and my
grandfather’s family (although we will suggest later that there is some confirmation for some of
his information).
My grand uncles and aunts seem to have reinvented their origins in later American records as
well. For example, Bella (Beile’s Americanized name) stated in her February 9, 1944 application
for a social security account number that she was born in Germany. Louis, another sibling,
reported a Russian birth in his application for a social security account.
In May 2000 I talked on the phone with Irvin’s 73 year-old son (with the same name as his
father, not a Jewish pattern) who was caring for his 90-some year-old sister. He did not know
he had Jewish ancestors but confirmed the family connection by mentioning his father’s
reference to his own father, Jacob, some kind of artisan who worked in churches and was born
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Robert E Mitchell
in Lithuania. The father’s name, he thought, began with the letter “M.” The son thought the
family may have been Roman Catholic (perhaps based on his work on churches).
My grandfather David’s sister Sarah Mitchell Goldenson’s 1900 and 1920 census records report
Yiddish as her native language and both her own and her parents’ birthplace as Poland. The
death certificate for Henry Jacobson, another sibling, reports that he was born in Russia (he was
the only known sibling not to adopt the name “Mitchell.” Instead, he presumably adopted his
father’s first name - - that is, he was the son of Jacob, or Jacobson.)
The American records for my own grandfather David Mitchell were similarly inconsistent. 1900
and 1910 Federal censuses report he was from Germany and that his parents spoke German (a
common pattern found among “Pseudo-Prussians”). In the 1920 Federal Census, David’s
German origin and his parents’ language were changed to Russia and Russian, perhaps
attributable to someone other than my grandparents responding to the census-taker’s
questions.3
These discrepancies warn against accepting documentary sources as necessarily reliable.
Support for this caution is reinforced by information I obtained not just from censuses but also
from other sources as well. Genealogists and historians must necessarily question their
documentary as well as oral sources.
My speculation is that none of these siblings knew much about their parents’ backgrounds and
they were unsure about their own as well. All were fairly young when they left for America.
Still, my best guess is that my paternal grandfather’s own father’s family name was
Detomischkofsky and that it was perhaps shortened to Mischkofsky. Neither were common
names, although other families in the general vicinity of Vishtinetz had the same names. This
3
A later separate chapter will include conflicting information (reported from census, ship manifest, naturalization
records, and other sources) on the birthplaces of my grand uncles and aunts. The currently available information
reports that my grandfather David Mitchell was followed by seven of his siblings (listed not necessarily in the order
of their arrival in America): Louis Mitchell, Sarah Mitchell Goldenson, Henry Jacobson, Joseph Mitchell, Irvin
Mitchell, Bella Mitchell Bob, and Rachel Mitchell. From early Detroit city directories, the names of William (1901)
and John (1905) Mitchell were living with my grandfather. Of course some of these relatives might have been
cousins rather than siblings. Dena Abrams found that Irvin was living with my grandfather in 1899 according to the
1899 Detroit City Directory. Bella also settled into American life with the same sibling support, as did others
including Sarah, Joseph and perhaps Rachel. Emigration and settling-in was a family enterprise, one facilitated and
supported by my grandfather, the first sibling to have traveled from Vishtinetz to America. According to old notes I
kept, my grandfather told me that his siblings came to America one at a time.
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Robert E Mitchell
sharing of rather rare names provides a clue to the existence of family and business networks, a
topic that will be revisited later.
The great grandfather Jacob was, according to oral reports collected by my fellow researcher
Dena Abrams, a carpenter and skilled wood carver (sculptor) whose work “adorned local public
buildings, railroad stations and churches.” Also in support of this occupation comes from a
report consistent with what Irvin’s son told me: one of Bella Bob’s children whom Dena Abrams
interviewed recounted that her mother, Bella, would tease her mother by stepping over the
border into East Prussia and hearing the border guard saying not to worry as she was the
carpenter’s daughter.
Jacob is reported to have sent at least four pieces of his own hand-crafted wooden (walnut) doll
furniture and a crib rocker to his daughter Bella’s children in America. 4
My grandfather David and his brother Joseph also had a carpentry and wood-working
background, one that may explain why they first settled in Grand Rapids, Michigan, one of the
centers of the American furniture industry. David later moved to Detroit where he rose from
carpentry to general construction and perhaps his own firm before leaving for Los Angeles at
the suggestion of his wife Augusta’s doctors who thought the change would be good for her
heart condition. My cousin Thelma has some fine furniture that our grandfather David built for
her. So, yes, he too was a skilled carpenter (as were at least some of the males on my maternal
grandparents’ side). David’s occupation in the city directories of Detroit for 1884 and Grand
Rapids for 1890 was “carpenter.” (These dates suggest that David might have moved back and
forth between these two fairly widely-separated Michigan cities.)
Both of my great grandfather’s two occupations (wood carver and carpenter) probably required
that he spend time away from the family’s home village of Vishtinetz as it was unlikely that any
small settlement could provide sufficient income-earning opportunities for someone with his
multiple skills, especially for a sculptor retained to work on railroad stations, public buildings
and Christian churches in the general region.5
My great grandfather would have had to travel to where work assignments could be found. As
transportation facilities were underdeveloped, it is also possible that he would have taken his
4
Rosalind (Roz) Bob, born October 16, 1914 to my grandfather David’s youngest sister’s Bella, provided my coresearcher Dena Abrams with this information. Rosalind said that the items were not hand-me-downs but she was
not certain about who sent the gifts.
5
Wood carving was, according to A. I. Chayesh, a “relatively exotic craft” at the time. See his Jewish Craftsmen in
Kaunas Gubernia from the stand point of genealogy and local history at http://www.litvaksig.org/litvaksig-onlinejournal/jewish-craftsmen-in-kaunas-gubernia
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Robert E Mitchell
family with him. This may explain why his children, some of my grandfather’s siblings, reported
that they were born a relatively short distance from Vishtinetz. Irvin, as already noted, stated in
his 1952 application for a social security account number that he was born in Pavestits
(Pavištytis), 15 kms from Vishtinetz.6 According to a son of Henry Jacobson, another of my
grandfather’s siblings, Henry was born in Slonim or Volkavic. His younger sister Bella, as already
noted, reported that she was from Wistiten although it appears from her ship manifest that her
home province was Kowar, perhaps really Kowarsk some distance northeast of Vishtinitz. East
Prussian records report that Wistiten was the home of Isador (Irvin).
That village may have been the home base for their parents, a community in which their
mother may (according to one source) have had some connection with the hardware business.
It was quite common among Jewish women in the area to have been actively involved in
income-earning pursuits. (More on this in Section 4.)
If little documentary information is available on Jacob Detomischkofsky’s family name, even
less is known about his wife Beatrice (?) Detomischkofsky’s maiden name.
We have two (or three) versions of this name: Henry Jacobson’s death certificate lists it as
Bessie Vanslofsky.7 The social security application form from another sibling, Bella Bob, reports
the name was Beatrice Von Slovsky.8 The death record for Bella (prepared by her daughter
Martha) stated that Bella’s father was Jacob Mishkofsky and her mother was Beatrice Levy and
that Bella herself, as already noted, was born in Germany, not Vishtinetz. Irvin, as noted, wrote
that her mother’s name was Mary Anschlafsky.
Another source reported the wife of my great grandfather was not as religious as her husband.
Her photo on page 13 questions this assumption. It is possible (given the age differences in the
two subjects) that she was not my great grandfather’s first wife and the mother of my
grandfather.
So the versions of my great grandmother’s maiden family name are Levy/Levi, Vanslofsky, and
Anschlafsky. The latter two are very similar, so that one of them might have been her actual
name. However, again let me suggest that it is possible that great grandfather Jacob had more
than one wife. This is at least a possibility suggested by the age discrepancy of twenty years
6
Spelling is a challenge, as there are other settlements with the same general name.
Henry/Harry was buried on October 24, 1937 in the Wisoko Litovsker Society section of the Mt. Judah cemetery
in Ridgewood, Queens. The brotherly aid society was a landsmanshaft. Wyszków is a city in northeast Poland that
had a 9,000 Jewish residents before WW II.
8
The term von is thought by some to denote a link to nobility and being non-Jewish (which, if true, would mean
that none of the parents’ children and descendants are Jewish by birthright. My own Mother was not Jewish.)
David Langenberg’s listing of 1871 contributors to two Jewish charities includes a family name Slavitski.
7
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Robert E Mitchell
between my grandfather and his sister Bella. If Rachel was even younger, then the discrepancy
would have been twenty-two years. However, if David’s mother was 17 or 18 when she
delivered David, then she would have been up to 40 years old when she had her last child.
That’s possible. Moreover, we will see later that my Aunt Belle’s letter to her mother regarding
the death of her mother’s father, Mordechai Selinsky, mentions the recent (1920) death of both
the mother and father of my grandfather. Therefore, although the photo of the two great
grandparents (see later) suggests an age difference between the two, it is possible that great
grandfather Jacob did marry a woman somewhat younger than himself (and perhaps not his
first wife). Other evidence from census reports for my grandfather’s siblings indicate that their
mother had a German background whereas the father had a “Russian” one, it is possible that
the two met when my great grandfather met his wife during one of his work visits to East
Prussia. Of course, these are hypotheses that will probably never be possible to confirm with
adequate evidence.9 Testing the possibilities must also recognize that one of my father’s
siblings reported a mother’s name different from what the other siblings provided.
That is, my own grandfather David’s mother may not have been the mother of his much
younger sister. This younger “mother” is the one in the photo on page 13. Still, this is just a
possibility, not a proven fact (and there are precious few proven facts in this report).
There is a case for the name Anschlafsky, for twenty-one year old Rose Anschlafsky and her
infant son Ephrain Anschlafsky lived in Vishtinetz before boarding the Gypsy Queen to join
Rose’s husband in America 1869. Another five-member Hanslawsky from Vishtinetz traveled to
America via the indirect route in 1873. See Annex B. However, the compilation of names for
Wistiten emigrants also includes 1865 arrivals Louis and Marianne Levy as well as Louis and
Michle Levi with their nine-year old daughter in 1872.
According to Hank Mishkoff’s April 27, 1999 email to Dena Abrams, his great-great-grandfather
Lejb Myszkowski was born in Przerosl, Poland and that some of his other ancestors came to
America in the mid-1800s from Grajewo, both in Suwalki-Łomża areas within striking distance
of Vishtinetz. Przerosl is within only around fifteen miles from where my ancestors lived. The
name Myszkowski is a Polish version of Mischkofsky, suggesting that larger kinship networks
could have provided assistance to their members in their own emigration decisions and
experiences. (To many researchers, this is a rather old-hat finding.)
9
According to the Mayo Clinic: “Women over 35 may take longer to be able to conceive. This is related to those
eggs we have had since birth. We don't make new eggs as men make new sperm. Our eggs are with us almost from
conception. They don't always age well. They can lose quality and there can be fewer of them.” See
http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-living/pregnancy-week-by-week/expert-blog/pregnancy-after-35/bgp20055825
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These names and their arrival times suggest that my own grandfather was preceded in America
by members of his mother’s family as suggested (in Annex B) by the immigrant mother Rose
Anschlafsky and her infant child.
My great aunt Bella might have been only as young as 14 on her arrival (when she joined my
grandfather in his Detroit household10) and was not the best source of information about her
parents. Her ship manifest information itself was probably provided by some adult. She had a
lot to remember if, as I suspect, her father frequently moved, not an unrealistic assumption for
a skilled wood carver and carpenter.
Skipping a generation to my father’s one, the siblings closest to my father in age had little
information about their parents (my grandparents). For example my own father and some of
his other near-age siblings, did not know their mother’s correct maiden name or where exactly
his father was born.11 This disappearing memory is itself an interesting story of the
Americanization of an immigrant’s family.
Although the names and origins of my paternal great grandparents may be open to question,
we do have their photo, one that my co-researcher Dena Abrams obtained from one of Bella
Bob’s (her mother-in-law) relatives (see the following page). The date and place of photo are
unknown.
According to the Michigan Jewish genealogist Betty Starkman, my great grandparents seem to
have been relatively well-off and perhaps able to afford sending their children to America.
Betty reported that people at the time typically wore their own clothing and jewelry for these
photographs, as they wished to reflect their life style, economic status and religion. And in this
photo, my
great grandparents are seated. Jacob is on the right with his right hand holding a cane
and his left arm held straight down. Beatrice is clasping her hands with the right over
the left, as her arms are crossed in front of her. She is wearing either pearl or diamond
earrings, and her dress is either imported silk or another fine fabric. One sleeve appears
to have two stripes on it, although this appearance may be an artifact of the picture
(which is a copy of a copy). She has a decorative head covering over her wig. (Religious
Jewish women covered their heads, but then again, so did many non-Jews.) She also
10
Her daughter also reported that her mother lived not just in Detroit but in Pontiac and Grand Rapids (where her
brother Joseph resided) as well.
11
Source: See later for the information they listed on their own social security application forms. David’s California
Death Certificate contains information provided by my Uncle Milton.
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wears a neck scarf. Her ring is on the middle finger of her right hand, a typical Jewish
custom.
Jacob wore a typical middle-class Jewish male’s attire. He held a walking stick, perhaps
suggesting that he needed some assistance.12 Betty concluded that Jacob and Beatrice were
also Orthodox as Beatrice was wearing a wig (shetel) while Jacob had side curls (payot) and a
beard. Moreover, according to Betty, my great grandmother “was fashionable and very well
dressed as evidence by the neck scarf . . . Married women covered their heads. Hers, however,
is more fashionable than most.” Silk fabric was “most unusual.”
My paternal great grandparents Jacob (?) and
Beatrice (?) Detomischkofsky/Mischkofsky (?).
My great grand parents seem to have sent eight (or more) of their children to America. I (and
my follower research Dena Abrams) were able to locate scattered but admittedly incomplete
and often inconsistent information on these siblings. Our sources included ship manifests, city
directories, censuses, death certificates, obituaries, and personal interviews. Highlights of some
of this incomplete and inconsistent information is presented on the following page.
So much for what I know about my grandfather’s family. Much clearer information is available
on my paternal grandmother’s family - - that is, the female line (my paternal grandmother, wife
of David).
I have not be able to locate the arrival record of my Grandmother Augusta Mitchell’s father,
great grandfather Mordechai Selinsky, but the census records and his death certificate (with
12
Betty Starkman reported that she had rarely seen a walking stick in such old-country photographs. Elisa New
wrapped her ancestral story around her Latvian great grandfather Jacob Levy’s cane. See Jacob's Cane: A Jewish
Family's Journey from the Four Lands of Lithuania to the Ports of London and Baltimore (Harvard University Press,
2009)
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information provided by own Grandfather David Mitchell) all list the family name as Selinsky or
Silensky.13 Augusta’s maiden name is given as Seliewski on her marriage certificate.
Max was 24 on his arrival and first becoming a parent.14 That is, he was born between 1840 and
1847. (His obituary indicates it was 1847 but it is possible and not unheard of that older folks
sometimes reported they were younger than their actual age.) I have not been able to locate
any names for Mordechai’s wife’s maiden name.
Mordechai’s wife Rosa or Rose seems to have been age 22 at the time of their arrival (according
to the 1870 census), and it appears that she later died after which Max (his adopted name
along with Ernst and other variations) may have married twice more. His 1920 obituary reports
that among his surviving children were Miss Rae Cohen, Miss Anna Cohen and Alex Cohen.15
That he may have remarried once more is suggested by his death certificate (with information
provided by my grandfather) indicating that his wife was Jennie Blumberg. The Michigan
divorce records for 1897-1952 report the separation of Jennie and Morton Blumberg. (I have
not yet searched for the year of this action.) No satisfactory information exists on what
happened to any of these three women. However, the 1883 lists of Detroit deaths mentions
German-born Rose Selinsky, a single 34 year-old woman who was killed by lightening. The
Detroit Jewish Cemetery index for old Beth Olem cemetery lists a 37 year-old Rosa Selinsky
(1851-1888). Rose Selinsky was the name of my Grandmother Augusta’s mother. Although the
ages of the two Rose Selinskys were a few years different as was their home country origins, I
have come to accept such discrepancies. (I did not explore whether there is an original death
certificate with the name of the person supplying the death-by-lightening information.)16
I suspect that it was not unusual for an older person to have had multiple spouses. Elethier
(McGreery) Neff Whitman, my maternal grandmother’s mother, outlived three husbands and
divorced a fourth before she died at age 89 in 1943. (She had a voice that would seem to travel
“for miles” - - as I experienced when she would call me from her Pine River rural home asking
me to fetch her an ice cream cone from the small rural general store in the Gordonville,
Michigan crossing. I was supposedly working and enjoying myself on my uncle’s nearby farm
during summer holidays.)
13
My cousin Thelma’s husband Lou was my original information source on the Selinsky connection.
My great grandfather Mordechai Selinsky would have had needed funds to support his wife and himself on their
trip to Michigan and their living expenses while they started their new life - - and new family (the arrival of my
grandmother Augusta). Steerage was the lowest cost travel. It was also the least comfortable with regard to
bedding, living and shared sleeping space, food, water, towels, and soap. American officials required that arriving
passengers have a minimum amount of funds with them.
15
The obituary also mentions Max’s daughter Mrs. Mollie Loeb of Chicago. A letter I have sent by my Aunt Belle to
her mother in 1920 mentions an Aunt Molly. My Uncle Milton was unfamiliar with any Aunt Molly or Uncle Sol.
16
According to the 1920 census, Max was single at the time and living with my grandparents. Jennie Blumberg may
have passed away earlier.
14
15
Robert E Mitchell
The eight or more children of Jacob Detomischkofsky/Mischkofsky and wife
living in America based on scattered and inconsistent sources
NAME
David
Louis
Henry/Harry
Jacobson
Joseph
BORN
1862
AGE AT
YEAR
ARRIVAL NATURALIZED ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
17-18
1884
1866-67
Irvin
1879-83
Bella
Rachel
1882-85
Settled in both Grand Rapids and
Detroit. A carpenter. Married 1883.
A cabinet-maker in 1884 with A A
Maynard
Different dates and ages given over
time. On arrival not able to speak
English. Was initially a cabinetmaker.
14?
1866
Sarah
John
1878
1863,
1864,
1867
1868,
1871
William
YEAR
ARRIVED
He and his wife Ida had six children
1883-84
1884, 86,
87
15 or 17
16-19
14 to 19
1899
1902
1906
14 to 19
1900, 1903
Cabinet maker; married Anna
Gottlieb in 1905 and Jennie
Nussbaum in 1916. A rabbi officiated
at both. In 1930 employed by Fancy
Furniture in Grand Rapids.
11 children, 5 boys and 6 girls. Only
sibling to arrive via Canada and only
one thought to be truly religious
Died 1963; ladies tailor; 2 children;
moved from St Louis to Ft
Lauderdale in 1925
Dressmaker. Married in Detroit
1903. Eight children, 4 daughters
and 4 sons
Married (to Jacobson?). No children
Lived with my grandfather in 1900.
Might have been a cousin.
Lived with my grandfather in 1905.
Might have been a cousin
16
Robert E Mitchell
The 1870 census, the first written source I have for Max Selinksy, indicates that he was a 30
year old Russian-born peddler who seems to have been a home owner with an estimated birth
date of 1840. (His first name on the census form was Ernst). He was naturalized in 1872,
according to the 1920 census. It also reports that Max arrived in the US at age 25 (not 24) in
1865, the same year his first child, my paternal grandmother Augusta, was born. (She died
before I was born; my grandfather did not remarry.17 (According to my mother, Augusta had
red hair, as did I, my three children, and a granddaughter.)
Max’s Machelah Cemetery’s tombstone in Ferndale, Michigan read: “Here Lies Our Dear Father
Mordechai Son of Shmuel.” His mother’s name was Sar Hagalus, also of Poland. Sar could refer
to Sarah.
My great grandfather seems to have been very sociable and a joiner. He was a member of at
least two synagogues, first the most orthodox (Ashkenazi) Detroit synagogue, Beth Jacob
established in 1881 and located on Montcalm near Hastings, and, second, Mogen Abraham. It
was established in 1911 on Farnsworth near Antoine. His obituary also reported that he
belonged to “several other organizations of a charitable nature.” However, he was not buried in
a synagogue-specific cemetery, perhaps decision made by my relatively more secular-oriented
grandparents.
Detroit was an unusual destination for Max and Rose Selinsky when they arrived in 1865. It has
sometimes been suggested that most early Jewish arrivals in Michigan settled in smaller towns.
But Detroit was not bypassed. The first German Jews arrived in around 1840. By 1860, there
were about 200 Jewish people, mostly from Germany, living in the city. This number rose to
around 540 ten years later and then to 665 in 1880 and 1,200 in 1890. By 1902, 12,000 of the
city’s 300,000 residents were Jewish. An estimated 60 percent of these 12,000 were, like my
ancestors, of Polish or Russian (RusPol) origins. Many of Detroit’s older Detroit Jewish families
17
The 1870 census indicates that my great grandfather’s family also had a 19 year-old domestic servant, Lizie Dunn,
born in Prussia (although the first letter of her birthplace is unclear; it could have been Russia). If these same
general-region immigrants did not have connections with one another in Vishtinetz (although I suspect that they
did), they were birds of a feather in their new home. The home region information networks continued in America.
The census form lists the following names: Ernst, 30 Peddler, Birthplace Russia (his DOB would have been 1840);
Rosa (Augusta’s Mother) 28, keeping house. Russia (DOB around 1842); Augusta 6, born in Michigan (DOB around
1865-66); Samuel, 3, Michigan; Moses, 2, Michigan, and Lizie Dunn, age 19, domestic servant, born in Russia (or
Prussia, since the first letter is not clear) is also listed as a member of the household (which is different from
“family”). In the column “eligible to vote,” Ernst is designated as “citizen,” suggesting that he became naturalized
within five years of arriving in the U.S. However, Michigan’s resident-aliens were allowed to vote in these early
years. I suspect that neither Ernst/Max nor David Mitchell may have gone through the naturalization process, as I
have not been able to locate their naturalization records.
17
Robert E Mitchell
came from Suwalki (arriving in the 1880s) with at least one family named Wistinisky (perhaps
Wistiten (Vishtinetz).18
Detroit at the time provided its growing Jewish population with multiple social, occupational
and other opportunities. Organized Jewish life increased along with the growing population. In
1899 there were nine Jewish charitable organizations, three Jewish social clubs, and Jewish
secret orders and lodges as well.
Old-timers such as my great grandfather could live in their own world along with the new multicultural one evolving in Detroit. As will be suggested elsewhere, this was a disappearing world,
one that my own father (and his children) moved from as they seem to have lost the heritage of
their ancestors when they moved away from their Jewish neighborhoods and the religious
institutions in them.
My grandfather David Mitchell, as indicated earlier, provided the information that appears on
his father-in-law’s death certificate of April 13, 1920. Although the 1920 U.S. census reported
that Max Singer (really Max Selinsky) was born in 1840 (not 1841 or 1842), the information
provided by my grandfather states that Max was born in 1849 in “Virstinag Poland” (Russia was
crossed off). Virstinag in pronounced similar to the name my mother mentioned to me before I
visited my grandfather soon after WW II.
The 1849 birth year means that Max was 71 when he died in 1921. His obituary stated that he
was 73. The 1870 census reported he as age 30 and therefore was born in 1840 and that he was
80 when he died. (So much for the consistency of different written records.)
The 1865 arrivals Mordechai and wife Rose may have come from Vishtinetz, the same village as
my grandfather David and his siblings. And as suggested by the Anschlofsky family’s 1869
arrival, my grandfather and his siblings were preceded in their travel to America by members of
their mother’s family as well as by David’s in-laws, the Selinsky family. At least this seems a
likely possibility (although not a proven fact).
With information probably provided by my grandfather David and grandmother Augusta,
daughter of Mordechai, his obituary in The Detroit Jewish Chronicle (see page 23) reported that
Max left seven daughters (Mrs. David Mitchell, Mrs. Julius Jacobs, Mrs. Harry Lefkofsky, Mrs.
Harry Wheeler, Mrs. Mollie Loeb, Miss Rae Cohen and Miss Anna Cohen) and three sons (Saul
Selinsky, Harry Selinsky and Alec Cohen who probably was Rae’s and Anna’s brother, the
siblings of Max’s second wife.)19
18
19
Betty Starkman provided me most of these numbers.
My cousin Bob Mitchell informed me that he was aware of both Harry/Henry Jacobson and Bella Bob.
18
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According to my tracking of Mordechai in various Detroit City directories, he changed his family
name to Singer before returning to Selinsky.20
Other later-arriving families from Vishtinetz also had the name Selinsky: Moses Silinsky and his
two sons arrived in New York in 1871, six years after my own Selinsky’s arrival. Nicholi Solinsky
and her infant son arrived the same year (on a different ship) no doubt to join her earlierarrived husband.21
Although none of the existing lists of names for Vishtinetz includes a family called Selinsky (or
Silinsky and Solinsky), there was a Slavitsky family. And records on Jewish births in the City of
Vilnius for the years 1837 to 1915 include two Selinsky names.22 Also the JRI-Poland Jewish
Records Indexing includes 495 names from Suwalki that are variations of the English-spelled
Selinsky.23
20
Among the different sources for the name Selinsky, my paternal grandmother Augusta’s California death
certificate gives her maiden name as Selinsky and her father’s name was Mardechia C (or G) elensky; the mother
was Rose, and both parents were born in Russia. Further confirmation is provided in the Social Security application
records for my Uncle Bob (Robert), Uncle George and Aunt Lillian. Robert reports “Selinsky,” George reports
“Solinsky” and Lillian gives “Selinsky.” Lillian was born in 1892; the next child in the family was Sidney (1894). He
gave his mother’s name as “Sellers.” My uncle Leslie (1897) and my own father (1899) gave the name Singer, one
that may not have been adopted until sometime after they were born. That is, genealogical (family) knowledge
declined over the years. The family’s youngest son, my Uncle Milton, knew neither his mother’s maiden name nor
where his parents were born (as reflected in the information he supplied for David’s death certificate).
According to a paper by Warren Blatt on “given names,” Max was by far the most common name adopted by men
whose East European name was Mordechai. If the -sky part of the family name could imply that the family hailed
from a village whose name began with Selin, then there are 21 Russian possibilities, one from Lithuania, and one
from Estonia (based on a search of the JewishGen ShtetlSeeker files).
21
David Langenberg’s listing of 1871 contributors to two Jewish charities includes a family name Slavitski.
Vilnius District Research Group of LitvakSIG list available online at https://vilnius.shutterfly.com/surnames. This
list also includes the following names that could be variations of Detomischkofsky: DANIOSHEVSKI(1),
DANISHEVSKI(1), DANISHEVSKY(22), and DANIUSHEVSKY(17). Other names on this list include MISHKOVSKY(1),
MISHLOVSKY(1), MISKOVSKY(1) and MZYKOVSKY(1).
22
For example Jelinski, Zielnick, Szalamejczyk, Zilnicki, Zielonski, Szylasnski, Zelenski, and more. Several of these
versions appear in the surname list for Wizajny (Suwalki Gubernia) on the southern shore of Lake Vištytis.
Additional references to this settlement will be made later.
22
19
Robert E Mitchell
And remember that it is likely that the maiden name of David’s own mother could have been
Anschlafsky (or Levy or Levi) and that other immigrants with the same names arrived in New
York after Mordechai and his wife Beatrice.
That is, it is possible that both of my paternal grandparents - - the Detomischkofsky/Mischkofsky
and the Selinsky families - - came from the same Vishtinetz village and were acquainted back in
their home village. This common background was one basis for the two families re-connecting
in America.
Of course these are possibilities, just hypotheticals.
Just as there is a photo of David’s parents back presumably in or near Vishtinetz, there is an
imperfect photo of Augusta’s father taken in Detroit probably somewhat prior to his death in
1920, ten years before I was born in the same city. (See page 22.)
The obituary on page 23 of Max (Mordechai) Selinsky in the Friday April 23, 1920 issue of The
Detroit Jewish Chronicle summarized some of my great grandfather’s life in Michigan based no
doubt on information my grandparents provided - - and is probably somewhat varnished.
I draw four tentative conclusions from the information presented so far.
First, although the evidence is admittedly shaky, it appears that the pre-arrival name for
my Mitchell family was some version of Detomischkofsky or Mischkofsky.
Second, my grandfather David Mitchell married into a family with the name Selinsky.
Third, it is quite likely that both the Detomischkofsky/Mischkofsky and Selinsky families
came from the same village of Vishtinetz or its immediate environment.
Fourth, it is quite possible that over time other members of the same two families also
left Vishtinetz for America. As we will see, they were not the only residents to do so - either earlier or later.
Among the many missing topics in the above account is the later life of my paternal great
grandfather. Jacob and his wife declined to follow their many children to America.
A letter I found from my Aunt Belle to her mother (Grandmother Augusta) with the lament that
“poor papa away from his father and mother all these years and then to learn of their tragic
death.” Although we do not know what she meant, the tragedy could have been from WW I or
its aftermath. Sophie Bob told Dena Abrams that she thought (but this was just a thought) that
my great grandparents may have died either one week or six months apart in around April
1914, a date before the German-Russian hostilities. My Aunt Belle’s letter indicated that both
20
Robert E Mitchell
of my grandfather’s parents were alive together and had tragic deaths about the same time or
exactly as the same time. (In my comment the photo of the two together on page 13 suggests
that the great grandfather had at least two wives.)24
Germany declared war on Russia on July 19, 1914 with attacks through East Prussia (occupied
by Russian forces) to Lithuania in April 15, 1915.25 The East Prussian Battles of Gumbinnen,
Tannenburg and (especially) the Masurian Lakes in late August and early September 1915
presumably completely destroyed Vishtinitz as the German forces moved eastward. (General
Hindenburg trapped and defeated the Russian Army.26)
In May, 1915, the Russians began to expel Jews from Sulvaki. According to Masha Greenbaum
in his The Jews of Lithuania,
“Jewish families were moved at random; almost half a million Jews [from all Lithuanian
areas bordering Prussia] were refugees by the end of 1915 … Those who decided to
remain were mistreated by German occupation forces near the Polish border. Roving
Polish bands assaulted Jews in Vilnius and Suwalk. The horrors of war took their toll …
Uprooted by advancing troops, refugees were continually on the move.
Unemployment, destitution, hunger, and disease were the stark new realities.” (p.
213)27
Peter Gatrell’s A Whole Empire Walking, Refugees in Russia During World War I reports that
at the beginning of May, 1915,
all Jews in Kaunas (Kovno) and Kurland provinces, living west of the Kaunas-PonvezhPosvol-Bauske line, were ordered to leave their homes and move west. These ferocious
instructions were frequently implemented with great callousness. By the autumn of
1915 … the existing population of … Suwalki … had been badly depleted. Of those who
had left during the terrible summer months, several hundred thousand refugees had
24
Belle’s letter also refers to her parents and Max having spent Easter and Seder together - - celebrations from two
different religious traditions, although the words for "Easter" and "Passover" (Pesakh) are identical or very similar.
25
See Anatoli Chayesh’s The Expulsion of the Jews from Lithuania in the Spring of 1915: The Case of Zeimelis,
available at http://www.jewishgen.org/litvak/expulsion.htm and his “Narratives of Jewish Eye-Witnesses in the
fond of the Jewish Historical and Ethnographical Society [Part 2]” available online at
http://www.litvaksig.org/litvaksig-online-journal/on-the-front-line-in-lithuania-1915?task=article
26
Sir Bernard Pares’ first-hand account of Russian military operations during 1914 and 1915 refers to “local
friction” with the Galacian Jews [who were south of Lithuania in traditional Poland] based on economic rents they
charged and their alleged assistance given to the Germans. See his Day by Day with the Russian Army, 1914-15.
27
Galina Baranova’s list of Jews Evicted from Suwalki Gubernia in the Summer of 1915 (Landsmen Press, 1999)
does not cover Vištytis.
21
Robert E Mitchell
temporarily found shelter, but three-quarters of a million [from 11 provinces] remained
in transit as of mid-September.28
Louis Stein in his “The Expulsion of the Lithuanian Jews During the Fervor of the First World War
(1914-1918) noted that Lithuanian Jews were “dispatched” (viselentsi) in order to differentiate
them from refugees who ran away voluntarily.
The Germans were harsh as well. In 1914 and 1915, according to Gatrell, “the German military
imposed a ruthless regime” in Vilna, Suwalki and Kurland.29 Many of those in Russiancontrolled areas suffered from cholera and typhus epidemics.
Maurice Paleologue, the French Ambassador to the Tsar, wrote that
“Hundreds of thousands of wretched people … were herded like cattle by Cossack [farther
to the south] troops, abandoned at railway stations, and left exposed to the elements on
the edge of towns, dying of hunger, exhaustion, and cold. And along the way, to raise their
spirits, these pitiful multitudes encountered the same hatred and contempt. … Throughout
their sorrowful history, the Jews have not known a more tragic exodus.”30
These experiences define a tragedy for the refugees (of whom over 67 percent were Russian)
and for the Jews in particular (about five percent of the total). According to one historian, “the
overwhelming majority of refugees were women, children and the aged.” Their fate may have
been what my Aunt Belle meant by a “tragic death.”31
Other authors have added to this picture of human suffering that affected Suwalki, the home
area of Vishtinetz. For example, Don Gussow’s Chaia Sonia recounts his family’s personal
experiences following the Tsarist regime’s forceful evacuation of Lithuanian Jews, including
those quite distant from Vishtinetz and the Prussian border.
Stanley Washburn, a London Times correspondent reporting on the war wrote that 13 million
Russians, Poles and others were “expelled by the order of the Russians” and that “this hardship
28
Indiana University Press (1999). pp 22, 31
Ibid. (p. 160).
30
Gatrell, p. 36. He reports that Russian government leaders unsuccessfully opposed these actions directed by
Russian Generals.
31
For statistical information on the refugees, see Gatrell, especially pages 213-14.
29
22
Robert E Mitchell
Mordechai (Max) Selinsky, the father of my paternal Grandmother
Augusta Mitchell’s. He was between the ages of around age 71 and perhaps 75 before
his death in 1920. The photo was probably taken in front of my Grandfather David
Mitchell’s Detroit home.
cannot be considered as falling particularly upon the Jews.”32 However, it appears that the
Jews were expelled before their neighbors were. Washburn also reports that the London Times
32
See his Victory in Defeat, the Agony of Warsaw and the Russian Retreat, 1916.
23
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specifically instructed him to look for atrocities and excesses against the Jews. He had “been in
not less than 1,000 villages in Russia covering country all the way from Bukowina to the Baltic,
and barring the expulsion of the Jews from the war zone, I have nothing whatever that can be
considered as an outrage on the Jews.” Polish Jews were, in his opinion, sympathetic to the
Germans. Other reports I have seen claim that the Germans also destroyed villages during
24
Robert E Mitchell
retreats from advancing Russian forces. The publication Landsmen has “extensive data on
Jewish families evacuated from many Suwalki towns by the Czarist Government in 1915”33 (but
not for my great grandfather).
After the war, President Wilson sent a team to investigate anti-Jewish attacks under the new
Polish government. Over 300 Jews were reported to have been killed. Symar Petlyura’s band
operating farther south in the Ukraine were said to have killed thousands (one source puts it at
over 60,000) Jews during the first quarter of the 20th Century. These events were not limited to
the Ukrainian pogroms of 1919.
That is, various sources indicate that the Russians forcefully removed Jews from the German
border areas, and the Germans also were harsh with the population in German-occupied
territory. It is reasonable to assume that many displaced Jews died during this removal.
The Russians fleeing from East Prussia in 1916 destroyed Vishtinetz, according to David
Langenberg. Nancy and Stuart Schoenburg’s Lithuanian Jewish Communities reports that the
town was destroyed by retreating Russians in 1915. (Sophie Bob Ross’s 1914 date was perhaps
approximate, as the major WW I battles in the area did not take place until 1915.)
As suggested, we may not be able to determine the exact dates and the causes of my great
grandparents’ deaths.
--- --- --The following pages place Vishtinetz in its larger socio-economic and cultural context in order to
identify some of the forces that influenced the emigration decisions of my ancestors and their
neighbors prior to end of the 1800s. There are some excellent studies of this large-scale
emigration of East European Jews to America later in the 20th-century, but that time period is
beyond the departure dates of my own paternal ancestors.
As with the above materials, the reader will not find a traditional genealogy and its associated
family trees in the following pages.34 Instead my account is an initial exploration of one corner
of the larger history of Jewish emigration in general and to America in particular. That larger
social history is my primary focus and general interest. I am not, however, an expert on either
Jewish or East European history and life. I am learning as I go along.
33
See the earlier reference to Galina Baranova’s research.
My fellow researcher Dena Abrams has prepared an extensive family tree. I hope to draw on her April 1998
information in a separate report at a later time.
34
25
Robert E Mitchell
But what about the histories of the other side of my own family: my maternal non-Jewish
Protestant ancestors?
Given the high percentages of Jews who married non-Jews, my own mixed background is not
unique,35 although it was certainly much less common and less accepted when my parents
were married in 1925, a time of widespread and more than occasional overtly expressed antiSemitism in Detroit and in America more generally.36
No, I certainly have not forgotten that I also have maternal non-Jewish ancestors. I was quite
close to my Midland, Michigan grandmother Maude Chloe Neff Wayne. My daughter Maude
Wayne Mitchell was named after my grandmother.
This fairly well-documented stream of ancestors will, given the time, be reviewed sometime
later. For now, note that a fair amount of selective information is available on one of a good
number of branches of my Mother’s family tree. William A. and Laura McCreery, for example,
edited, compiled and privately published in 1976 the book-length A Historical, Genealogical and
Biographical Records of Some of the Members of the ALEXANDER McCREERY CLAN of the United
States and Canada. This ambitious volume is limited, as it primarily traces links through my
mother’s maternal grandmother, Elethier McCreery, born in Leslie, Michigan on July 1, 1854.
Information is also available on my maternal grandfather, Duncan Anderson Wayne, born
January 7, 1858 to John and Elizabeth [Wilson] Wayne in Simcoe, Norfolk County, Ontario,
Canada. John Wayne was born in England. His father or he himself may have been involved in
the distilling business (the production end). Elizabeth, a native of Ontario, Canada, had both
English and German (Pennsylvania Dutch) ancestors who arrived in America before the
Revolutionary War. They moved to Ontario, Canada after independence (suggesting that, like
many of their neighbors, they may have been Tories). My own mother was named after her
paternal grandmother.
McCreery genealogists subsequently traced my maternal line far back in history - - in fact, it is
claimed, to Duncan the First King of Scotland. He ascended to the throne on November 25,
1034.37 After he was killed in a civil war in 1040, he was succeeded by his cousin, Macbeth, the
historical basis for “King Duncan” in Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Again, I hope to able to cover
some of this information in a later separate analysis.
35
Neither my older nor younger brothers were probably aware of our father’s and our own Jewish heritage until I
so informed them.
36
There are many publications on the history of American anti-Semitism - - for example Leonard Dinnerstein,
Antisemitism in America (Oxford University Press, 1995).
37
See Descendants of Crinan De Mormaer
http://familytreemaker.genealogy.com/users/m/a/c/Michael-D-Maccreery/ODT5.html
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PART II: VISHTINETZ IN ITS GEOGRAPHICAL, ECONOMIC AND CULTURAL CONTEXT AS A
MAJOR EXPORTER OF ITS JEWISH RESIDENTS TO AMERICA
Vishtinetz was a multi-language and multi-religious village on the border with the Europeanoriented and modernizing German-speaking East Prussia, the present-day Russian exclave of
Kaliningrad. My focus is on Vishtinetz during the residency of my ancestors from the 1840s
through to the end of the century. This was an often tumultuous transition period, one that
followed Napoleon’s failed 1812 invasion of and retreat from Russia through an impoverished
countryside. In his letter home, one of Napoleon’s officers noted the poverty of the Lithuanian
soil and people a short distance north of Vishtinetz where the French forces entered
Lithuania.38 This disastrous campaign further harmed an already poor border region.
The Jews of Vishtinetz certainly were aware of Western thinking, modern trading and economy,
and the potential of escaping the confines of traditional constraints. But this village was not an
isolated outpost in the Russian Pale and the former Congress Poland, for settlements and
Jewish populations throughout the larger Suwalki and Litvak39 environment were similarly
influenced by more general changes in the western world during the mid-to-late nineteenth
century.
38
See Paul Britten Austin’s 1812, Napoleon’s Invasion of Russia (Greenhill Books 2000). One of my email
informants reported that the French-led armies entered Lithuania somewhat north of Vishtinetz.
39
Litvak “(pl., Litvakes), Yiddish term for a Jew of historical, or “greater,” Lithuania. It “includes large swaths of
northeastern Poland (notably the Białystok and Suwałki regions), northern and western Belarus (notably the
Grodno [Hrodna], Minsk, Slutsk, Pinsk, Brisk [Brest Litovsk],Shklov, Mogilev [Mohilev], Gomel [Homel’], and Vitebsk
[Vitsyebsk] regions), southern Latvia(notably the Dvinsk [Daugavpils] region), and northeastern Prussia (notably
the region of the Baltic port city Memel [Klaipėda]). This expansive definition of Lithuania in
Jewish historiography and culture corresponds roughly to the large territory under the jurisdiction of the
Lithuanian Jewish Council (Va‘ad Medinot Lita), which governed Lithuanian Jewish communal affairs from 1623 to
1764. … The stereotypical Litvak is portrayed as unemotional, withdrawn, intellectual, and mercilessly critical; he
challenges authority and is by nature skeptical, stubborn, and impatient with, and suspicious of, others. The
Litvak’s commitment to tradition is suspect; his Judaism purely intellectual. Hyperbolic expressions of the
stereotype maintained that even when he is studying Torah, the Litvak has one leg out the door of the bet
midrash (study hall), on his way to inevitable apostasy. He studies Mishnah, Talmud, and halakhic codes publicly,
went the stereotype, while at the same time furtively glances into Christian scripture or reads Marx and Tolstoy.
The Litvak was called, derisively, tselem kopf—meaning, split the head of a Litvak and you’ll find a cross.”
From http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Litvak. There are other explanations as well - - for example
David L. Langenberg’s excellent but unpublished What is a Litvak? Also see Saul Issroff’s “What is a Litvak” at
http://www.jewishgen.org/infofiles/litvak2.txt. Among the other worth-reading books on Litvaks are Dovid Katz,
Lithuanian Jewish Culture (Central European University Press, 2010) and Dov Levin, The Litvaks: A Short History of
the Jews in Lithuania (Yad Vashem, 2001). Also Masha Greenbaum, The Jews of Lithuania 1316-1945 (Jerusalem
and New York: Gefen Publishing, 1995).
27
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Vishtinetz is “Wysztynice” in Suwalki (upper right-hand side of the map)
Source: http://kehilalinks.jewishgen.org/vishtinetz/rubenstein.html
28
Robert E Mitchell
I doubt that Vishtinetz was unique, although its population and cultural composition as well as
its location on the East Prussian border may have given the village and its Jewish residents an
additional awareness of opportunities offered elsewhere.
Later political and military turmoil, including the Polish rebellion against the Russian army
beginning in1863, brought further havoc to the larger area, one that scholars indicate placed
less of a burden on Polish than on Russian Jews. Military service for Jews in Poland, for
example, was less onerous than it was for Jews in Russia (outside the old Congress Poland
borders). And although the Jews suffered discrimination, the Polish authorities attempted to
soften some of the anti-Jewish restrictions applicable in the Russian Pale of Settlements.
Beginning on May 1862, Poland adopted a process that, according to some historians, “almost
warrants the designation równouprawnienie (‘equality of rights’), or emancipation.”40
Both the Poles and Russians adopted laws intended to lower the visibility of Jews through
mandates against wearing traditional Jewish clothing. It was replaced in Poland by a Russian
style, one that was more or less identical with what was worn earlier.
Tadeusz Konwicki’s novel Bohin Manor covers village life during the 1870s in a Vishtinetz-type
Polish (or East Prussian) village perhaps not radically different from Vishtinetz (except the only
Jew came from outside). This, however, is fiction.
The present analysis is not the only study of Vishtinetz. David Langenberg, a scholar with
relevant language skills, authored information-rich articles including his Landsmen contribution
titled Toward a Yizkor Book for Vishtinetz (Wisztyniec) as well as his Notes on Vishtinetz Families
and its partial census of the village’s Jewish families. And several authors have explored
Vishtinetz around 1900 and later - - after my ancestors left for America. Despite the time
differences, these studies are worth reading, including Bert Oppenheim’s The Oppenheim
Family History, 1750-1995 with Jacob Hyam Rubenstein’s (1890-1963) recollection of his early
teen years as a religious student in Vishtinetz at the turn of the century and later. He left the
village around his fifteenth birthday. Various issues of Landsmen also report items relevant to
the village and its larger region. Mendel Sudarski has written about his early life experiences in
Vishtinetz as well.
40
Glenn Dynner, Antony Polonsky & Marcin Wodzinski, eds., (Oxford: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization,
Littman Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry, Volume 27. 2014), 16, 23-24, 28, 30. Thanks to Professor Polonsky for
referring me to this valuable analysis. See his three volumes The Jews in Poland and Russia (Oxford: The Littman
Library of Jewish Civilization, 2010). Also see Michael Ochs, “Tsarist officialdom and anti-Jewish pogroms in
Poland,” in John Klier and Shlomo Lanbroza, eds., Pogroms: anti-Jewish violence in modern Russian history (New
York: Cambridge University) Press, 1992), 165.
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Robert E Mitchell
I will reference these observers and other sources in the following pages.
Dr. Ruth Leiserowitz has published some very useful pieces on Vishtinetz and its place in the
larger economic and political environment. Her The Traders of Wystiten: The Border as a
Modernization Factor for Litvaks in Transnational Space in 19th century is one of her several
relevant contributions that she kindly supplemented with our exchange of emails. I will have a
number of opportunities to reference her ongoing research.
I also benefitted from information provided by various Special Interest Groups (SIGs) that
include JewishGen, LitvakSig, Jewish Records Indexing (JRI-Poland), Suwalki-LomzaSIG,
BelarusSIG American SIG, and numerous individuals who kindly responded to my emailed
questions.
I have done my admittedly limited best in mining original documents, books and journals from
the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), Library of Congress and more
recently from Harvard’s Widener Library.
Scholars continue to publish works relevant to my research. And the various SIGs and
specialized archives will in the future release materials that I wish were available for my present
research into the background of my paternal grandparents who emigrated to America from at
least 1865 through to the turn of the century.
The following pages are organized into five sub-sections introduced earlier:
1. Vishtinetz - - including its location as well as how its different population,
language and religious groups as they might have changed over time.
2. The role and apparent influence of Vishtinetz’s western neighbor: East
Prussia.
3. The history and influence that the larger Suwalki area might have had on
Vishtinetz.
4. The role that kinship systems and residential patterns played in the social
organization of Jewish families and communities
5. Political and economic influences on the timing and pattern of out-migration
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Robert E Mitchell
--- --- --1. Vishtinetz - - including its location as well as how its different populations, languages and
religious groups might have changed over time.
Location: The available evidence suggests that my paternal ancestors came from the currentlynamed Lithuanian village of Vištytis.41 Its Yiddish name is Vishtinetz (‫)ווישטינעץ‬, a settlement
with multiple other names in German [Wistiten, Wistitten, Wystiten] and Polish Wisztyniec as
well as Vištyčio, Vishtyney, Vishtitis, and, among still others, Vishtinits. When my grandfather
David was born in around 1861, it is likely that all three Polish, German and Yiddish names were
used, although the official government maps would have one name only. Wars and treaties
altered borders and names along with them. Residents of Vishtinetz lived in a changing and
often violent political environment, one that probably failed to appreciably improve the
economic conditions of the multiple populations in the village’s immediate vicinity. (Photos of
the time and later include well-dressed residents.)
Lietuva senose fotografijose - ca 1915. My grandfather left the village around 37 years
earlier (1877-78)
41
Located on the northern border of Lake Vištytis which means “chicken.”
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Vishtinetz was in a transition area subject to multiple economic, linguistic, cultural, political and
military influences that in combination gave the village and its broader environment a relatively
complex non-physical environment, one that probably made many of the local residents aware
of the larger world and the opportunities available outside their own religious community.
Vishtinetz had at least three (and possibly five) such communities: Jewish, German-speaking
Protestants, Roman Catholic Poles, and perhaps Orthodox Christians as well. There were
German, Jewish, Polish and Russian cultural influences in the air. (Less is known about
“Lithuanian-specific” influences as they may be merged with the more general PolishLithuanian complex.)
Vishtinetz’s coordinates are
“54°27' N, 22°43' E, 19 miles SW of Vilkaviškis (Wyłkowyszki), 27 miles WSW of
Marijampolė, on the border with Kaliningrad oblast, Russia. … Vištytis is situated in SW
Lithuania near the Polish and Russian borders on Lake Vištytis in the municipality of
Vilkaviskis and the county of Marijampole. Before WWI, Vištytis was in Wolkowyszk
powiat of Suwalki guberniya in Congress Poland and the Russian Empire.”42
The geographical location of the village placed it at the crossroads of destructive wars,43
boarder revisions, and changing political overlords.
In the past (during my grandfather’s youth), this area was described as a primeval forest.
But this village was not a single outpost for Jews, for there were Jews living throughout
Lithuania and its neighbors south, east and west. The map on page 33 identifies the “sites of
prewar Jewish Residence in Lithuania.” This sea of dispersed settlements provides several
insights that include: Jewish traders had wide-spread business and customer contacts; these
contacts also opened marriage opportunities for both Jewish men and women; and there were
42
http://www.iajgs.org/cemetery/lithuania/viitytis.html
I recall that my grandfather David informed me that, as a child, he could see soldiers on the move (“at war”)
outside of where he lived. According to US census information, he was born July 21, 1861 and arrived in the U.S. in
1878 or 1879. So his observation could have been between 1868 (when he was 7) and 1878. I have not found any
information on battles between warring states during this period. There were, however, national uprisings from
1861 to 1864, including the January 1863 Insurrection. (See Stanislaw Chankowski, “The Attitudes of the Jewish
Population of Augustow Province Toward the January (1863) Insurrection,” Landsmen, 2: 2 and 3.) These uprisings
were very likely followed by shows of military force in the region (perhaps what my grandfather reported to me
that he saw). Later on, as reported by Lloyd Gartner in his The Jewish Immigrant in England, 1870-1914, “[t]he
stream of [immigrant] young men from Eastern Europe was sharply augmented in 1875 and 1876 when many fled
to avoid service in the armies of the Czar during the Russo-Turkish War.” (p. 40). However, as noted above, draft
service in Poland was less onerous than service in Russia. Also a military draft would not explain the emigration of
the daughters in a family (including my own ancestors).
43
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Robert E Mitchell
many potential synagogue and church clients both in Poland/Lithuania and East Prussia for my
great grandfather, a wood carver working on both religious and public buildings.
Economy: Several online and other sources listed the following kinds of jobs held by the local
men in Vishtinetz: artisan crafts, fishing, money-lending, coach companies, exchange offices,
processing and wholesaling bristles and poultry, as well as petty traders and a range of unskilled
muscle-demanding pursuits.44 Sudarksi wrote that “because of its proximity to the German
border …Vishtinetz [became] a center of small industry. There were a number of pig-hair
factories and tanneries, which employed approximately 200 workers.”45 “Workers, merchants,
bakers, second-hand dealers and a weaver” are included in a list reported by Oppenheim.46
The road and transportation networks gave the village more ready access to East Prussia than
to the Russian Pale. According to Langenberg, “although roads led from Vistinetz to Kybarti,
Wierzbolow, and Kalwarja, on the same side of the border, they were poor. To travel to other
towns in Lithuania it was easier to go part of the way on the better roads on the Prussian side
of the border. Thus the orientation of Vishtinetz was rather to East Prussia … [and] by 1843
there were 27,500 Jews in East Prussia … a considerable portion in small towns and villages.”47
Again, Dr. Mendel Sudarski reported that
“It was difficult and troublesome to reach Vishtinetz from the Russian side, although it
was only 21 verst away from Verzhbalove. Twenty-one verst are about 15 American
miles. To travel this distance, however, often took the better part of the day and
sometimes part of the night as well. The road was partly sandy, strewn with rocks and,
in many places, so muddy that sometimes Vishtinetz was cut off from the rest of the
world—no coming, no going—unless you took a long detour through Germany in order
to reach the station at Verzhbalove.”48
However, he did not mention the earlier-referenced settlements both north and south of
Vištytis.
44
Within the immediate but larger region, one study reports that 47 percent of the productive Jewish population
in Grodno Gubernia were craftsmen (it was 41 percent in Vilnius and 35 percent in Kaunas). Anatolij Cheyesh,
Jewish Craftsmen in Kaunas Gubernia, http://www.litvaksig.org/litvaksig-online-journal/jewish-craftsmen-inkaunas-gubernia?task=article. Craftsmen presumably had to be members of guilds. Cheyesh refers to “some
relatively exotic crafts” such as the “woodcarver Shatil” in Kaunas.
45
Mendel Sudarsk, op. cit.
46
Oppenheim, pp 123-41. Elsewhere he noted (without attribution) that a “sizeable portion of the Jews living in
the small towns and villages were engaged in farming, gardening, dairying and fishing … Thousands of them were
engaged in processing pigs’ bristles for brushes, cigarette making and common labor.” p. 36.
47
Langenberg, p. 25.
48
Available online at http://www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/lita/lit1614.html
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Source:
http://www.google.com/imgres?imgrefurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.seligman.org.il%2Fkretinga_h
olocaust.html&tbnid=AjFPhwUgPEF11M:&docid=J8du7cHWnecUGM&h=1076&w=1000
Access to the wider region was increased with the opening of railroads that facilitated the
movement of emigrants and heavier goods but not necessarily the servicing of local populations
in Vištytis’ immediate vicinity. In fact, the new rail network, according to Langenberg, “stifled
the economic livelihood of Vishtinetz beginning with the completion in 1860 of a line from
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Robert E Mitchell
Königsberg to Stallupönen [both in East Prussia] followed shortly after by further extensions
and in 1861 by “the first railway in Lithuania—the line from Kovno to Wierzbolow, 23 km north
of Vishtinetz.”49 The construction of a railroad from St. Petersburg to Prussia via the village of
Kybartai about 10 km north of Vištytis in 1865 supposedly started, according to some authors,
the decline of Vištytis’ prosperity and the economic fortunes of its Jewish population. 50
(Population figures to be introduced later are somewhat ambivalent regarding responses to the
new railroad.)
Although Vištytis Jews lived in a Prussian-infused region, the residents of this small village were
also attuned to the needy members of the larger Jewish world as suggested by the 318 Vištytis
families who contributed to the HaMagid Persian Famine fund in 1871-82. Only the much larger
Kaunas (Kovno) had more contributors (493). Residents of 61 different Lithuanian communities
appear on this list.51
The large number of contributors from Vištytis might suggest that the resident Jews were
economically better off than Jews in most other settlements many of which had larger
populations. These numbers may also indicate differences in the economic conditions as well as
differences in the “western orientations” of various Jewish communities.
Some Jews in Vištytis no doubt credited their relative fortunes to their ability to service the
commercial needs of their non-Jewish neighbors.
Although it was rare for Jews to own land, Dr. Sudarski noted that the town once had a “large
religious Jewish community of landowners.” Still it seems that few Jews were farmers. Instead
they lived in more settled communities where they, the Jews, were able to provide services to
one another and to their non-Jewish neighbors. And not owning land may have lifted some of
the shackles tying Jews to a community.
The earlier-mentioned class and settlement status within the region suggests that Vishtinetz’s
diversity of economic pursuits and land ownership no doubt created within the Jewish
community heterogeneity of incomes and an internal class structure affecting both relations
among Jews as well as relations with non-Jews.52 Although different reports include references
49
Langenberg, p. 25.
A Timeline of the History of Vištytis.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Vištytis/database?method=reportRows&tbl=3&sortBy=1&sortDir=down&start_at
=40
50
51
Jeffrey Maynard, HaMagid Persian Famine Donation Lists Donors from Lithuania, 1871-1872 at
http://www.jewishgen.org/databases/lithuania/magid72.htm
52
I seem to recall that Chaim Grade mentioned in his Rabbis and Wives that seating in synagogues was rented or
sold so that the wealthier members of the congregation typically sat closes to the officiating rabbi.
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Robert E Mitchell
to poor Jews, many Jewish families may have been relatively better off than their non-Jewish
neighbors – and were probably more connected to the larger world outside the village as
suggested by the earlier reference to 318 of the community’s Jewish heads-of-household who
contributed to the Persian Famine appeal in 1871-72. (Lithuania itself suffered famines in,
among other years, 1867-68 and 1872.53) If the average family had five persons, then nearly
every family gave something.
The appeal itself was launched with an August 4, 1871 article in the London Jewish Chronicle.
The Hebrew newspaper HaMagid picked up this appeal in an article on November 17, 1871.
Vishtinetz’s response suggests that the Jewish population was probably fairly literate and
connected to the larger outside world. Still, their economic opportunities probably failed to
keep pace with the increase in the community’s population, a lag that no doubt helped propel
many Jews to search elsewhere for better lives. Emigration was obviously one way to escape
the Malthusian trap.
Little information is readily available on the occupations and class of non-Jews, the neighbors
whom Jews served and competed against.
Populations and economies, of course, were not stagnant. They both expanded and contracted
over time, a process that influenced income-earning opportunities and relations among the
different community members and their social groups.
Given the population trends for Vištytis over time, it seems likely that Germans, Poles and
especially [I assume] Jews) were moving into and out of the village. (I assume that the
Lithuanian agriculturalists were less mobile, but I could be mistaken.)
To close this section, I will quote Langenberg on the relative economic, language and cultural
complexity as it was
“truly a border town . . . at the ethnographic frontier between Poles and Lithuanians.
The center of the town itself was populated by Jews, and farther out, Poles, while the
surrounding countryside was populated primarily by Lithuanian peasants as well as
German colonists54 . . . During the early 19th century, there was an increasing
percentage of Jews in Vishtinetz, as in other Polish-Lithuanian towns.”55
53
Reported in “Podzelva” - Encyclopedia of Jewish Communities in Lithuania (Lithuania) at
http://www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/pinkas_lita/lit_00449.html
54
However Rubenstein, as noted elsewhere, reported that Jewish and German-speaking boys would visit each
other’s homes during, perhaps, holidays.
55
Langenberg, p. 25.
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Langenberg considers Vishtinetz to have been a (Roman Catholic) Polish-dominated village with
other populations living on the village’s perimeter. But it was low-population geographically-
small place so that different cultural streams were not far from one another. The centrallylocated Jewish craftsmen and traders presumably served all population groups.
Population: The summary table on page 38 provides population estimates (and only estimates)
for different years from 1795 through to WW II. The sources and methodologies behind these
numbers are unknown to me.
In her September 10, 2003 email to me, Dr. Leiserowitz reported that in 1821 all 1,028 of the
Vishtinetz Jews lived in Vishtinetz itself. None lived in nearby villages. Later numbers suggest
that although Jews may been a large minority in the village itself, they were a distinct small
minority in the larger immediate area. That is, Dr. Leiserowitz’s numbers are specific to the
village whereas other figures could possibly refer to a larger area.
In his JewishGen Discussion Group letter of July 20, 2011, Omryn Kaplan-Feuereisen reported
census figures for a number of years beginning in 1888 for both the “gmina” or municipality of
Vishtinetz and 20 additional localities (and therefore are not comparable to the village alone).
There were 6,553 inhabitants including 3,520 Lithuanians (54 percent), 1,269 Jews (19 percent),
and 1,764 Poles (27 percent). (Different sets of numbers are quoted elsewhere, although they
are fairly similar.) No Germans were listed in this census but 28 percent (1,834) reported that
German was their mother tongue. Fifty-five percent of the residents were Roman Catholic, 26
percent Protestants (Evangelicals) and 19 percent Jews. But in the village of Vishtinetz itself,
1,260 of the 4,219 residents (30 percent) were Jews. (Note that these are 1888 figures.)
Polish was the major mother tongue (42 percent) followed by Yiddish (30 percent), German (23
percent) and only 5 percent Lithuanian. Again, these numbers suggest that Vishtinetz was a
multicultural enclave within a larger Lithuanian-speaking primarily rural population.56
56
In his memoir, Rubenstein suggests that Jewish-German relations were not confrontational. He is silent on
relations with Roman Catholic (Poles) and Lithuanians. No information is available on which if any of the local
populations contributed to the murder of their Jewish neighbors after the German occupation in 1941. A Wikipedia
article reported: “As Einsatzgruppe A advanced into Lithuania, it actively recruited local nationalists and antisemitic
groups. In July 1941, members of the Baltaraisciai movement joined the massacres. . . . Local officials,
the Selbstschutz, and the Hilfspolizei (Auxiliary Police) played a key role in rounding up and massacring Jewish
Lithuanians, Latvians, and Estonians. These groups helped the Einsatzgruppen and other killing units to quickly
identify Jews. . . The Germans relied increasingly on the Arājs Kommando and similar groups to perform massacres
of Jews.” Also see Browning, Christopher; Matthäus, Jürgen (2004). The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution
of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939 – March 1942. Comprehensive History of the Holocaust. (Lincoln: University
of Nebraska Press); Haberer, Erich (2001). "Intention and Feasibility: Reflections on Collaboration and the Final
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Only scattered rough estimates are available on population numbers for other years. The
Russian census of 1897 might come closest to actual numbers although they might be off if the
census counted individuals according to where they were legally registered, even though the
individuals may have moved and even left their initial registration site for America.
With these reservations and contrasting numbers in mind, the following incomplete list
indicates that Vishtinetz itself was a lightly populated village that grew from around 1,579
residents in 1795 to an estimated 4,219 in 1897. The high point of Jewish residents was around
1871-72 (just before an assumed larger exodus of emigrants to America) with 1,590 Jews.
Jewish families comprised a fairly large minority of the local population.
Emigration and perhaps other reasons help explain the sight drop twenty-five years later to
1,260.
Given the high fertility rates among Jewish families (as among my own ancestors), the number
of Jewish residents would have been expected to have significantly increases, not significantly
decreased. The decrease, it is assumed, was due to emigration.
Jewish emigration continued in the 1920s and before the start of WW II, with the very likely
incorrect report of only 22 Jews by 1937. Approximately 250 (or 222) Jews were in Vishtinetz
when the Einsatzgruppen murdered the entire Jewish population (possibly minus two) in 1941.
Religion and Cosmopolitanism: The Jews in Vishtinetz, as in other Litvak settlements, were
influenced by western non-religious thinking. Based on Jacob Raisin’s The Haskalah Movement
in Russia, one could go “fifty miles in nearly any direction from Shavli [another settlement] and
one finds the home or birth place of a maskil, an enlightener for Russian Jewry.” In this area
northeast of Vishtinetz, Jews struggled intensively for their intellectual and civil emancipation, a
movement accelerated by economic development facilitated by the new railroad network.
In addition to Yiddish, it is often assumed that most Jewish males were literate in Hebrew, a
result of their religious education. According to Sachar, “Like synagogue attendance, education
was universal. It was also implacably religious.”57
Vishtinetz had up to two synagogues, a larger and a smaller one. It is unclear whether there
were state-supported schools, but calls were made as early as 1876 for a Yiddish school
(unlinked to the heder, a private primary school?). Landenberg reports an April 1876 appeal in
ha-Maggid for “Who Teaches Wisdom? The inhabitants of our city Vishtinetz request a teacher
to conduct our sons in the fountains of knowledge and science, to teach them writing and
Solution". East European Jewish Affairs 31 (2): 64–8. No information is available on whether the German-speakers
formerly living with their Jewish neighbors were forcefully evicted from the village at the end of the war.
57
Sachar, A History of the Jews, 176.
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Hebrew, German and Russian . . . M. Linde, in Wystiten, … Suwalki Gubernia.” (Note the
mention of Suwalki, the focus of a later section. My grandfather left the village a year or so
later.)
Historical Population Estimates for Vishtinetz
YEAR
TOTAL
1795
1579
1821
2194
SOURCE
August Carl von Holsche, Geographie und Statistik von West-, SŸd- und Neu-Ostpreu§en, v.
1 (Berlin: Friedrich Maurer, 1800), p. 436.
1028
Dr. Ruth Leiserowitz
A list of 1871-72 subscribers to the Hebrew newspaper HaMagid in 1871 and 1872.
Jeffrey Maynard estimated that the average size family had five members, giving
1590 Vishtinetz a population of 1590 Jews. See his “HaMagid Persian Famine Donation
Lists Donors from Lithuania, 1871-1872” online
at http://www.jewishgen.org/databases/lithuania/magid72.htm.
1871-72
1897
JEWS
4219
1260
David L. Langenberg’s Toward a Yizkor Book for Vishtinetz (Wisztyniec).
1900
799
JewishGen Communities Database
1921
222-250
1937
22
The Black Book of Localities Whose Jewish Population Was Exterminated by the Nazis (Vad
Vashem, 1965)
1941
250
Einsatzgruppen murdered the entire Jewish population of 222 (not 22) in a ravine East of
town. Two sources give earlier dates: July 14, 1941 and September 9, 1941. (See Yahrzheit
Dates on JewishGen.)
According to the Schoenburgs’ Lithuanian Jewish Communities, there were only about 40
Jewish families (“about 250 people”) in Vishtinetz in 1921.
There were certainly local Jews with a wide intellectual orientation. And the relatively high
subscriptions to ha-Maggid suggest that the Vishtinetz Jews included many literate families
with modern cosmopolitan views.58
58
“David Gordon and E. L. Silbermann were forerunners of Jewish nationalism in the Central and Eastern Europe of
the 1850s, via the weekly publication of their Hebrew newspaper, Ha-Maggid published in Lyck, East Prussia. Not
merely publicizing, but addressing, the Jewish problems of their times, the two were among the pioneers of the
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Robert E Mitchell
In the early 1800s northern Lithuania in general was already in the forefront of Jewish
modernism, the German Haskalah. The first Hebrew journal in Lithuania, Pirhe tsafon,
appeared in Vilna in 1841 promoting the program of Haskalah. “Between that time and World
War I, 86 Jewish periodicals (20 in Hebrew) were published in Lithuania,” including daily
newspapers. “59 According to the YIVO Encyclopedia, “the central Lithuanian districts (Vilna,
Kovno, Grodno, and Suwalki) evolved by the end of the nineteenth century into centers of
Jewish secular culture and education and became the seedbeds of the Russian Jewish
nationalist and socialist movements.” That, in addition to the influence of German culture in
adjacent East Prussia, helped create a worldly intellectual outlook different from what is
painted for traditional Jewish shtetlekh.
The collation of information from these various sources provides a cut-and-paste imagined
world in which my ancestors lived and left, a much wider world than an isolated inwardly
looking traditional village. This community was not a distant cultural and economic island but
existed within a larger geographical, political, cultural and linguistic context that included East
Prussia, Congress Poland, Suwalki within Poland, the Russian Pale, and windows farther to the
west.
new Jewish press (serving Hebrew, Yiddish, and Russian readerships), which appeared in the late 1850s and early
1860s, and soon became central to the Jewish communities of both Eastern Europe and Palestine. Throughout its
reign (1856-1886), Ha-Maggid was the most important Hebrew periodical worldwide. … Although their paper's
emphasis on internal community matters caused them to view world events through a Jewish prism, the editors'
high degree of familiarity with and sensitivity to the socio-political and spiritual problems of the Jews in Eastern
and Central Europe enabled them to reexamine the primary assumptions of traditional Jewish society. Rejecting
the separation of traditional Jewish culture from the evolving realities of European society, the two put forth a
vision of Jewish modernization, treating two sets of issues: tradition versus Haskalah and the Jews' emancipation
versus their national revival. Although other Jewish leaders sought to develop models in which both goals in each
respective set could be realized, Gordon (and to a certain extent Silbermann) was the most influential. … HaMaggid's self-proclaimed raison d'être was to strengthen world Jewish solidarity through the medium of the
Hebrew language.” Yosef Salmon, “David Gordon and Ha-Maggid: Changing Attitudes Toward Jewish Nationalism,
1860-1882,” Modern Judaism (17:2m 1997) available online at
http://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals/modern_judaism/v017/17.2salmon.html.
Kuznets, Perspectives in American History 1967, reported that the Northwestern region of the Pale (which includes
Suwalk) “was characterized by more advanced learning and a more rationalist movement in religion, in contrast to
the greater role of pietistic and Hassidic movement in the South and in Poland.” In 1868 Ha-Maggid “published its
article emphatically endorsing settlement in America,” a vote for westernization. The Jewish press included articles
about the increasing number of families leaving for America. Berk, op. cit., pp. 28, 146. Aaron Copland’s mother,
Sarah Mittenthal, came from Vishtinetz. His father Harris Kaplan was from Shavli. See Howard Pollack, Aaron
Copland: The Life and Work of an Uncommon Man (University of Illinois Press, 2000).
59
See the YIVO Encyclopedia online entry for Lithuania as well as the entry on Hebrew journals at
http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Literary_Journals/Hebrew_Literary_Journals
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Robert E Mitchell
Inter-Group Relations: The living conditions of Vištytis Jews and their relations with non-Jews
within this larger arena is unclear (unknown). Jews seem to have been given a specific identity
by their village neighbors. For example, some decades after my grandfather emigrated, Jacob
Hyam Rubenstein reported that in Vishtinetz “I constantly heard references to Jews as distinct
from ‘Goyem,’ the literal meaning of which in Hebrew is ‘people’ and was applied to all nonJews. I sensed this difference in my inability to understand the speech of most of the people
who came to our house for business purposes. This applied even to Germans.”
Rubenstein’s recall, of course, might have been as much a result of his own culture rather than
of how non-Jews treated him, for he also wrote that “I sense it in the prayers and blessing
which I was taught to recite.”60 Moreover as noted earlier, although he wrote that there “was
little, if any fraternization between the boys of the five [yes, five] ethnic groups that made up
the population of the town,” this young teenager recalled years later that when he did visit
houses of non-Jews, “I was always well received.” But the exchanges were with Germanspeaking families because “We could speak their language.”61
The German-speaking boys would also visit their Jewish neighbors on Christmas Eve, a
Christian, not a Jewish holiday (except in our contemporary America!).62 Rubenstein also
recalled that “When I lived in Wishtinetz … [The] older people still spoke Yiddish, but the
younger ones spoke German only.” (p. 71) That is, some Jews were becoming or already were
Psuedo-Prussians.63
German language-capabilities would have been important for Vishtinetz-based Jewish
craftsmen and traders who moved or traveled to East Prussia to serve potential customers, let
alone the German-speaking residents of Vištytis itself.64 This may be an additional reason why
60
Jacob Rubenstein’s memoir in Oppenheim, pp 79-80
An enlargement of the village in a larger 1897 map of the country identifies two major east-west streets parallel
to the lake front along with perhaps four roads that cut across both these two parallel streets. And there are up to
six other cross-cutting roads. Both sides of the two parallel streets have buildings on each side, north and south.
Since the sizes of the buildings are unknown, it is not possible to estimate the number of housing or family units
along these streets or the smaller number of units in the surrounding area. “Perhaps” there were 100 possible
housing units with few units outside these major roads. The map (that needs to be enlarged to see Vishtinetz is at
http://lithuanianmaps.com/images/1897_KdwR_L24_Wisztyniec_KdRR_78_Mehlkehmen_100K.jpg
62
Ibid., 47-48. However Wilno (Vilnius) born Tadeusz Konwicki’s conceptual novel Bohin Manor set in an area
similar to Vishtinetz around 1873 reports a Polish (not German) grandmother’s anti-Semitic prejudice.
63
He also gave information on several other towns - - for example, there were Jewish communities centered about
synagogues in Sydkunen, Staluponen, Gumbinen, Tilset and Insterburg. Again, Vishtinetz was not the only Jewish
community in the area.
64
That my ancestors may have had deeper German connections is suggested by a personal postcard that I found in
my father’s effects. It was sent on March 31, 1916 and postmarked April 1 from Podgorz (Poland) today a district of
Krakow. The Shtetl Seeker lists five towns with this name. The largest is associated with Krakow, which is likely to
have had its own postmark. An expert from the German Historical Institute kindly translated this card. It gave
some puzzling results: This postcard was sent from one brother to another. On March 31, 1916, Willy Oesterle, a
foot soldier on the Eastern Front wrote to his brother Hugo (Jugo) Oesterle in the Field Artillery Division 233
(stationed at the artillery range) in the Western Front that Jana (their sister?) will take a (domestic?) job with Dr.
61
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Robert E Mitchell
apparently Yiddish-speaking families from Vishtinetz (and the larger Suwalki area) claimed on
their ship manifests and early American censuses that they came from Germany and spoke
German as their home language as did my grandfather and some of his siblings.
Still, there were apparently several ways that the local populations differed from one another.
For example, in his The Awakening of a Nation, written in 1861, E. H. Peterson observed that
the Jews in Lithuania more generally:
“don’t dress like the rest of the people. Although they have been forbidden to use their
own manner of dressing, they still manage to look different from the other people in the
way they dress. They have neither friends nor enemies nor interests in common with
the people …
one is struck by the ugly and comfortless mode of living of these people … [but] the
peculiarity of their garments has disappeared, [as] the [Russian] government has
forbidden the Jews to use any outward signs of their race. . . . One at once recognizes a
Jew by his dress in spite of the fact that it doesn’t differ greatly from the ordinary
European…
[However] The Jewish hold on Lithuania was so powerful that business life had to be
arranged according to the Jewish calendar.”65
It is possible and probably likely that many communities became more like one another over
time. Following the construction of railroads as early as 1860 slightly north of Vishtinetz in
1865, the cross-border trade on which Vishtinetz depended declined along with its population.
(Earlier-referenced population figures are unclear about these changes.) That is, the fortunes of
the residents from all language groups depended on the community’s economic base, and this
base depended on its larger economic and transportation network.
Arzt. The letter also states that the apartment of Golasveroski (not an obvious German name) will be vacant from
June 1 through July. A message to the JewishGen Digest on April 6, 1999 refers to a Goliembiewski family (yes, not
the same English spelling) as coming from Kalingrad (East Prussia) or from Poznan in Poland. Of course it is possible
that some of my paternal ancestors came from (were pushed out of) what today is Germany and that the family
maintained some contacts with their old homes. The name Oesterle seems to be associated with southern
Germany (Schwaken Bavaria, the home of both Albert Einstein and Berthold Brecht). My great grandfather might
have thought that the Vishtinetz area close to East Prussia offered him more economic opportunities than what
existed in Germany with its more numerous skilled wood-workers. That is, he might have moved East rather than
West whereas his children moved West. I have one of three of my father’s matched German beer mugs, suggesting
a German connection. Because my father was a stamp collector, this particular postcard could have been part of
his collection.
65
Oppenheim, 225-26. As noted earlier, much of the country was no doubt still recovering from Napoleon’s
disastrous 1812 invasion of Russia.
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“By 1871, a sizeable part of the town had emigrated to Germany, including Königsberg and to
the United States.” 66 From the Moser-Silverman listing, it seems that all, or nearly all, of these
emigrants traveling from Vishtinetz via the indirect route from Hamburg were Jews.
Moves Closer to Home: It was not just long-distance moves and contacts, for Vishtinetz Jews
had extensive contacts with other Jews somewhat closer to their village. A list titled “Suwalki
Gubernia Families - Marriages and Immigration” includes residents who came from Vištytis.67 Another
source reported that “the frequency of inter-town marriages was quite high.”68 David
Langenberg’s Notes on Vishtinetz Families reports a number of this village’s residents who
found their spouses in Wizajny, a village a short distance south on the same Lake Vištytis. 69 (See
Section 4 below for more information on marriage patterns.
Both Jews and non-Jews were moving into and out of Vishtinetz. Some out-migrants probably
moved several times. For example, in his Toward a Yizkor Book for Vishtinetz, Langenberg
reports that Wolf Reinschreiber first moved about twenty miles away to Darkehmen, East
Prussia before ending up in Chicago.
Mobility could involve multiple steps with fairly stable residences along the way. Unfortunately,
it appears that official Russian population and other records (e.g., “revision lists”) were not
helpful in locating individuals at any specific time because people, it seems, were assigned to
the place where they were first registered.70
Some emigrants were replaced by new arrivals from outside the village, including from nearby
settlements as suggested by their family names. Langenberg provides a number of these
66
Langenberg, op.cit. p. 25-26.
http://www.geni.com/projects/Suwalki-Gubernia-Families-Marriages-and-Immigration/9609
68
From the website for The Suwalk-Lomza Interest Group for Jewish Genealogists.
69
Some emigrants to America abandoned their wives and families back home, less of a danger for removals within
the same general area. Langenberg translated several letters sent to ha-Magid by abandoned wives in search of
their husbands in America. David Langenberg Notes on Vishtinetz Families. These Notes also link residents of
Vishtinetz not only to Wizajny but also to Königsberg, East Prussia more generally, Suwalki, and elsewhere again
suggesting that many Jewish families from Vishtinetz had fairly wide geographical contacts.
70
“All Jews (with the exception of certain guilds and classes) were required to register officially so they could be
counted for the revizki skazki (revision list) and other census-type lists. In most cases, even though a family moved
to another town, their town of registration remained the one in which they had initially registered. . . . Vital
records – birth marriage, death and even divorce records - - were recorded in the town in which the actual event
took place.” Judy Baston, “The All Lithuania Database and Litvaksig: 2004.” Vital record-keeping became
mandatory of Jews in 1835. Ten censuses (revision lists) were taken in the Russian Empire for tax purposes from
the mid-18th to the mid-19th centuries. Russia annexed most of present-day Lithuania in 1795. The borders of
Poland, Lithuania, Austria and Prussia were re-drawn a number of times over the centuries. These changes were
accompanied by changes in the record-keeping language. The records themselves are often found in different
regional archives. Ada Greenblatt wrote that “population statistics quoted from ‘secondary sources’ should not be
taken for granted without first comparing them to Lithuanian archival documents.” And “To the best of my
knowledge, only the 1897 General Russian Census contained both Jews and non-Jews” and only a limited number
of lists for Lithuanian shtetls survived. Litvaksig digest: August 8, 2001.
67
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Robert E Mitchell
families including Gumbiner/Gumbinsky, a surname stemming from Gumbinnen, East Prussia
(there was movement from west to east as well as east to west); the surname Marwilsky stems
from Marywill, a hamlet south of Vishtinetz, whereas the surname Povishtaytski is from the
small nearby village of Powisztajce. At least one family took their surname
Vishtinetzer/Vistinetski from the Yiddish term for the village itself.
It is possible, as earlier noted, that some of my great uncles and aunts were born in nearby
villages where my great grandfather may have temporarily worked. There is a small (only 49
inhabitants in 2001) Lithuanian village called Detomischki that, like Vishtinetz, is also in what
today is Marijampolė County not too distant away for a Vishtinetz-based skilled wood carver to
have spent time working.71 Another village (or the same one) with the name of Dotomai, some
distance from Vishtinetz, might also have provided the prefix to the surname Detomischkofsky
as reported by two of my grandfather’s siblings.72 And, in fact, worker mobility as well as trade
71
See the village on the far left of the map that includes the larger settlement of Kalwarja on the far right at
http://www.bilder-hochladen.net/files/big/5yka-wp-feab.jpg The village, or at least its name, also appears in the
1897 “Karte des westlichen Russlands” “the Reymann maps - a collection of maps published by the German
cartographers during the period 1806 -1908 at a scale of 1:200 000 maps” available in the Geography and Map
Division of the Library of Congress. The map that includes Vishtinetz (Wisztyniec) can be viewed at
http://lithuanianmaps.com/images/1897_KdwR_L24_Wisztyniec_KdRR_78_Mehlkehmen_100K.jpg An
enlargement of this map shows the building and street layout of the village just before the turn of the century.
72
Vytas Mickevicius emailed me that he found perhaps the same small settlement spelled
"Detomiszki" in topographic map of 1916. It isn't a village-settlement, it has houses in the fields spreaded
over larger area. There are two labels "Dotamai" on the detailed Russian millitary map of 1984 (it is
"secret" :)) at that area - to allocate other houses that are at greater distance from a first label. Village of
Dotamai still can be found in a Lithuanian 1:50000 map published in 2001.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Vištytis/message/126?threaded=1. Another response in the same source
reported “Just some toponymics and lingvistic data: Also a dozen km from Vištytis (and from Vizainis, too
:)) are located: village Dotamai, lake Dotamai and stream...” The online aerial map gives the name but
does not show any current buildings. See http://loc.li/w/56066374 and
http://www.alltravels.com/lithuania/marijampole/dotamai/photos-1108090. The sky at the end of names
is a Slavic surname suffix called a toponym. What precedes the sky is a geographical location, and
typically denotes the place from which a person came. One correspondent to JewishGen wrote that her
“understanding is that people would begin using/choose such a toponym after they had left that place to
denote where they come from. If people chose a toponym corresponding to the place they currently live
in, too many people in the same town would have the same name.”
Also a dozen km from Vištytis (and from Vizainis, too :)) are located: village Dotamai, lake Dotamai and
stream Dotamas. [It was eight miles southeast of Vištytis.]
A person living in Dotamai in lithuanian language can be called "dotamiszkis" (a polish version of spelling),
and many polish surnames are ending with "-owski". Not sure, but it seems that "-ovski" two or more
centuries ago could have meaning of "belonging
to". So, surname "Dotamiszkowski" could be interpreted as "a man belonging to Dotamiszkis". 72
Name of a village Dotamai most probably came from the lake's (or river's) name. But that name sounds a
bit strange for lithuanian ears (no more known occasions in Lithuania), it can be a relict of our lithuanian
cousins Sudovians (jotvingians) language.
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Robert E Mitchell
relations and marriage patterns within the larger vicinity of Vishtinetz help explain the
geographical distribution of rare family names. Robert Friedman, for example, reported that
the Polish village of Wizajny on the southern shore of Lake Vištytis had one entry for
Dotomiszkowska and one for Dotomiszkowski (female and male). Friedman’s useful source has
been updated to include variations of these Polish names: Datnyszkowska and
Datnyszkowska.73 Section 4 below provides further insights into the sources of the distribution
of Jewish families.
The distribution of names within a relatively small area of this area suggests that Jews were
moving within the Pale, not just westward. According to Diner, “Although some historical
accounts would have us believe that Russia was virtually emptied out of all its Jews, in truth
approximately two-thirds of the Jewish population stayed in Russia” in part, perhaps, in
response to “Russian rabbis who warned that in the United States Jews would lose their
Jewishness,” as happened among many of my own ancestors.74
Emigration numbers for Vishtinetz Jews: Although statistics are not available on the total
number of Vishtinetz residents who left their village, it is possible to extract American numbers
for most years between 1855 and June, 1873 from the Hamburg Passengers from the Kingdom
of Poland and the Russian Empire, Indirect Passage to New York: 1855-June, 1873.75 The
compilers of this valuable resource presented their list of travelers in a spreadsheet format
from which I extracted 201 names from Wistiten and its possible spelling variations (Annex B).
I no doubt may have mistakenly included several (but very few) immigrants not from Vishtinetz,
but it is more likely that I failed to identify others. (German officials recorded family and
personal names, as well as the other reported information. Variations in Polish, Russian and
German pronunciations help explain spelling differences.)
There were no lists for 1868 or for the first three months of 1870. And, of course, the list does
not include émigrés who travelled before 1868 or those who did not follow this particular
indirect route. That there were such earlier emigrants is seen in the young mothers who
traveled with their children assumedly to meet their husbands/fathers who arrived in America
earlier.
Also, word "miszkas" (a polish spelling) means "forest" in lithuanian, it is frequently used as one syllable of
surnames. But not in this surname, I think... (That was just speculations, I have no enough knowledge in
linguistics, so take it as a little game :))
73
He found this from the JRI-Poland database http://www2.jewishgen.org/jri-pl/. The updated information
appears at http://data.jewishgen.org/wconnect/wc.dll?jg~jgsys~jripllat2
74
Diner, op. cit., p. 94.
75
By Geraldine Moser & Marlene Silverman (Washington, DC: Landsmen Press, 1997). This particular indirect
passage was, of course, only one of various routes used to travel from Vishtinetz to America.
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Robert E Mitchell
Before 1871, “birthplace and residence” were the basis for assigning home settlement.
Between 1871 and 1873, the reference was to “former residence.” The compilers estimated
“that about 30% of all persons in this index came from Suwalk-Lomza (i.e. either of these two
provinces, though predominantly from Suwalk). The 30% estimate held relatively constant over
the years.”
The Moser-Silverman data base includes 12,503 passengers, 72 percent who were Jewish and
33 percent female. The larger area surrounding Vishtinetz exported more than 3,778 residents,
mostly Jews, between 1855 and 1873. The number was surely much higher.
Indirect arrivals from Vishtinetz (I will use the Yiddish name rather than the variations of the
German Wistiten) came in small numbers until a relatively large surge in 1872. For example
there were nine arrivals (in two separate families plus three solo travelers) in 1855 but only one
arrival the following year. Twenty arrived in 1857 (the eleven-member Potoppe family and the
six-member Burton family). Only a relatively few (around a dozen) hazarded the trip during the
American civil war years but there was an upsurge of 22 arrivals in 1865. (See Annex B)
Only modest numbers arrived until a large uptick in 1872 when the records show 45 followed
by another 23 during the first six months of 1873. Modest numbers of Vishtinetz emigrants via
this particular indirect route continued to arrive.
My own grandfather benefitted from the experiences of many others from Vishtinetz and the
larger Suwalki area who preceded him to America in 1878.
Absent information on David’s own travel, it is not known whether any of his neighbors
accompanied him on his trip.
Ye s at other times there were single individuals traveling solo, but 130 (65 percent) of the
Vishtinetz emigrants during this period on the indirect route were members of families, some
with their numerous children, others just a husband and his wife, while still others with their
young children (at least one couple may have had their child born while on the high seas); and
there were also young unaccompanied children as well as brothers (or cousins with the same
name) travelling together.
There were ships with at least two different families on board suggesting that collective or
shared decisions were made before leaving Vishtinetz.
Emigration was in the Vishtinetz and Suwalki air.
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Robert E Mitchell
My great grandfather Mordechai was among the early pioneers (arriving in 1865) but by 1878
when my own grandfather left home the entire emigration process was probably well known
and shared among neighbors - - although the travel experience would still have been
challenging if not traumatic for many.
Another source reported that Jews coming to America later between (it seems) 1900 and 1924
arrived as families. These immigrants “included a high proportion of women and children.
Women accounted for 44 percent of Jewish migrants, and children under the age of fourteen
accounted for 25 percent.” In contrast women accounted for only 23 percent of the Italian
immigrants and 33 percent who came from Poland and Latvia.
Moreover, a lower proportion of Jewish immigrants returned home. Only 5.2 percent of the
Jews who arrived between 1908 and 1924 returned whereas it was 33.6 percent for all arrivals
during the same period. (More on this later.) Finally, a high proportion of the Jewish arrivals
claimed they were craftsmen (65 percent), suggesting that the poorest of the poor who lacked
marketable skills were the least likely to leave home for America.76
America and the west were the new permanent homes for Jews. But they did not entirely cut
themselves off from the old world that was not friendly to Jews, for they created and supported
services to help other Jews to join them in the golden medina, especially America. That is, they
did not forget they were Jews and why they left.
As in my ancestors’ experience, information and assistance networks seem to have contributed
important services. Hasia Diner captures my own ancestor’s pattern: “Typically a son left for
America, serving as the family pioneer. He worked there, almost invariably in the occupations
of his forebears, peddling77 and petty business. After saving money he sent passage money for
one or more of his brothers to join him in America, share in his enterprise, and set aside enough
money to bring over more siblings, all the while sending money back to aging parents and
siblings not participating in the American migration.”78
76
Alroey, Bread to Eat, pp 10-11. Saul Stampfer, according to Alroey, also showed “that the stream of emigrants
from places where pogroms occurred was smaller than from places where the Jews suffered economic hardship
but no pogroms.” p. 38. Although the northwest (Lithuania) was spared the widespread pogroms farther to the
south, Jews in Warsaw and other large cities suffered home burnings and other attacks in 1881-82. Sachar, op. cit.,
p. 199.
77
German Jews also often became peddlers on their arrival in America in the 1840s and 1850s. Berk, op. cit., p.
172.
78
Hasia R Diner, The Jews of the United States 1654 to 2000 (University of California Press, 2004), p. 84.
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Robert E Mitchell
The letters that Alroey included in his study indicate that “the mass Jewish emigration from
Eastern Europe was not a flight from imperial Russia or the result of panic. It was a reasoned
process, beginning with a limited number of pioneer emigrants in the 1870s.”
There were only an estimated 719 Jewish immigrants from the Russian Empire in 1878.79 It is
with regret that I have no letters that my venturesome ancestors sent before and soon after
they set out for new lives in America. However, the 719 number suggests that my earlierarriving great grandparents Mordechai and Rose Selinsky were pioneers.
Travel routes and carriers: Émigrés changed their travel routes and arrangements over time in
responses to innovations by shipping companies and their vessels.80 According to Lloyd Garnter,
“The journey from a Continental Port to America via England cost less than did the direct route
for those emigrants who circumvented the high, fixed prices of the North Atlantic Shipping Ring
by purchasing trans-Atlantic tickets in England under an assumed name.”81 For a description of
the sea journey itself, see Pamela Nadell’s “The Journey to America by Steam: The Jews of
Eastern Europe in Transition.”82
At one time, emigrants from Vishtinetz would have left via Libau, but because the train service
to Libau was “exceptionally unreliable and expensive,” migrants might have traveled by foot or
cart to get to the port. (Libau was connected to the Russian rail network in 1871 but it was not
until the early 1900s that the line was extended into the Pale.) Ships sailed from Libau when
and as needed. They seemed to have connected the traveler to America via Hull.
Also according to research by Nick Evans,83 the Libau path seems to apply primarily to the
period 1891 to 1914, well after my grandfather David and some of his siblings arrived in
America. Still, around three million Jews passed through the ports of Hull and Grimsby
between 1880 and 1914. Because the train service to Libau was, as noted above, “exceptionally
unreliable and expensive,” some migrants might have traveled by foot or cart to get to the port.
I suspect (but don’t know) that many of my own ancestors would have needed a passport and
visa from Vishtinetz to the next largest municipality on their way, in Bella’s case, to their
embarkation port to England or America. And somewhere along their way to America they
79
Alroey, pp 32 and 211.
Mary Antin’s popular The Promised Land and From Plotzk to Boston described her experiences during her
family’s emigration in 1894 when she was an inquisitive 12 year-old. These books can be read online.
81
“Jewish Migrants en Route from Europe to North America: Traditions and Reality,” Jewish History, Fall, 1986
82
American Jewish History, December 1981
83
As reported by Saul Issroff in the January 11, 2000 JewishGen newsletter
80
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Robert E Mitchell
would also need an additional visa. I have not found any of these documents - - and they may
not exist. She arrived alone with $15 and was to be met by her brother.
Other sources reported that
The immigration from Lithuania and Latvia was by and large highly organised, mainly
through the Port of Libau. [Apparently after my grandfather emigrated.] A system of
shipping agents operated throughout the Pale. Knie and Co., Spiro, etc, to name two of
them. Tickets could be purchased in NY, London, Paris, Johannesburg or in many of the
outlying shtetls. This facility was widely advertised in the Yiddish press in the states and
elsewhere.
The ticket would cover the first leg to the UK, often Grimsby or Hull or London, include
assistance and lodging in the Jews Temporary Shelter in Leman Street in the East End, or
in other shelters in Hull and other places, and then the next leg of the journey. If to
South Africa, this was on a Union or Castle Line, if to the USA often on Cunard or other
lines.”84
The Board of Guardians of the Poor Jew’s Temporary Shelter in the east-end of London
reported that the Board itself sent “a good many families away to America.”85
Ships sailed from Libau when and as needed. They seemed to have connected the traveler to
America via Hull.
We do not know the routes the different Mitchell siblings took from their homes to America,
except for the cross-Atlantic portion of Bella Mitchell Bob’s trip. She took the Barbarrosa from
Bremen to New York City.
Life in America freed immigrants from the shackles of the old world - - although not entirely.
My great grandfather Mordechai was a member of a very orthodox synagogue. But he also
witnessed his son-in-law and grandchildren wandering from if not rejecting old-world Judaism.
84
Saul Issroff message to JewishGen, March 2, 2000.
Sworn testimony by Hermann Landau taken before the Select Committee on Emigration and Immigration
(foreigners): House of Commons, Exhibit A.I. Extract, page 117
85
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“Even today,” according to a leading Jewish genealogist in Michigan, “a horrible custom is
practiced by the orthodox and some conservatives that of sitting ‘Shiva’ or mourning for a child
who marries out of the faith. They are considered dead.” Max Selinsky did not have to endure
this further slipping of his ancestors’ culture, as my mixed-background parents were married in
1923 after his own death in 1920.
My grandfather David and his siblings were not the first to emigrate to Detroit. David
Langenberg reports that the brothers Nathan, Jacob and Simon Marwil(sky) “settled in Detroit,
about 1867-68,” ten years before David’s arrival. If the information that my grandfather
provided on Mordechai Selinsky’s death certificate was accurate, then the Selinsky family from
Vištytis settled in Detroit even earlier (that is, in 1865). My grandfather David arrived in Grand
Rapids in around 1878,86 the same year when only 360 “Russian Hebrews” arrived in the Port of
New York.87 And as noted earlier, many Vishtinetz emigrants settled in smaller Midwestern and
southern towns such as Peoria and Chillicothe Illinois, Dubuque and Des Moines Iowa, Utica
New York, and Waxahachie and Hillsboro Texas.88
86
I recall David telling me in 1945 or 1946 (when I was 15 or 16) during my visit to him in California that he and his
siblings left their home country one at a time for the U.S. My cousin Thelma Fields repeated an earlier story I had
heard (source forgotten) that David traveled via Manchester, England to Grand Rapids, Michigan to become an
apprentice carpenter. My contacts in around 1996 with the Grand Rapids Congregation Emanuel did not lead to
lists of early members. I have not been able to search the ‘Miscellaneous correspondence and records, 1873-1954;
history of the congregation; biographical sketches of members; and cemetery warden's reports to the
congregation, 1907-1940” available in the Marcus Archives of the American Jewish Archives as described at
http://americanjewisharchives.org/catalog/Record/vtls000030501/Description#tabnav. Based on my telephone
discussion with a great grandchild of Joseph Mitchell, my grandfather’s brother with whom he probably lived in
Grand Rapids, it is possible that he became a Christian (a Methodist as perhaps his second [?] wife was). My own
father married a Christian, my mother, and my father’s younger brother Milton married a Mormon. I believe that
all the other married siblings had Jewish partners. To the best of my memory, my father only set foot in a church
once: during my confirmation as an Episcopalian. I can still recall his stoic apparently unapproving look.
87
Ira A. Glazier, ed., Migration from the Russian Empire, List of Passengers Arriving at the Port of New York, Vol. 1,
January 1875-September 1882 (Genealogical Publishing C.), Table 1.
88
My grandfather’s sister Sarah Goldenson lived in Des Moines where, according to her obituary, she was a
member of the Des Moines’ Children of Israel Synagogue. Other evidence suggests that she was the only one of
the eight or so siblings who was religious - - perhaps because of her husband. See pages 77-78 for a summary of
basic information on all the American children of my great grandparents. Suffice it to note that Sarah’s 1957
newspaper obituary reported that her brothers Harry (really Irvin) Mitchell of Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, and Louis
Mitchell of Philadelphia survived her. Knowing this suggests that the siblings had at least some communications
with one another. I have a photo of my grandfather with his brother Louis. Robert Jacobson, a grandson of Henry,
indicated a familiarity with Louis (Henry from New York City and Louis from Philadelphia), suggesting that at least
some of the siblings kept in touch with one another.
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Robert E Mitchell
That my grandfather, the son of a wood sculptor and carpenter, first settled in the furnitureindustry leader Grand Rapids suggests that he had excellent information before his departure
from home.
The first Jew to reside permanently in the town was 19-year-old Julius Houseman. He arrived in
Grand Rapids in 1852. There were five Jewish families in Grand Rapids when 28-year-old Jacob
Levy visited in 1857.89 (Remember that my grandfather David’s mother’s maiden name may
have been Levy or Levi, a common name among Jews from different country origins. Still it is
possible that my grandfather had an old-world connection as an extra draw for moving to this
city.)
Grand Rapids’ Temple Emanuel was founded in 1857. Today the Temple describes itself as the
fifth oldest Reform congregation in the United States. It was part of my grandfather’s initial
exposure to American life. Unfortunately this German-based synagogue does not have lists of
its membership for the 1870s. (The Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives
has early lists of the synagogue’s officers.) Other records indicate that this synagogue had 17
members in 1871, 25 in 1876, and 40 in 1878 when my grandfather arrived. It remained flat
until dropping to 35 in 1884 and a further decline to 30 in 1886. These are numbers for families,
for in1884 the 35 members had 50 children enrolled in the synagogue’s school. And an 1894
source reported 300 “Hebrews” in the city with 500 attending Temple Emanuel. It appears that
although both of my great uncle Joseph’s marriages were officiated by a rabbi, other evidence
suggests that he might have become a Christian, perhaps a Methodist. One of his descendants
whom I interviewed on the telephone was not aware that she had a Jewish heritage. Irvin’s son
whom I also interviewed had the same lack of knowledge. And as elsewhere noted, a cousin in
Flint as well as my two brothers and I were not aware of our respective fathers’ backgrounds.
Joseph probably was not unique, for my own grandparents also had a rabbi officiate at their
wedding, and both grandparents were buried in a Los Angeles Jewish cemetery. In between
these two events, they adjusted to their larger social and cultural environment. According to
the Detroit city directories and decennial censuses, my grandparents moved several times, each
move to a block with relatively fewer Jewish families (based on the census information
reporting place of birth, parents and languages). But these moves did not mean that old social
contacts were lost. For example when I only occasionally visited my father’s law office in the
Penobscot Building and wended our way home, he would stop to visit some of his clients most
of whom owned Jewish delicatessens and bars. There was much warm embracing and
89
Garret Ellison, “Historical society sponsors talk on history of Jews in Grand Rapids,”
http://www.mlive.com/living/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2011/11/jewish_historical_society_spon.html
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Robert E Mitchell
welcoming among long-established friends. (In fact, I thought that these visits was the meaning
of practicing at the bar, although admittedly few of these men needed to practice.)
Information is not available on how the earlier-arrived German Jews in America responded to
the pseudo-Jews living east of the Prussian border, but the German-American Jewish leadership
is reported to have been appalled by East European Jewish immigrants. They were branded as
“unemployable” and “uncivilized,” “divorced from all forms of modern civilization.” “It was
their outlandish garb and Yiddish patois, at a time when American Jewry itself was confronting
the shock of gentile discrimination.”90
It would take a great deal more research to discover the reasons why Jewish emigrants moved
to their eventual new homes in communities with and without established Jewish populations.
But move they did and in ever growing numbers. And in so moving, they were able to inform
and help those who followed them.91
The Left-Behind: Vishtinetz Jews were on the move. Those who stayed were the left-behinds,
although they were certainly aware of the opportunities and challenges available elsewhere.
It is likely that some non-leavers benefitted from this out-migration. Remittances would be
sent from America, and some stay-behinders benefitted from reduced economic competition
from those who departed with their talents.
Still, the larger area lost important human resources: During the post-WW I recovery, according
to Laima Tautvaisaite, from 35 to 43 percent of physicians in Lithuania between the two world
wars were Jews as were 50 percent of the lawyers. Moreover Lithuanian Jews owned 77
percent of the country’s commerce and over 20 percent of its industry.92 Jewish emigration
deprived the old Congress Poland, Lithuania and the Pale of valuable human resources that
would have added to the wealth of the losing countries. Instead, these emigrants benefitted
America and other receiving nations.
Because little information exists on Vishtinetz’s residents and their names during the migration
years, it is not possible to identify which families left and which stayed, as well as the character
of the losses or gains to the community. What little information that is available - - for example
the names on the 1837-1866 synagogue lists reported by Bert Oppenheim - - suggests that
there were relatively few emigrants were prominent members of the local Jewish religious
community. (Some family members on the synagogue lists did, however, emigrate.)
90
Sachar, op. cit., p. 210.
Again, I will have a separate chapter reporting the limited information I was able to discover on the lives of my
grandfather’s siblings in America.
92
Laima Tautvaisaite’s talk titled “Lithuanian Archives in the Past and at Present” delivered to the 2001 IAJGS
conference in London.
91
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It is possible that few emigrants left residue kinsmen back in Vishtinetz. That may explain why
their names are not found in the limited available rosters. Few if any of the 201 migrant names
listed in the Moser-Silverman compilation match the names that Jacob Rubenstein mentioned
in his recollection of Vishtinetz life at the turn of the century.
In Summary: Vishtinetz Jews were part of a cascading outward flow. Even by 1871, according to
Langenberg, “a sizeable part of the town [of Vishtinetz] had emigrated to Germany, including
Königsberg and the United States.” But note that there were many economically comfortable
urban Jews living in the larger area and may have not moved elsewhere: 0.45 percent of the
upper class were Jews; 68.47 percent of the merchants and honorary citizens were also Jews as
were 69.76 percent of the middle class (bourgeois). Only 1.82 percent of the larger guberniya’s
peasants were Jews. However, although this was a region with relatively comfortable urban
Jews, many still left for America and elsewhere.
2. The role and apparent influence of Vishtinetz’s western neighbor: East Prussia
The village is on the northern tip of Lake Vištytis bordering on present-day Russian Kaliningrad,
the old East Prussia, and its largest city, Königsberg, an early center of Protestant Lutheranism
and home both of the influential German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724 –1804) and around
800 Jews with perhaps two synagogues by the end of the 1800s. A little less than 14,000 Jews
lived in the larger East Prussia at this time. According to David L. Langenberg’s Toward a Yizkor
Book for Vishtinetz (Wisztyniec), “Vishtinetz is the single most often mentioned East European
town” on the cemetery headstones in Königsberg going back to as early as 1807.
Background: Following “a plague in 1709-1711 the German colonization of Lithuania Minor
started” with a policy of “germanisation.”93 In around 1795 a Prussian army garrison was
established in Vishtinetz.
As a result of the third partition of Poland in 1795, Vishtinetz became part of New East Prussia
and a “royal city.” In that year the “city” became part of the larger Sudovian territory under
Prussian rule suggesting that the Jews in this locality had a long connection with their German-
93
Lithuania Minor, the Cradle of the Written Lithuanian Language
http://pirmojiknyga.mch.mii.lt/Leidiniai/lietkrastas1.en.htm Lithuania Minor seems to include East Prussia to
the west as well as areas farther east and south.
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speaking Protestant Lutheran neighbors as well as Prussian Jews themselves. This was not a
traditional inward-only-looking Fiddler on the Roof shtetl.94
In 1812, the Edict of Emancipation “gave citizenship to the Jews in Prussia and awarded them
freedom of trade, the right to settle and freedom of movement . . . Before the edict, [the]
around 800 Jews . . . tripled by as soon as 1817.”95
However, even earlier in 1807, the area became part of the Napoleonic Duchy of Warsaw and
later, in 1815, the Kingdom of Poland.
Border and political suzerainty changed over time bringing Vishtinetz and its neighboring
settlements under Prussian, Polish, Russian and Lithuanian authorities, languages and
populations. After Russia annexed the area following Napoleon’s defeat, the area came under
Russian rule – as part of Congress Poland.
A customs house was established in Vištytis to facilitate continuing trade with Prussia,96 but in
response to claims that Jews were cross-border smugglers, the Russian authorities
subsequently outlawed Jews from residing within a limited area bordering on East Prussia. It is
unclear how rigorously this prohibition was enforced, for certainly my own ancestors and a
great number of Jews lived in and came from this area.97
By 1829 warehouses, fairs and markets were supporting a growing population that one
estimate put at approximately 2,800 residents.
The village was also a funnel for importing forbidden books from the west through East
Prussia.98 That is, some of the economic fortunes and cultural influences on the Jews of
Vishtinetz were based on the East Prussian (and German) economy and culture.
But as Leiserowitz reported:
“The tangle of relationships between Jews on both sides of the [East Prussian] boarder
has been explored very little till now. There was lively contact and in all cases this was
However, an online list of Lithuanian Shtetls (Yiddish plural: ‫שטעטלעך‬, shtetlekh) includes Vishtinetz.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_shtetls#.C2.A0Lithuania
95
A quotation taken from an article by Dr. Ruth Leiserowitz and reported in the Landsmen (17:3-4, December
2007), 3.
96
There are several sources for this history that include http://www.lietuva.lt/
97
As noted earlier, large numbers of both Jews and non-Jews were forcefully removed from the general area in
the course of WW I as reviewed earlier with regard to the possible fate of my great grandparents.
94
98
In an unverified (without references to sources) table presenting “A Timeline of the History of Vištytis” in the
Yahoo special interest group for Vištytis at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Vištytis/database?method=reportRows&tbl=3. Another source is “History:
Vištytis” that is no longer available at http://www.lithuania.It/IMI/i_en.jsp?nr=Vištytis_sen-istorijos_apzvalga
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foremost due to economic reasons. Among these are the frequent markets in the region
(on both sides of the boarder) and the numerous visits of Jewish businessmen to Tilsit.
As well as this form of cross boarder commerce a broader formulation of the problem of
the economic migration across the border includes-legal immigration as well as
unauthorised visits --and the restrictions of the Prussian administration for them. In
addition smuggling was a commonplace occurrence and should not go without being
mentioned here.”99
Russia did not look kindly on the influence that East Prussia had on Jews and others in its newly
conquered lands. According to Masha Greenbaum’s The Jews of Lithuania,
“… the Russian Empire had encountered difficulties with the inhabitants of the newly
conquered territories, including parts of Lithuania, ever since the First Partition of
Poland and Lithuania in 1772. …
“An afterword to this period of Russian rule pertains to Prussia, Russia’s partner in the
partition, new owner of the Suwalki area of Lithuania and its eastern sector, including
Memel-Klaipeda, Tilsit, and other border towns. In the process of colonizing these
areas, the Prussians introduced a Germanization policy that included the imposition of
German language and culture. Formerly Lithuanian Jewish communities now
incorporated into Prussia were adjoined to the older German Jewish aggregates of
Koenigsberg and Berlin. Prussian law improved their religious, social, and economic
circumstances to a level far superior to that of their brethren under the Russian yoke.
“Since strong links continued to exist between the newly Prussianized areas and the
Lithuanian Jewish localities in the Pale of Settlement, the Prussian-occupied zone
became a corridor though which Enlightenment ideas and the language, literature,
culture and customs of the new communities penetrated the townships of the Pale.”
(pp. 164-65)
That is, the town of Vishtinetz had a diversified political and cultural ancestry.
Many Jews were no doubt heavily influenced by their East Prussian neighbors and the economic
opportunities they provided. However, and as again noted earlier, a railroad line in 1861
between Vilna and Königsberg opened somewhat north of Vishtinetz. As a result, “international
trade [with East Prussia] bypassed Vishtinetz completely.”100 This loss would have increased the
99
See her Jewish Migration from Lithuania to East Prussia (starting 1813) at
http://www.judeninostpreussen.de/front_content.php?idcat=113. The density of settlements to the west of
Vishtinetz in old East Prussia is seen in the map at
http://www.kartenmeister.com/preview/map/images/Suwalki_8.jpgn map
100
David L. Langenberg, Toward a Yizkor Book for Vishinetz (Wisztyniec).
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pressures for outmigration both to East Prussia and elsewhere on the part of Jews and nonJews alike on both sides of the border.
According to the earlier-referenced Jacob Rubenstein, even “During the second half of the 19th
century, many Jews from Wishtinetz and other border towns settled in nearby towns and
villages in West [he means East] Prussia. Most of them [according to Rubenstein] were granted
German citizenship. When I lived in Wishtinetz, there were Jewish communities centered
about synagogues in Sydkunen, Staluponen, Gumbinen, Tilset and Insterburg. The older people
still spoke Yiddish, but the younger ones spoke German only.” (p. 71)
I have not yet found information on Prussian anti-Judaism and/or anti-Semitism, but Jews in
East Prussia seem to have had greater freedom and flexibility than enjoyed by Jews in the
Russian Pale of Settlement and the Kingdom of Poland although the Jews living in the latter, as
noted earlier, enjoyed virtual civil equality, Rownouprawnienie, as of 1862.
Cross-border movement was not particularly bureaucratic or difficult for a good portion of the
1800s. Once in Prussia, the road network facilitated travel by peddlers and others in search of a
living. Moreover, the 1820 Prussian Edict of Emancipation gave citizenship to the Jews in
Prussia and awarded them freedom of trade. Various sources report frequent and easy crossborder movements, although later in the century movement was more restricted.
Intermarriages between Königsberg Jews and Jews from Russian Poland were one indication of
ties between the two geographically separated communities.101Leiserowitz found that 50
percent of the 1848-1872 marriages in the East Prussian district of Heydekrug involved women
who did not possess Prussian citizenship. They came from farther East.102
As will be noted later, there were fewer females than males, suggesting that males had to
import their wives or to move to where their wives live, the Jewish matrilocal residential
pattern. However, in East Prussia, it appears that patrilocal or neolocal residential patterns
were followed, perhaps because potential husbands were already relatively well-off financially.
Economic influences could trumpet cultural ones that influenced the common pattern of
marriage-based residential practices.
In short, the Jews in Vištytis as well as those in the larger Suwalki area had historical, cultural,
language, interpersonal, and governance ties with Prussia, the German language, Russia, Poland
101
102
From an email that David Langenberg kindly sent me on May 26, 1998.
See her “Jewish citizen in East Prussia, Tilsit Ragnit Heydekrug Russ Gembinnen.”
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and, yes, fellow Jews living like themselves in mixed language and cultural communities. The
world extended beyond one’s own immediate village.
Prussia Tightened the Border: The German scholar Dr. Ruth Leiserowitz is exploring the social
and commercial networks that Lithuanian Jews, including those from Vishtinetz, established in
East Prussia. But whereas an unknown number of Jews successfully established their legal rights
to live in this German-speaking area, Leiserowitz also discovered Jews whose residency
applications were refused and were subsequently expelled, as was one of my grandfather’s
younger brothers, Isador (Irvin).
Her research discovered 47 Vishtinetz Jews who from as early as 1807 were legally or illegally
living in Prussia. As indicated in Annex A, some of these individuals became East Prussian
citizens.
Both these 47 along with a good number of others from elsewhere in the larger area around
Vishtinetz influenced their East Prussian hosts. It wasn’t a one-way exchange, for as Leiserowitz
noted,
Jewish life in East Prussia was in a very high level influenced by inputs from the Litvakian
neighborhood. Jewish inhabitants from sthetls near the former East Prussian
borderzone crossed the border very often. They had business in Koenigsberg, Tilsit and
other towns or visited relatives, who settled here after 1812. Sometimes they followed
their neighbors, business partners or relatives and settled in East Prussian places too.
People from Vištytis (Vishtiniec) were found extremly often in the East Prussian
territory. They had a strong network.
East Prussia later restricted access that Jews had to life and work in this area west of the
Vishtinetz border. “The turning point came very suddenly in 1885,” according to Leiserowitz.
“The Prussian government began to expel Jews with Russian citizenship even if they had lived in
Prussia for quite some time. Residence status could only be bought by those who were
commercially successful and had influence on the place.”
Most Jews, including those from Vishtinetz, had to search farther afield for safe and secure
lives. No doubt many of these Jews were already well adapted to lives outside the Pale
suggesting that returning east would have been an unwelcome and unwelcomed resocialization to life in Congress Poland and the Russian Pale. Better to move west to America, as
my ancestors did. This movement was probably facilitated by the experiences Jews had with life
in East Prussia and the German language. As others have noted, Vishtinetz and other Jews were
already “Pseudo-Prussians.”
Russian Concerns: Of course Germany was not the only country that expressed concerns about
this border area. Imperial Russia was aware of the German sympathies of the Jews and their
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German-speaking neighbors living in the areas of the Pale close to East Prussia. As early as
1804, Tsar Alexander “launched into a ‘preliminary’ transplantation in the northwestern,
Lithuanian, border region. Here 60,000 Jewish families were summarily evicted into the Pale’s
interior.”103
In a law passed in 1858 but not enforced until 1884, Russia prohibited Jews from residing within
35 miles of the German (Prussian) and Austrian borders. The law’s purpose, according to Masha
Greenbaum in his The Jews of Lithuania, “was to stanch the spread of German Jewish influence
in Russian-controlled territories.” Several Lithuanian Jewish communities were, in fact, evicted.
Vishtinetz, for some reason, seems to have escaped this fate - - but not others, as indicated in
research conducted by the University of Delaware’s Langenberg. Not all Jews had the same
repressive experiences in different parts of the Pale close to East Prussia.
Jews were not just moving across borders, for there was movement within Congress Poland and
the larger Pale of Settlement as well. According to Diner, “Although some historical accounts
would have us believe that Russia was virtually emptied out of all its Jews, in truth
approximately two-thirds of the Jewish population stayed in Russia.”104
Jews were a mobile people whose moves were not just to the west. Geographic mobility
characterizes the Jewish people. According to Galina Baranova, an archivist in the Lithuanian
state archives, “Jews were not characterized by a settled way of life. Very often they migrated
with their whole families, or family members got married and moved to another location and
stayed there for many years belonging to a different community.”105 Arcadius Kahan made the
same observation: “historically the Jews were more mobile and migrated more frequently
(even voluntarily) than other national groups.” This mobility was facilitated in 1856 when the
new Tsar, according to Sachar, readjusted the frontiers of the Pale “allowing Jews to live closer
to the Austrian and Prussian frontier zones.”106 As noted elsewhere, the Russian authorities
later restricted Jewish settlement close to these same borders.
3. The history and influence that the larger Suwalki area might have had on Vishtinetz
It is likely that any village on the immediate doorstep of East Prussia would have had
experiences somewhat different from those living elsewhere in Congress Poland and the Pale.
103
Howard M. Sachar, A History of the Jews in the Modern World (New York: Knopf, 2005), 58.
Diner, op. cit., p. 94. “Between 1880 and 1924, one-third of Eastern European Jewry left their homes” according
to a JewishGen InfoFile titled “Tracing Jewish Ancestors: Where is the ‘Old Country’ located today? A Directory of
the 25 Russian Pale gubernii (provinces).”
105
Galina Baranova, “Experiences with Jewish Genealogical Requests and a Review of the Records Stored in the
Lithuanian State Historical Archives.”
106
See his Essays in Jewish Social and Economic History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 28.
104
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In this section, the village and its Jews are placed in the context of the Suwalki Gubernia in
which it was once located.
Over time, as already noted, Vishtinetz (Vištytis) was administratively and culturally part of a
changing number of provincial units including, among others, Suvalkija (Suwałki also Suvalk),
Augustów and both Kovno (Kaunas) and Marijampolė, some of the geographical and cultural
foci for contributors to the Jewish genealogical special Suwalk-Lomza Interest Group that
publishes its Landsmen.107 From 1867 to 1917, Vištytis was in Suwalki Gubernia that was part of
Russia’s Congress Poland. In 1866-67 the province was separated from the former Augustow
Gubernia.
The greater Suwalki region that includes Augustów, Suwałki and Sejny of the Białystok
Voivodeship of contemporary Poland but also lower northwest Lithuania was fairly thinly
settled, economically underdeveloped, and poor. Small settlements are still found there today.
For example, nineteen of these are within 6.5 miles of contemporary Vištytis.108 Most are either
south (seven) or north (another seven) with only two east of the village. Most have just a few
residents. This remains a lightly settled area.109
According to Dr. Kasriel Eilender,
“The territory now known as Suwalki province comprises about 11,000 square
kilometers. Located in the Northwestern corner of modern Poland, the traditional
borders included East Prussia to the west, and to the northeast and south, the Niemen
and Bobra rivers, alongside the provinces of Kovno, Vilno and the city of Grodno. To the
southwest it is next to the province of Lomza. It was almost entirely included in the
Grand Duchy of Lithuania until 1386, when it became part of Poland. The border
location between Prussia, Lithuania, and Poland made it the site of continuous warfare,
depressing the population and leaving the area rather desolated by the 14th
century… Jews lived in the towns throughout the province. …
by 1800, Suwalk had no Jewish residents. The contemporary German historian, Hoische,
wrote that at the beginning of the 19th century Suwalki was free of Jews. This would be
107
http://www.jewishgen.org/suwalklomza/
One of the descendants of my great uncle Henry Jacobson, as already noted, mentioned two other village
names in addition to Vishtinetz. They are Slonim and Volkavic. The source did not know if these villages were
associated with one or both of their parents. There are at least two villages named Slonim. One is in Belarus (107.7
miles WSW of Minsk); the other Slonim is in Poland, 11.2 miles SSW of Warsaw. There is no shtetl spelled Volkavic,
but the D-M soundex code yields a number of possibilities in Belarus (e.g., Val’keviche), Lithuania, Poland, Russia
and the Ukraine. These are references to the current countries, not the areas as defined in the 19 th Century.
108
109
For an historical account of the development of this region, see Timothy Snyder, The Reconstruction of Nations:
Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569-1999 (Yale University Press 2003). Also Sachar, op. cit., p.185.
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consistent with historical accounts showing that Jews were generally forbidden to live in
larger towns in Poland at this time period. This edict was changed by the Napoleonic
conquest and the Polish historian Waszutinski writes that in 1808, 44 Jews lived in
Suwalki, the small number indicating that the Jewish settlement had it is beginnings in
recent times. …
The Jewish community in Suwalki also grew from 1823 to 1862, in spite of the fact that
there were restrictions on the presence of Jews in many parts of the city. In 1827 the
community numbered 1,209 people, in 1856, 6,407, in 1857, 6,687, and in 1862, 7165.
From the 1890's through the first decade of the 20th century there was a new increase
in the Jewish population, and by 1908 the census takers counted 13,002 Jews in Suwalki.
it also experienced, in 1868 through 1870, a severe interlude of hunger at which time
many Jews in Suwalki just plain perished. During this period help came from surrounding
provinces as well as countries like Prussia where there were Jewish communities that
were able to help their brothers to the east.”110
Within these and other guberniyas, Vishtinetz itself came under the jurisdiction of a
recalibrated number of smaller sub-governmental administrative districts (uyezds). 111
These changing political alignments help explain why it is difficult to locate some
information on this single village: archival records might be kept in several different present
day countries.112
As noted earlier, Vištytis today is in the Lithuanian Vilkaviskis Uyezd (District) of the
Marijampole Province (but, again, previously part of Poland’s Suwalki Gubernia). Historically
110
From his A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE JEWS IN SUWALKI available online at
http://kehilalinks.jewishgen.org/suwalki/history.htm.
111
Jewish families living in Russian Poland, including Suwalk Gubernia in the Kingdom of Poland, were required to
adopt names in 1821. Mitchell was the name adopted by all of David’s siblings except one on their arrival in
America, but Mitchell is not a name found in their home country. I suspect that the name was adopted while in
transit in England. I do not know where or when my grandfather learned English. He had no accent whatever, as I
recall when staying with him shortly after the end of WW II. Forty-two Jewish-American residents with the family
name “Mitchell” are listed in Malcolm H. Stern’s “First American Jewish Families” with its family trees of Jews who
arrived during the Colonial/Federal period (1654-1838). Jewish Mitchells have a long history in America. :)
112
As already noted, Vishtinetz (Vištytis today) was presumably called by its Russian name Wysztyniec and was in
the Wolkowyszk Uyezd (also Wylkowysk and Volkovishki). Suwalk and Lomza gubernias today are in northeastern
Poland and southwestern Lithuania. The Russian records of the time were, of course, in Russian. However, Suvalki
Guberniya was part of the Kingdom of Poland (Congress Poland) established in 1815 by the Congress of Vienna and
assigned to Russian Czarist rule. It had an administrative structure different from the other guberniyas.
Unfortunately, Jewish researchers have yet to find revision (tax census) lists for Suvalki. The Russian authorities
organized these lists by uyezd (not town within a district) during the nineteenth century
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this district could be seen as belonging not just to “large swaths of ortheastern Poland (notably
the Białystok and Suwałki regions) but also to northern and western Belarus (notably the
Grodno [Hrodna], Minsk, Slutsk, Pinsk, Brisk [Brest Litovsk], Shklov, Mogilev [Mohilev], Gomel
[Homel’], and Vitebsk [Vitsyebsk] regions), southern Latvia (notably the Dvinsk [Daugavpils]
region), and northeastern Prussia (notably the region of the Baltic port city Memel
[Klaipėda]).”113
That is, Vishtinetz was not an isolated village alone in a vast forest. Instead, it was part of a
together not just in smaller villages and neighborhoods but also in a volatile larger political
world with its wars, border changes, and markets in which the members of all self-identified
cultural groups strove to support themselves and their families.
This larger cultural and economic world may help explain my own ancestors’ mobility. For
example, their world and the world of their neighbors expanded beyond Vishtinetz, as seen in
the number of local residents who traveled, worked and lived in East Prussia. And from the
early 1800s they emigrated farther West and to the New World, South Africa and Europe (for
example Paris and London).114
Galina Baranova of the Lithuanian state archives reported that the Suwalki region produced
some of the earliest and largest out-migration within the entire Pale and Congress Poland. This
Gubernia itself had an estimated 1897 population of 582,913 (multiple times more than a
previously-mentioned number - - suggesting, again, the need to question one’s sources), the
majority of whom were Roman Catholic (75%), not the Protestant Lutherans of East Prussia.
The administrative area’s Jews seem to have been primarily urban oriented, accounting for 40.1
percent of the urban residents.
The region’s limited economic conditions for an expanding population “produced the
characteristic local response: emigration to America.” (There were also opportunities farther
south - - for example in the industrializing Warsaw area.)
4 The role that kinship systems played in the social organization of Jewish families and
communities
No statistics are available on the occupations of either Jews or non-Jews, and what little
information that exists refers only to males whereas Jewish (Litvak) women were important
113
http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Litvak
“Paris Marriages Revisited: Part II,” Landsmen (10: 1 and 2, 200`). This compilation includes 19th Century
marriages that mention families from both Wisztyniec (the Polish version of Vishtinetz) and nearby Wizajny.
114
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income-earners. For example, one source reported that 20 percent of the Jewish women in
Suwalki in 1897 were economically active.115
3.
Source: The Jewish Agricultural Colonies in Western Russia Prior to 1904 Research for this
table by Lou Goldman. Material composed, translated and compiled by Lou Goldman.
http://kehilalinks.jewishgen.org/colonies_of_ukraine/allsettlements.htm
115
“Economically active” is not defined. See Kahan, op. cit., p. 51.
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According to Yaffa Eliach, wives played “a pivotal role in economic matters.” They “were
important economic partners in all social classes of the shtetl from at least the seventeenth
century.
More recently, Howard Sandys reported hearsay that well-after the murder of the Jewish
population, some local residents recalled many decades later that Jewish women shopkeepers
in Vishtinetz “would sell goods to the townspeople on credit and would get paid when cash was
available.” Of course not all Jews were traders, but some certainly were. They serviced both
Jews and non-Jews alike on both sides of the border.
Eliach also noted that from at least the seventeenth century, young couples established their
first household in the home of the wife’s family. Shtetl family units were often matrilocal in
nature,
[Y]oung Jewish males studying for a religious career: From the sixteenth century on, the
ideal husband for an Eastern European Jewish girl was the scholar, the diligent,
promising yeshivah student. Hence the criteria for the bride were that she be the
daughter of well-to-do parents who were eager and able to support the scholar and his
young family during the early years of their marriage, in an arrangement known as kest.
Offering kest allowed the husband to continue his studies, while the bride, ideally an
industrious, strong, healthy young woman, established a business of her own that would
eventually enable her to take upon herself the financial responsibility for her husband
and their children. During this period, the wife (and sometimes her husband) might
receive training in the family business, as preparation for becoming a worker or a
partner in it, or might learn a craft or a trade, or might do agricultural work. The
duration of the kest period was according to the husband’s level of scholarship.
In the Eastern Europe of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, as
many generations of sons-in-law were quick to discover, the shulhoyf and the larger
worlds of business and public affairs were, as ever, the man’s kingdom, but the home
and its more modest commercial enterprises were definitely the woman’s domain.
Indeed, the matrilocal organization of the shtetl household was at the core of the kest
system, and thus a woman in the household of a family oriented toward scholarship was
in a particularly strong position. As the main breadwinner, she had considerable power,
power that had its roots in the early days of her marriage, when she was just beginning
to develop some kind of business with which to support her family and thereby enable
her husband to study without interruption. Even if she turned out not to be the sole
breadwinner in the family, it was expected that she supplement the income of her
husband. This expectation was so much the norm that the appointment letter for a
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shtetl rabbi, for example, usually stipulated the economic enterprise that would be
allotted to his wife. Typically the rebbetzin was given exclusive rights to sell yeast, or
candles, or kiddush and havdalah wine.116
Although women made up the majority of the shopkeepers and had been a backbone of the
market-day economy — in Eishyshok as in many other places — they disappeared from sight in
America where they were glaringly absent from the public worlds of business and philanthropy
in their new land. Perhaps because some husbands preceded their wives, it may have seemed
natural for women to allow their more acclimated, experienced spouses to assume the only
responsibility for earning a living, while they themselves were relegated to supporting roles.
Others have commented that “The strong-willed, outspoken Jewish woman has been a staple
of Jewish humor and literature ever since, an inexhaustible source for East European authors
and their literary descendants.” The relative economic roles of husbands and wives changed
after emigration to America although the old-world image of women didn’t necessarily vanish
in the new world.
I am not aware of any occupational pursuits of my paternal grandmother in Detroit. She was
born the same year her parents arrived in America, circa 1865.117 On the other hand, all of my
non-Jewish maternal ancestors were farmers, a truly family industry in which all the children,
sons and daughters alike, participated in the family’s enterprise. In addition, my maternal
grandmother was the post mistress in a small crossroads rural setting in Midland County
Michigan.
It is likely that trading and matrilocal-based family networks covered a fairly wide area,
conditions that further helped meet both economic (trading and job-searching) and marital
(marriage) needs. In fact, Russler and Silverman found that 40 percent of the marriages in
Suwalk were between partners from different towns and in 85 percent of these cases. It was
the groom who came from another town, further evidence of the matrilocal residential rules at
the time.118 These residential and trading networks may help explain why the Mischkofsky,
Detomischkofsky and Myszkowski names are spread throughout the relatively thin but large
Suwałki region and areas where Litvaks lived.
116
Yaffa Eliach, “The Shtetl Household.” Miriam Weiner Routes to Roots Foundation available online at
http://www.rtrfoundation.org/shtetl-front.shtml. Chaim Grade reported that his mother in Vilnius was a fruit
peddler and that her neighbors were petty traders. See the English translation of his My Mother’s Sabbath Days: A
Memoir (Jason Aronson, 1997). Also his Rabbis and Wives (Vintage, 1983).
117
For population estimates for American Jews, see American Jewish Year Book Vol. 32 (1930-1931.
118
Nicki Russler and Marlene Silverman, “Where the Boys Are: An Analysis of Suwalki Jewish Marriage Records
(1826-1854),” Landsmen (2:4 Spring 1992). Rules of residence should not be confused with lineage and authority
patterns.
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But marriage networks were supposedly geographically limited, for according to The SuwalkLomza Interest Group for Jewish Genealogists, during“ much of the 19th century, Russian-Polish
Jews were not permitted to marry outside of their own Gubernia (with some exceptions,
usually for prominent families). Thus, were inter-marriages among families within the former
Augustow Gubernia [i.e., Suwalki Gubernia and the four districts of Lomza Gubernia…].“
Inter-marriages among families within the former Augustow Gubernia [i.e., Suwalki Gubernia
and the four districts of Lomza Gubernia…] and the resulting region-wide information and
assistance networks no doubt facilitated residents in their emigration experience. That network
no doubt benefitted my grandfather and his siblings as suggested by the number of Suwalki
emigrants, including his own father-in-law, who preceded him to America.
Again, although the name Detomischkofsky in its several variations is somewhat unusual, I
found references to others with the same name throughout the region and beyond. The
“Jewish Records Indexing –Poland” reports 242 records for the name “Mischkofsky from the
Suwalki Gubernia as well as other families with the same name in Grodno, Kalisz, Lomza, Lublin,
Piotrkow, Plock, Random, Siedice, Warszawa, Krakow, Lwow and Tarnopol. JewishGen’s
“Hamelitz Database” includes Kaunas-based Yakov Yisroel Mishkowski as having made a
contribution in 1897. (He could have been my great grandfather).
The Vilnius Ghetto Lists include three people with the name Mischlowski (Rubin was the oldest,
born in 1893; Klemens, the youngest, was born in 1929). The Ellis Island Passenger Records list
122 arrivals with names similar to Mischkowski including one 1909 arrival from Suwalki. An
earlier five-member Mischkowsky family arrived in 1872 from an unidentified town of Besoyn.
Tax and voters lists include others with somewhat different English spellings (e.g., Myshkovsky).
A family with the transliterated name Dotomiszkowkas/i (female/male) appears in the Belarus
records for Wizajna around nine miles south of Vishtinetz also on the shore of Lake Vištytis.119
This village was also part of the Polish Gubernia of Suwalk within the larger Jewish Litvak
cultural region.
The 4,393 Wizajna “parish” residents enumerated in 1885 included 490 Jews living alongside
their predominately Protestant German 2,437 neighbors and only six Orthodox (and no Roman
Catholics), further suggesting that Vištytis residents only a short distance north lived in an
analogous Prussian cultural German-speaking environment, not one in which Jews would
necessarily identify themselves as “Russians” or “Poles.” This was also a local population on the
move, as 24 percent of the 1885 registered Wizajna population were in fact no longer resident
119
The source comes from the Jewish Records Indexing – Poland. Both husband and wife were born in 1865.
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in this village. (Figures were not given on the relative proportions of Protestant and Jewish
emigrants.) The entire region, not just Vishtinetz, was on the move.
So yes, my ancestors’ names were not unknown.120 The names’ geographical spread suggests a
larger story of how families moved within broad Jewish and non-Jewish economic, cultural and
kinship networks. Matrilocal residential patterns together with (and contributing to) economic
networks created by Jewish traders and craftsmen help explain the dispersion of families
including those with the somewhat unusual names of my ancestors.
4. Political and economic influences on the timing and pattern of out-migration
There is a growing social and historical literature on Jewish population growth rates, ruralurban distributions, emigration in general and movement to the United States in particular. For
one recent excellent contribution, see Gur Alroey, Bread to Eat & Clothes to Wear. Letters from
Jewish Migrants in the Early Twentieth Century.121 He reports immigration estimates before
1881, the starting date for Simon Kuznets “Immigration of Russian Jews to the United States:
Background and Structure.”122 He also reports population growth rates in Tsarist Russia
beginning in 1825.
Although the Napoleonic wars seem to have depressed Jewish birth rates in the early 1800s,
these rates rose to exceed those of non-Jews in later decades despite the higher urban
population concentrations of Jews (urban environments were less healthy than rural ones).
Kuznets argued that the urban concentration of Jews affected their occupational profiles and
the pressures for emigration. He also asked “to what extent the weakening of communal
authority among Russian Jewry after the 1884 was an important factor in freeing individual
responses to emigration prospects?”
It is possible that large out-migration flows, as from my ancestors’ home village, could have
raised questions about traditional authority rules and figures. Families were certainly aware
that there were options contrary to what had existed earlier in their immediate religious and
social environment.
As already mentioned, emigration to America and East Prussia was not the only possible
destinations for Vishtinetz Jews. (And an earlier reference was made to the proclivity of Jews to
be geographically mobile.) One author reported that “Poland was a place of economic
120
One value of rare or unusual names provides an opportunity to explore the influences that social, economic
and other factors had on Jewish populations.
121
122
Wayne State University Press, 2011
Perspectives in American History 1967
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opportunity for large numbers of Jews who migrated there during the early modern period to
become traders, merchants, and economic middlemen for the Polish nobility (szlachta).”123
In 1835 all these areas, including Vishtinetz and Suwalki, were subject to the Russian chertá
osédlosti, the largest ghetto in history, “better known as the Pale of Settlement” comprising “15
provinces or gubernias, nine in Russia and six in Lithuania and Belorussia.”124 But there wasn’t
just a single blanket set of restrictions, for according to one source, there were at least six
forms of the general concept Pale, each with a different set of restrictions. They included
geographical, educational, legal, economic, language and fashion pales.125
Following the attempted assassination of the Russian Czar in 1866 and the May Laws of 1882
restrictions placed on Jews in the Pale became even more severe, resulting in limited incomeearning and mobility opportunities that in turn led to widespread poverty, near-starvation,
overcrowding and migration responses to the forced deprivations even though the constraints
on Polish Jews were not as severe as those imposed by Russia on the Jews living under its
control (as referenced more than once earlier). Non-Jews, of course, were also adversely
affected by poor economic conditions. And, in fact, there was large-scale emigration to America
by Poles, not just Polish Jews.126
The historian Afonsiev, described the economic life of Lithuanian Jews in 1858 as:
The Jews live under very crowded conditions. Often several families live in one small
room. Uncleanliness inside and outside is the sign of great poverty. Their financial
resources are very small. In the morning they eat radishes, onions, garlic, or herring with
bread. Those who are a little better off drink tea. Midday they may have soup, fish, or
123
Stefi Jersch-Wenzel, Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften. Quellen zur Geschichte der Juden
in polnischen Archiven 1: Ehemalige preußische Provinzen: Pommern, Westpreußen, Ostpreußen, Preußen, Posen,
Grenzmark Posen-Westpreußen, Süd- und Neuostpreußen. München: K.G. Saur, 2003. http://www.hnet.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=10685
124
Masha Greenbaum, The Jews of Lithuania, A History of a Remarkable Community, 1316-1945 (Gefen Books,
1995) 160. This is an essential read for an understanding of this important Jewish community. Catherine the Great
created the Pale of Settlement in 1791. At least one author gives alternative numbers: “15 western provinces of
European Russia and the 10 provinces of Congress Poland.” RU-pale 5857 990110 Director of 25 Russian Pale
provinces by Bernard I. Kouchel available online at the JewishGen InfoFile.
125
Rules of Jews in Russia Empire. Pales http://www.roots-saknes.lv/Ethnicities/Jews/Pales/Pales.htm, p. 5. The
military had its own Pale rules or restrictions.
126
Family Search, a valuable genealogical site by the Mormon Church, lists 180 death records for individuals
presumably born in Vistytis or a nearby village. Of course the names of some deceased may have been changed in
America (as in my ancestors’ case as well) but it appears from my limited understanding that most of the listed
individuals were of Polish decent. See
https://familysearch.org/search/record/results?count=20&query=%2Bbirth_place%3Avistytis~&offset=160
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meat and in the evening the same menu. There are workers whose families fast all day
until the family wage earner comes home and brings his earnings.127
Lestschinsky reported that
The catastrophic year of starvation occurred in 1880. In many Jewish communities in the
cities and shtetlach the starving Jewish masses, being desperate, accused the
community leaders and merchants of causing the widespread hunger.
A report in the "Voschod'' in the year 1880 by A. Margolis noted that in the shtetl of Koidanov
in Kovno region:
There was a dreadful hunger. The poor class gathered in a sizable mass near the
synagogue and attacked those who owned the export businesses. All day and late into
the night the starving people roamed the streets, breaking windows and screaming that
they will break the bones of the wealthy if they will not take care of their families and
prevent their death from starvation.128
Some years were worse than others. For example, there was “a great famine in the Suwalki
region” from around 1869 to 1871.129 This may have been the same as the more commonlymentioned Russian famine of 1867 to 1869 - - that in turn was repeated in 1881 and 1882.
There were cholera and other epidemics as well.
That is, political, food, health and economic insecurity exasperated the deprivations of Jews
including those in Poland.
Jews and non-Jews alike were also victims of natural calamities that pushed residents to
emigrate. The “severe famine” of 1867-69 as well as cholera epidemic of 1876, according in
Langenberg, contributed to the emigration from Vishtinetz and its larger environment.
Langenberg also reported a Rabbi’s account that the village, “a poor and wretched city, which
has been deprived of many of its sons, who left it during the famine and have not returned to
it.” (p. 27) Still not all the Jews of Vishtinetz were in dire straits, as suggested by the 197
contributors in 1871 to the fund for assisting the Jewish famine sufferers in Persia and
Babylonia.
127
“The Lithuanian Shtetl” by J. Lestschinsky from the Memorial Book of Roskiskis available online at
http://www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/rokiskis/rok066.html
128
A. Margolis, Yiddisher Folk Masses in their Struggle Against their Oppressors, Moscow, 1940, pp.86, 1048-1059
and Lestschinsky, “The Lithuanian Shtetl” available online at
http://www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/rokiskis/rok066.html
129
Hayim Seligson, “The First Suwalkers in New York, “Landsmen, 6:2 and 3
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Poverty was widespread. By the end of the nineteenth century, according to Sachar, “it was
estimated that 40 percent of Russian Jewry were partially or completely dependent on
charitable aid.”130 Exit was one response to this deprivation.
Charles Foster of the U.S. Treasury was commissioned in 1891 (well after my grandfather
emigrated) to determine "the principal causes that incite emigration to the United States," as
well as whether current immigration laws were being followed or abused by the steamship
companies and others. His reports on Wilno (today’s Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania), Minsk
and other places in the Pale recount repressive laws, poverty, crowded living and working
conditions, and the exploitation of young children. The entire area (with the possible exception
of Courland - - farther to the north in today’s Latvia) was an extreme push environment. 131
The Commission’s 1892 report also recorded the geographical constraints on where Jews could
live, a further push that funneled many emigrants out of Poland and the Pale:
In the whole Russian Empire (exclusive of the Kingdom of Poland) the Jews are
prohibited from permanently residing or settling anywhere, except in the following
fifteen gubernias: Bessarabia, Vilna, Vitebsk, Volhynia, Grodno, Ekaterinoslave, Kovno,
Minsky, Mohilev, Podolia, Poltava, Taurida (except Sebastopol), Cherson (except
Nicolaiev), and Tshernigov, also the Gubernia of Kiev, exclusive of the city of Kiev. These
gubernias are, therefore, called the Pale of permanent Jewish settlement. (1886)
The Commission reconfirmed other reports of widespread poverty and suffering by Jews. In
1892, fourteen years after my grandfather emigrated, Commissioners Weber and Kempster of
the 1892 Foster Commission Report described the poverty conditions of Jews living in Minsk:
“The principal questions discussed” by Jews the Commission interviewed were “What shall we
do, and where shall we go to get bread?” “It is no wonder they wish to fly somewhere where
they can breathe and have an equal chance in the struggle for existence. The only thing which
prevents them for going en masse to other countries is their poverty.”
I do not know if my own grandfather and his siblings experienced the same extreme
suffering.132 According to Betty Starkman, they came from a relatively affluent family.
130
Sachar, op. cit., p. 203.
The Commission’s report contains a list of anti-Jewish laws and actions. See the Excerpts from the 1892 Foster
Commission Report available online at http://www.angelfire.com/ms2/belaroots/foster.htm and
http://www.angelfire.com/ms2/belaroots/foster2.htm#enote. Lucien Wolf’s Legal Restrictions Imposed upon the
Jews since 1882 published in 1912 extends the Foster Commission’s findings. See
http://www.angelfire.com/ms2/belaroots/wolf.htm
132
For earlier reports on poverty, see Stephen M Berk, Year of Progress, Year of Hope: Russian Jewry and the
Pogroms of 1881-1882 (Westport Conn: Greenwood, 1985). For example, 1860s studies of Kovno province found it
was common for several Jewish families to occupy a single room. (p. 25)
131
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During the nineteenth century, it is probably reasonable to assume that both the Jews and nonJews alike lived in a Malthusian world in which the number of mouths to feed increased at a
higher rate than the ability to feed the growing population. The economic and non-economic
push to leave was certainly there as was the pull of East Prussia, Europe and the New World.
And in fact disasters together with the Russian pogroms of 1881 led to a significant increase in
Russian Jewish emigrants to Germany.133 Even by 1871, Langenberg (noted earlier) found
reported that a “sizeable part of the town [Vishtinetz) had emigrated to Germany, including
Konigsberg, and to the United States." Simon Kuznets’ research reported that the poor areas of
Western Lithuania, including Suwalki, produced the largest and earliest number of Eastern
European Jews entering the United States.134 Seligson noted that the first Sulwaki immigrants
appear “as early as the 1860s” (but really by the 1840s). This suggests, however, that it did not
necessarily take famines and other analogous crises to precipitate mobility decisions.
One source estimated that 15,122 Russian Jews emigrated from Russia to the United States
during 1883-84, just after my own grandfather David made the same trip.135
It is not surprising that demographic and socio-economic developments suggest that those who
emigrated were “economic migrants,” although the forces driving migration had significant
anti-Jewish political discriminations that contributed to the misery of those suffering under the
Czar and others.
To recap, the Jews had relatively higher fertility rates, larger families and cruel poverty that
contributed to out-migration and escape from an unpromising future. Scholars such as Andrew
Godley have argued that this poverty rather than the destructive discrimination against Jews,
was the major force driving out-migration. Again: “The Russian Jews were primarily economic
migrants, not political refugees.”136
These Jews (my paternal ancestors), of course, were not necessarily unique, as the Irish
suffered under analogous (but not exactly comparable) life stresses, and they too responded by
leaving for America.
The Sulvaki “Gubernia took first place among all guberniyas in emigration during the five years
before 1894. The annual number of emigrants during the period 1889-1894 exceeded 2,000
133
See Jack Wertheimer’s Unwelcome Strangers: East European Jews in Imperial Germany, Oxford, 1987.
In his Jewish Immigrant Associations and American Identity in New York, 1880-1939 (Harvard, 1997)
135
Kahan, op. cit, p. 32
136
Andrew Godley, Jewish Immigrant Entrepreneurs in New York and London 1880-1914 (Basingstoke: Palgrave,
2001), 87.
134
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people.”137 Scattered information was introduced earlier on the number, names, place of origin,
and year of emigration for Jews from Vishtinetz and the larger Suwalki region. Former residents
of Vishtinetz were in Paris by at least 1831 if not earlier and in England (as early as the 1830s) 138
as well as farther south in Russia itself and the Pale. Suwalki Jews were in Odessa by 1865. 139
Jews from Suwalk “first came to the United States in the 1840s with the first groups of Polish
immigrants… The great famine of 1847 probably stimulated the desire to emigrate” and in fact,
American records for that year include a Suwalki Jew followed by increasing numbers in the
1860s.
By 1892 “there was seldom a week when twenty to thirty Jewish families were not leaving
Suwalk and the surrounding areas and emigrating to the U.S. There was such a rush that prices
of houses in Suwalk were very depressed.” But, again, the movement was not just to America,
as migrants also moved farther south in Russia itself and the Pale. Suwalki Jews have been
recorded as living in Odessa in 1865.140 They lived in Paris and London, as well as in both large
and small American cities with first arrivals in Buffalo (1860), Brooklyn (1867) and New York City
(1869). Detroit received emigrants from Vishtinetz as early as 1856.
Because they were losing populations, Jewish communities were becoming depopulated and
perhaps weakening from the lost labor and the cost of sending potential income-earning
children away. (See Annex B.) It is also possible (but unknown) that support for Jewish religious
and other conventional social controls was weakening. It is certainly possible that this
happened, although the population movements may have left the more traditional inwardlooking members of the community behind with fewer distractions from the outside secular
137
Galina Baranova, “Statistics for Suwalki Gubernia from the 1897 Russian Census,” Landsman (8:3-4, August
1998), 19-20. Lithuanian was the predominant language in the gubernia. Vishtinetz was subject to some of the
same forces and conditions found in Suwalki but in a very different language, religious and cultural setting.
138
The London Jews Database available through JewishGen lists four Mitchells referenced for the period 1807 to
1851. (The names included A. [initial only], David, Joseph, and Mary.) My grandfather David is said to have
traveled to America via England (Manchester). (Manchester’s Jewish population is predominantly Litvak in origin.)
It is possible that one of his relatives living in England had adopted the family’s new surname. (It might be possible
to track the backgrounds of these particular Mitchells.) An English stopover had a financial rationale and was not
simply family-linked. According to Lloyd Garnter (“Jewish Migrants en Route from Europe to North America:
Traditions and Reality,” Jewish History, Fall, 1986), “The journey from a Continental Port to America via England
cost less than did the direct route for those emigrants who circumvented the high, fixed prices of the North
Atlantic Shipping Ring by purchasing trans-Atlantic tickets in England under an assumed name.”
139
“The Emigration from Suwalk,” Landsmen (1:2, fall 1990) provides some statistics on these migrations.
Emigration reduced the number of Jewish men who did not report when called up by military drafts.
140
“The Emigration from Suwalk,” Landsmen (1:2, fall 1990) provides statistical and other information on
emigration, a movement that reduced the number of Jewish men who did not report when called up by military
drafts.
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world. The shackles of the old may have lifted from those who left but tightened for those who
stayed. The research I have read focuses more on the leavers than on the stayers.
On their arrival in America, the new immigrants, especially in smaller communities, became
free of traditional services and controls. They had to fend for themselves. In my own ancestors’
case, it appears that some of their religious (but not Jewish) identities may have been left in the
old country, a pattern that may have been especially common among the “Psuedo-Prussians”
from the Suwalki area. At least that’s what the first generation may have thought.
That is, the Jews of the region were subject to the same push-pull influences found in countries
around the world over time and still today.141 But the stagnant economy in which the number
of Jews in search of a living increased at a relatively high rate precipitated the decisions of a
growing number of Jews to leave for hopefully more promising opportunities elsewhere. This
outward flow may have been accelerated by discriminatory practices against Jews, but even
without these practices, the Jews would have left. They did, however, seem to have perhaps
emigrated earlier and in larger proportions than their immediate non-Jewish neighbors.
Moreover, they emigrated as families, not just as individuals, although not all family members
emigrated as a group together as was the case with my Detomischkofsky/Mischkofsky
ancestors.
The languages used among Pseudo-Prussians such as my grandfather surfaces in the native
tongues that immigrants reported in the 1900 and 1910 U.S. Federal censuses. In their
Hamburg Passengers from the Kingdom of Poland and the Russian Empire: 1855-June 1873,
Geraldine Moser and Marlene Silverman suggest that this only apparent anomaly of Germanspeaking Jews was fairly common among the “Pseudo-Prussians,” an assessment supported by
information reported in a JewishGen Discussion Group that “in American records, Jews from
the Suwalki-Lomza provinces frequently gave their nativity was Prussian or German”142 even
though that area had been annexed to Prussia only from 1795 to 1806. My own grandfather fit
this pattern as well.
In addition to the assistance that earlier-arrived kinsmen may have given those who followed
them, there were formal organizations that provided potential emigrants with information on
141
In the US, the bulk of mid-nineteenth-century migrants moved to the Midwest, and almost nine out of ten went
to rural areas. Patricia Kelly Hall and Steven Ruggles, “’Restless in the Midst of Their Prosperity’: New Evidence on
the Internal Migration of Americans 1850-2000” in The Journal of American History (91:3, December 2004) 844.
Also see William Parker, “From Northwest to Midwest, Social Bases of a Regional History” in David Klingerman and
Richard Vedder, eds., Essays in Nineteenth Century Economic History, The Old Northwest (Athens, Ohio: Ohio
University Press, 1975), 19. Also see Robert E Mitchell “Antebellum Farm-Settlement Patterns: A Three-Level
Approach to Assessing the Effects of Soils,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, xli: 3 (winter, 2011), 393–420.
142
http://data.jewishgen.org/wconnect/wc.dll?jg~jgsys~archview~39697~pseudo-Prussians~3217;6
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how and where to move. Landsmanschaften (home area benefit societies)143 and international
extension service such as the Jewish Colonization Association provided potential immigrants
with information before they left their home villages and also upon their arrival in America.144
That is, our old-country ancestors did not suffer an entirely information-poor environment. Gur
Alroey’s, Bread to Eat & Clothes to Wear. Letters from Jewish Migrants in the Early Twentieth
Century provides information on many of these services. My own paternal ancestors could very
likely have benefitted from the advice and assistance their earlier-arrived kinsmen and other
non-relatives from Vishtinetz provided.
Readers are referred to page 44 for the beginning of an analysis of 201 Vishtinetz residents who
arrived in New York between 1855 and 1873 (and also the detailed records presented in Annex
B.)
The above paragraphs did not touch on the challenges that Jews and others experienced in
adapting to their new lives in a strange environment. For example some Jews, especially those
living in small towns, would no doubt have had difficulty in finding a marriage partner. Of
course, over time, an increasing number of Jews married non-Jews, as was the case for my
father who was married in 1920 or 1923. He met my mother in Midland, Michigan when he
accompanied his brother, my Uncle Sid during his visit to a Jewish jeweler in this small midstate town. The jeweler’s daughter and my paternal uncle subsequently married. Of course, by
the 1920s the American Jewish population was much larger than it was when my grandfather
arrived in the 1870s. (Except for one uncle, all of my paternal uncles and aunts who married
had Jewish spouses.)
It wasn’t until I dated my wife that I became aware that people were classified by their national
origins, ethnicity, language and family names. My in-laws did not know my ancestral name of
Mischkofsky or Detomischkofsky or that my father was from a Jewish family. I felt that such a
background was not acceptable to this English family, although my in-laws did socialize with
one Jewish family. (Of course, I did not know the family name or ancestry when my wife and I
became happily-married twenty-year olds.145 And, of course, I am probably over-sensitive to
143
See Daniel Soyer, Jewish immigrant associations and American identity in New York, 1880-1939 (Detroit: Wayne
State University Press, 2001) and Michael R A Weisser Brotherhood of Memory: Jewish Landsmanshaftn in the New
World (Cornell University Press, 1985). There is a Vishtinetz section in Brooklyn New York’s Washington Cemetery
sponsored by the Tifferas Achim Anshe Wistenetzer.
144
Gur Alroey, Bread to Eat and Clothes to Wear: Letters from Jewish Migrants in the Early Twentieth Century
(Wayne State University Press, 2011). For a description of how immigrants were processed through Ellis Island
starting in around 1903 (after my grandfather arrived in America), see the Ellis Island National Monument article
The Immigrant Journey at http://www.ohranger.com/ellis-island/immigration-journey
145
If I had been aware that I was Jewish, I would have found an empty cupboard of Jewish girls in my high school.
But at that time, I wasn’t aware of the meaning of being a Jew and whether in fact there were any Jewish co-eds in
school.
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prejudice in any and all forms. Later in life I spent fifteen years as a minority living and working
among Chinese in Asia, Arab-speakers in the Near East, and diverse populations in West Africa.)
My research for this report is woefully incomplete and open to legitimate questions. For
example one might ask whether or not the Jews of Suwałki would have emigrated in large
numbers if the local economy had significantly expanded and America’s had collapsed. Even if
the economy of Vishtinetz and the surrounding area was strong and expanding, would it have
offered sufficient opportunities to the local Jews to entice them to stay at home? But, of
course, the locale economy was stagnant at the same time that the Jewish population was
increasing.
Perhaps there is another question: Did the non-Jews, that is the Germans, Poles and,
Lithuanians in the Suwałki region also emigrate in the same proportions as did their Jewish
neighbors? If they did during the years considered above, then what does this say about the
role that anti-Jewish restrictions played in the emigration process?
In fact, many did leave, although large-scale departures for some from the same small area may
have come sometime after the Jews left, and the character of the non-Jews emigration differed
from that of the Jews in two ways that tell us something about how the Jews viewed their
homeland.
First and as earlier noted, entire Jewish families tended to emigrate, although, as in my own
ancestors’ case, they did not leave as a family but one-by-one after the earliest émigrés
established themselves and were able to provide their siblings with information as well as
financial and other assistance.146 Non-Jewish Lithuanians, in contrast, were more likely to leave
their families back home.
Second and as earlier noted as well, when the Jews picked-up stakes and travelled as families,
they did not intend to return to their homeland. In contrast, according to one source:
Lithuanians differed from most immigrant groups in the United States in several ways.
They came to the US not only to escape poverty, but also to avoid bitter religious,
political and national persecution, and compulsory military service in 1874. They did not
plan to remain permanently and become "Americanized." Instead their intent was to
live in the US temporarily to earn money, invest in property, and wait for the right
opportunity to return to Lithuania. Official estimates were that 30% of the emigrants
from the Russian provinces of Poland-Lithuania returned home. When adjusted to
146
Chain migration of young adults was fairly common. The migrants knew where they were initially headed and
with whom they would stay. They would also have known the name they were to use. All (except Henry
Jacobson) eventually used the name Mitchell, suggesting it was known before the migrants left home. None of
the siblings had a middle initial - - which sets them off from most other Mitchells listed in city directories.
74
Robert E Mitchell
include only non-Jews the number is closer to 50-60%. Lithuanian immigrants who
mostly came to the United States from Imperial Russia in a social environment akin to
early European feudal society, where classless Jews performed the essential middle
roles of artisans, merchants and moneylenders.147
So yes, there may have been unusual forces driving Jewish emigration. And these forces may
have shaped differences between Jews and non-Jews in how each viewed both America and
their home-sending environments.
POSTSCRIPT AND RETROSPECT
Reader beware: I provided a personal (and professional) interpretation of my paternal
ancestors’ background and the social history of their time and place. Given the absence of
evidence and questions about it, my interpretations are often tentative and certainly open to
criticism. I welcome comments and justified corrections.
I began my research with two interests:
1. To narrow the choices of my paternal ancestors’ family names and their home
village.
2. To provide a sense of the lives of my ancestors - - the cultural, economic, language
and political environments that within each could have predisposed them to
emigrate. I also gave attention to their travel itineraries and arrangements - - among
other topics.
I benefitted from multiple personal contacts in pursuit of my initial research interests: The road
to genealogical research begins with mining the memories of one’s relatives. This I did.
And in accordance with standard genealogical procedures, I mined a wide array of birth, death,
social security, ship manifest, city directories, and numerous other records. I also made heavy
use of the existing literature.
147
There is no source for this Wikipedia entry “Lithuanian American” available online at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithuanian_American. According to some observers, it was common for Jews living in
Eastern Europe and, perhaps, Germany to emigrate in order to avoid military service. Avraham Barkai (Branching
Out) noted that “unwillingness to serve in the army was a main cause for emigration is evidenced by the many
young Jewish men who arrived in America just before their seventeenth birthday.” Barkai also notes that many of
these young immigrants from Germany came from moderately well-to-do middle-class families. It seems likely
that Vishtinetz was not devoid of middle-class Jewish families. Jacob could have had sufficient funds to send his
many children overseas. (We don’t know how many, if any, stayed with the parents.)
75
Robert E Mitchell
This combination of personal, primary and documentary evidence still required interpretation.
I suspect that individuals with vastly more experience and knowledge than I have might
interpret this evidence differently. So consider the following four conclusions as my best
assessments:
First, although the evidence may be shaky in places, it appears that the pre-arrival name
for my Mitchell family was some version of Detomischkofsky or Mischkofsky.
Second, my grandfather David Mitchell married into a family with the name Selinsky.
Third, it is quite likely that both the Detomischkofsky/Mischkofsky and Selinsky families
came from the same village, Vishtinetz, or its immediate environments.
Fourth, it is quite possible that over time other members of the same two families also
left Vishtinetz for America. They were not the only residents to do so.
The second of my two research objectives was to understand what it was like to have lived in
Vishtinetz during the nineteenth century. Meeting this best-judgment but admittedly perhaps
interpretative research challenge required a review of more traditional sources some of which
were online publications only. These sources were supplemented by email exchanges with
others who were exploring the same general topics.
I will not repeat and summarize my assessments of life in Vishtinetz, East Prussian influences,
and how conditions in Suwalki affected my ancestors and other Jews (the Pseudo-Prussians).
These separate sections were followed by how Jewish marriage rules, residential arrangements,
and economic networks influenced the lives of my ancestors, possible reasons why they
emigrated, and some of the social and kinship networks supportive of emigration.
Finally I covered some of the legal, economic and other pressures that predisposed Jews,
including my ancestors, to leave their families and communities for new lives far from home.
Now let me return to my children’s questions about my paternal ancestors: Did I at least
partially satisfy their demands?
They will have to answer that question, but I suspect that they had a more near-term interest in
my grandfather David Mitchell, his wife Augusta, their two daughters Belle and Lillian, and their
five sons, Robert, George, Sid, Lee, Arthur (my father), and Milton.
76
Robert E Mitchell
At age 84 I hope I am able to provide more information on this American family. But I can at
least close this chapter with two photos, one of my grandfather and his seven children, a photo
taken in February 1940 during a family reunion in Los Angeles, and the other of my
grandmother Augusta (taken in Detroit probably before 1920). These photos are followed by
pages 77 and 78 with admittedly incomplete information on each of my paternal aunts and
uncles.
Back row: Robert (Bob), Arthur (my father), Lee
Front row: Sid, Grandfather David, George, Milton
Sitting: Lillian, Belle
77
Robert E Mitchell
78
Robert E Mitchell
Brief Overview of Each of David and Augusta’s Eight Children
NAME
Robert
(Bob)
George
Belle
Lillian
Sidney
Leslie
Arthur
Milton
BIRTH
YEAR
DIED
1884
WIFE
1886
Lena
Not
married
1888
Not
married
1979
George
Fine
1892
1894
His heavy investments in Bell Telephone allowed him to survive the
depression. With younger brother Sid, they opened the Acorn
Lumber and Wrecking Co. In Flint, although it was Sid and Sid Jr.
who managed the operation. During my childhood, Uncle Bob and Aunt
Lena had an apartment in Palmer Park. Uncle Bob also lived in Florida
Before moving to Los Angeles where he died. Bob and Lena did not
have children.
A carpenter in 1910 living with his father in Detroit.
In 1910 census: an actress in theaters. Appeared in over 100 films plus
guest TV appearances between 1915 and 1982 often in "dark-eyed exotic
roles. With Paramount Theaters.
Bookkeeper in 1910. Husband in garment business. They gave my wife
one of the dresses from his business - - and I passed it on later to my
daughter Maude. I don't think they had any children.
My favorite uncle. One of the youngest students ever to have entered
the University of Michigan College of Engineering. Was a city engineer in
Tulsa when he lost everything in the Depression; moved to Detroit where
he lived with and was supported by my parents until he and Uncle Bob
started the successful Acorn Lumber and Wrecking Co. He was a
Myra
wonderful story teller. Both his children, Sid Jr. and Bob were born
1991 Lowenstein in Tulsa. Bob and wife Esther Rachel Fritz had four children.
1897
1899
1904
or 05
OTHER INFORMATION
Miriam
1967
Elizabeth
Wayne
Lucia
Nelson
Another wonderful uncle. He was, I believe, the manager of a major
California factory owned by Howard Hughes. His twin daughters Ardeth
and Sheila live in the Los Angeles area.
My father learned stenography that led him to a job with the Detroit
Police Department and an appointment as a Deputy Sheriff. He graduated
from the Detroit College of Law and before entering regular legal service
was the lawyer for the area's major Sicilian mafia gang. One of their
Detroit homes was at 20200 Briarcliff (my first home). I lived in Hong
Kong when he died (and I lived in Guinea-Bissau when my mother died).
My older brother Art and younger brother Don both passed away as did
my wife Sylvia Sheppard Mitchell.
A Los Angeles attorney with Mitchell & Gold. Two children: David & Julie.
79
Robert E Mitchell
ANNEX A: 47 Vishtinetz Jews living in East Prussia during the 1800s
These 47 names come from Dr. Ruth Leiserowitz’s website at
http://www.judeninostpreussen.de/front_content.php?idcat=111
Vistytis
Jewish life in East Prussia was in a very high level influenced by inputs from the Litvakian neighborhood.
Jewish inhabitants from sthetls near the former East Prussian borderzone crossed the border very often.
They had business in Koenigsberg, Tilsit and other towns or visited relatives, who settled here after 1812.
Sometimes they followed their neighbours, business partners or relatives and settled in East Prussian
places too. People from Vistytis (Vishtiniec) were found extremly often in the East Prussian territory. They
had a strong network. Here some informations collected from my research in several German archives:
*Source: Private State Archive (Berlin), XX. HA, Rep.2I, Tit.Nr.16, Nr.1
Jews without permission in Tilsit November, Dezember 1807 and January 1808
Place and time
Name
From where
What they do
25. Nov.1807
Itzig Karpel
Wishtitten
Trade business
2.Dec. 1807
Hiller Bachr
Wishtitten
Trade business
6.Jan. 1808
Nachim Jankee
Wishtitten
Trade business
*Source: Private State Archive (Berlin), I.HA,Rep.77, Tit.1021, Stallupoenen, No.1 Etablissement, 1814-1814
25.5.1814 Application for citizenship by Benjamin Hirsch from Wystiten and confirmation
*Source: Private State Archive (Berlin), I. HA, Rep. 89, Nr. 23676 Application for citizenship (1829-1840)
Beer Freitel Weinberg
Wystiten
now Königsberg, confirmed 1836
Mendel Schmul
Wystiten
now Friedland, refused
*Source: Private State Archive (Berlin), XX. HA, Rep. 2 II, Nr. 2133, Die Staatsbürgerrechte der Juden.
Aufenthaltsgenehmigungen.1844-1850, 179
Lives without permission in Koenigsberg: Moses Kaminski from Wystitten
*Source: Private State Archive (Berlin), I. HA, Rep. 89, Nr. 23677 Application for citizenship (1841-1846)
Mendel Seelig Heimann
Wystiten
now Berlin, refused
Ruben Levin
Wystiten
now Preußen
*Source: Private State Archive (Berlin), I. HA, Rep. 89, Nr. 23678 Application for citizenship (1847-1848)
Hirsch Chaim Norwitzky
Wystiten
Labiau
80
Robert E Mitchell
*Source: Private State Archive (Berlin), XX.HA, Rep. 2 II, Nr. 2133, Die Staatsbürgerrechte der Juden.
Aufenthaltsgenehmigungen.1844-1850, 3.
Crossed the border without permission: Levin Golding and David Neumann from Wystitten, asked for baptism
*Source: Private State Archive (Berlin), XX.HA, Rep.18, Tilsit XXIV, Nr.3, 19.
Document about Schlomke Wion and Selig Neumark from Wystiten about obtaining by underhand citizenship 1848
*Source: Private State Archive (Berlin), XX.HA, Rep. 18, Tilsit XXIV, Nr.3
Document about the order of removal for Leib Hirsch Schloßberg from Wystiten 1851
*Source: Private State Archive (Berlin), VIII. HA, J2, Nr. 2
1846 Document about baptism for Isaac Hirsch (28 years old) born in Wistiten, living now near Labiau
1847 Document about baptism for Moses Kaminski (18 years old) born in Wisztyten, living now in Koenigsberg
1847 Document about baptism for Marcus Jankel Brenner (19 years, 5 month old) born in Wischtitten, living now in
Adl. Gut Bothkeim
1848 Document about baptism for Samuel Bluhm (19 years old) born in Wisztyten, living now in Pomedien
1848 Document about baptism for Jerochim Blumenthal (b. 1817 in Wisztyten), living now in Beyershoff near
Darkehmen
*Source: Brilling Collection Jewish Museum Frankfurt
A 153 Jews in Tilsit. Citizenship from 1754-1855 and 1872-1905
Nr.
Name
Surname
Profession
Birth place
Birth date
Adress in Tilsit
Date of citizenship
183
Itzig
Epstein
Händler
Wystiten
1852
Fleischerstr.2
20.11.75
359
Julius
Michalowsky Pferdehändler
Wystiten
07.08.1813
Hohe Str. 49
09.03.77
2507
Isidor
Michalowsky
Händler
Wystiten
04.07.47
Hohe Str. 86
01.05.87
4493
Isaak
Kowalsky
Kaufmann
Wystiten
23.02.1843
Mittelstr.29
11.04.1900
*Source: Private State Archive (Berlin) XX HA, Rep.12, Titel 3, Nr.19, Band 1-12
Following persons (all born in Vishtiniec/Wystiten) lived 1885 in Eastprussian villages near the border, but had no
German citizenship:
Friede Janus nee Barkowski (b.1862)
Isidor Janus (b.1875)
Luise Barkowski (b.1865)
Bertha Sternfeld (b.1864)
Laser Dominski (b.1850)
Hulda Sandelofski (b.1866)
Therese nee Pariser married Sallisohn (b.1856)
Bertha nee. Halpat widowed Sternfeld (b.1842)
Isidor Detomischkowski (b.1878)
Max Sternfeld (b.1866)
Hulda nee Sandelowitz Demant (b.1853)
Pescha Falk (b.1886)
Sara Silberberg (b.1836)
Elske nee Alariansky Jordan (b.1857)
81
Robert E Mitchell
Jeanette nee Meserowitz Liebermann (b.1872)
Jankel Sandelowski (b.1862)
Lived 1885 in Eydtkuhnen:
Henriette nee Kaminski Freidberg (b.1860)
Lived 1885 in Stallupoenen:
Sarah nee Neumann Gelberg (b.1860)
Rebekka Gelberg (b.1882)
*Source: Bundesarchiv, Lichterfelde
Jews, (all born in Vishtiniec/Wystiten) who lived in 17.05.1939 in East Prussia
Name
Surname
Birth year
Birth place
Living place
Koppel
Klimowski
1879
Wystiten
Gerdauen
Adolf
Britz
1868
Wystiten
Kuckerneese
Flora
Jankowski nee Lewinski
1865
Wystiten
Tilsit
Dina
Demburky nee. Benkmann
1858
Wystiten
Tilsit
Joachim nee Silberstein
1878
Wystiten
Tilsit
Rahel
Epstein nee Eserbein
1854
Wystiten
Tilsit
Henriette
Joachim
1876
Wystiten
Altschrangenkrug
Leib
Direktor
03.04.1867
Wystiten
Gumbinnen
Lina
ANNEX B: 201 among many other immigrants from Vishtinetz between 1855 and 1873
This spreadsheet consists of 201 immigrants arriving in New York from Wistiten and its possible
spelling variations for the period 1855 to the first six months of 1873 via “indirect routes” as
selected from the long list of arrivals prepared by Geraldine Moser & Marlene Silverman in their
Hamburg Passengers from the Kingdom of Poland and the Russian Empire, Direct Passage to
New York: 1855-June, 1873 (Washington, DC: Landsmen Press, 1997). I no doubt may have
mistakenly included several (but very few) immigrants not from Vishtinetz, but it is more likely
that I failed to identify others.
Family Name
Personal
Name
Sex Age
Amadorsky
Israel
M
Family/
Single
20 S
Number
in Party
Ship
1 Gitana
Arriv
al
Date
72
Page
#
F
N
3
1
82
Robert E Mitchell
Andursky
Andursky
Moses
Lea
M
F
5 F
25 F
Anschlafsky
Ephrain
M
0.5 F
Anschlafsky
Rose
F
21 F
Barman
Jankel
M
23 F/S
Barman
Samuel
M
30 F/S
Blowinski
Schlome
M
19 S
Blumensohn
Blumenthal
Burton
Burton
Burton
Burton
Burton
Burton
Cohn
Benjamin
Bertha
David
Esther
Hirsch
Ida
Jette
Sahra
Sarah
M
F
M
F
M
F
F
F
F
24
30
7
6
10
5
34
3
20
Colon
Hattie
M
17 S
Conigiezke
David
Dietzman
Disternaeski
Chaim
Samuel
Isac
Gerson
M
M
M
M
24
40
19
32
Dormer
Elias
Israel
Leb
M
M
17 S
19 S
Ellenstein
Nathan
M
20 S
Epstein
Joel
M
23 S
Erbstein
Friedmann
Schlome
Mendel
M
M
28 S
28 S
Gilbert
Chiffre
F
25 S
Goldberg
Aaron
M
17 S
Goldberg
Meyer
M
40 S
S
S
F
F
F
F
F
F
S
S
S
S
S
2 Gitana
2 Gitana
G
2 Queen
G
2 Queen
Grimsb
2 y
Grimsb
2 y
Panthe
1 r
Wakefi
1 el
1 Lincoln
6 Urania
6 Urania
6 Urania
6 Urania
6 Urania
6 Urania
1 Lincoln
Minerv
1 a
Grimsb
1 y
1 Hero
1 Falcon
1 Hero
Eugeni
1 e
1 Gitana
Grimsb
1 y
Eugeni
1 e
Grimsb
1 y
1 Urania
Wakefi
1 el
Eugeni
1 e
G
1 Queen
67
67
3
3
2
3
69
3
4
69
3
5
65
5
6
65
5
7
72
10
8
66
69
57
57
57
57
57
57
69
10
10
13
13
13
13
13
13
17
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
72
17
18
63
64
55
64
17
18
18
18
19
20
21
22
65
70
19
21
23
24
64
21
25
63
21
26
64
55
21
25
27
28
70
27
29
67
28
30
65
28
31
83
Robert E Mitchell
Gordon
Gumbina
Cimer
Ezichiel
M
M
17 S
17 S
Gumbinen
Joel
M
24 S
Gumbino
Marcus
M
25 S
Gumbino
Moses
M
22 S
Halbert
Gnesche
F
22 S
Hanslawsky
Aaron
M
8 F
Hanslawsky
David
M
7 F
Hanslawsky
Rachel
F
40 F
Hanslawsky
Taube
F
12 F
Hirsch
Rachel
F
35 S
Hirsch
Rosine
F
30 S
Hirschberg
Boehel
F
7 F
Hirschberg
Sarah
F
44 F
Hochland
Leb
M
25 S
Holbert
Gnese
F
22 S
Holzberg
Jacob
M
10 F
Holzberg
Moses
M
11 F
Holzberg
Schmuel
M
40 F
Hulete
Braine
F
7 F
Hulete
Schone
F
23 F
1 Hamsa
1 Lincoln
Grimsb
1 y
Grimsb
2 y
Grimsb
2 y
G
1 Queen
H
McGre
4 g
H
McGre
4 g
H
McGre
4 g
H
McGre
4 g
Britann
2 i
Britann
2 i
H
McGre
2 g
H
McGre
2 g
Br
1 Queen
Grimsb
1 y
Minerv
3 a
Minerv
3 a
Minerv
3 a
Archim
2 ed
Archim
2 ed
72
66
30
33
32
33
67
33
34
65
33
35
65
33
36
67
34
37
73
34
38
73
34
39
73
34
40
73
34
41
69
36
42
69
36
43
70
36
44
70
36
45
73
37
46
67
37
47
72
37
48
72
37
49
72
37
50
59
37
51
59
37
52
84
Robert E Mitchell
Jankowsky
Jdzal
Theodore
Jacob
M
M
45 S
11 S
Kaminsky
Abraham
M
10 F
Kaminsky
Kaminsky
Feige
Mele
M
F
7 F
23 F
Kaminsky
Sorge
F
8 F
Kanowe
Kleinschmidt
Nessle
Anna
M
F
28 S
5 F
Kleinschmidt
Kleinschmidt
Dora
Chaim
F
M
28 F
26 F
Kronenberg
Isaac
M
17 S
Kuschalowsky
Aga
M
17 F
Kuschalowsky
Debora
F
22 F
Kuschalowsky
Elke
F
52 F
Kuschalowsky
Feige
F
6 F
Kuschalowsky
Jankel
M
9 F
Kuschalowsky
Leib
M
53 F
Kuschalowsky
Mausche
F
17 F
Kuschalowsky
Sorke
M
20 F
Kuschalowsky
Labilowitz
Soros
Gitel
F
F
7 F
18 S
Laje
Schone
M
21 S
Landan
Lauterstein
Leb
Abraham
M
M
26 S
19 S
Lavielsky
Moses
M
36 S
Hambu
1 rg
1 Hansa
Minerv
3 a
Minerv
3 a
1 Lincoln
Minerv
3 a
H
McGre
1 g
2 Hansa
2 Hansa
1 Lincoln
H
McGre
1 g
Minerv
9 a
Minerv
9 a
Minerv
9 a
Minerv
9 a
Minerv
9 a
Minerv
9 a
Minerv
9 a
Minerv
9 a
Minerv
9 a
1 Hansa
Archim
1 ed
Grimsb
1 y
1 Hansa
Grimsb
1 y
73
72
40
40
53
54
72
43
55
72
67
43
43
56
57
72
43
58
65
69
44
46
59
60
69
67
46
46
61
62
70
50
63
72
52
64
72
52
65
72
52
66
72
52
67
72
52
68
72
52
69
72
52
70
72
52
71
72
72
52
52
72
73
59
52
74
65
72
53
53
75
76
64
53
77
85
Robert E Mitchell
Lea
Hanne
F
16 F
Lea
Joseph
M
15 F
Lea
Rachel
F
10 F
Lebarowsky
Chaim
F
0.5 F
Lebarowsky
Debora
F
24 F
Lebarowsky
Leb
F
6 F
Lebowski
Hirsch
M
23 S
Lemann
Feige
F
5 S
Lemann
Hirsch
M
39 F
Lemann
Kale
F
3 S
Lemann
Radel
F
10 S
Lemann
Rale
F
7 S
Lemann
Taube
F
30 F
Levi
Jacobson
F
10 S
Levi
Michle
F
30 F
Levi
Michle
F
9 S
Levy
Louis
M
37 S
Levy
Marianne
F
41 F
Lichtenstein
Leb
M
23 S
Lichtenstein
Mortje
M
25 S
Lipsohn
Abraham
M
49 S
Lipsohn
Joseph
M
30 S
Lipsohn
Leser
M
42 S
Leopol
3 d
Leopol
3 d
Leopol
3 d
Minerv
3 a
Minerv
3 a
Minerv
3 a
Eugeni
1 e
Hamm
6 onia
Hamm
6 onia
Hamm
6 onia
Hamm
6 onia
Hamm
6 onia
Hamm
6 onia
Br
3 Queen
Br
3 Queen
Br
3 Queen
Eugeni
2 e
Eugeni
2 e
Grimsb
2 y
Grimsb
2 y
Leopar
1 d
Grimsb
2 y
Grimsb
2 y
72
53
78
72
53
79
72
53
80
72
53
81
72
54
82
72
54
83
63
54
84
61
54
85
61
54
86
61
54
87
61
54
88
61
54
89
61
55
90
72
55
91
72
55
92
72
55
93
65
56
94
65
56
95
65
57
96
65
57
97
72
59
98
64
59
99
64
59
100
86
Robert E Mitchell
Longinsky
Chaim
M
24 S
Lotwack
Moses
M
18 S
Manning
Meyer
Manie
Abraham
M
M
18 S
18 S
Mindel
Chawe
F
36 S
Mittenthal
Abraham
M
0.6 F
Mittenthal
Barbara
F
30 F
Mittenthal
Fanny
F
19 F
Mittenthal
Jacob
M
8 F
Mittenthal
Philip
M
16 F
Mosel
Wolff
M
24 S
Mutzermacher Isaac
Nackewitz
Franz
M
M
28 S
29 S
Nathan
Daniel
M
20 S
Nathan
Sarah
F
23 S
Niedersninsky
Jacob
M
21 S
Oppenheim
Jankel
M
21 F
Oppenheim
Feiway
M
18 F
Poluwacz
Anna
F
11 F
Poluwacz
Catherina
F
33 F
Poluwacz
Joseph
M
9 F
Poluwacz
Marie
F
5 F
Grimsb
1 y
Eugeni
1 e
H
McGre
1 g
1 Hero
Grimsb
1 y
G
4 Queen
G
4 Queen
G
4 Queen
G
4 Queen
Br
4 Queen
Eugeni
1 e
Panthe
1 r
1 Hansa
Grimsb
1 y
Q
1 Scotia
Eugeni
1 e
Minerv
2 a
Minerv
2 a
Hambu
5 rg
Hambu
5 rg
Hambu
5 rg
Hambu
5 rg
63
59
101
65
59
102
71
64
62
65
103
104
67
66
105
71
66
106
71
66
107
71
66
108
71
66
109
71
66
110
65
67
111
73
72
68
68
112
113
66
68
114
67
68
115
66
69
116
65
71
117
65
71
118
73
74
119
73
74
120
73
74
121
73
74
122
87
Robert E Mitchell
Poluwacz
Rosalee
F
2 F
Polomintzky
Albert
M
50 S
Porwin
Potoppe
Potoppe
Potoppe
Potoppe
Potoppe
Potoppe
Potoppe
Potoppe
Potoppe
David
Esther
Feibisch
Flora
Joseph
Leiser
Loschky
Michalis
Rachel
Sahra
M
F
M
F
M
M
M
M
F
F
18
3
10
37
6
10
9
5
16
20
Potoppe
Potoppe
Vogel
Vogel
F
F
38 F
16 F
Pietrzyk
Michael
M
28 S
Raschkofsky
Fege
M
11 F
Raschkofsky
Rodobinsky
Pauline
David
F
M
20 F
17 S
Rosenbaum
Hirsch
M
21 S
Rosenberg
Rosenberg
Rosenberg
I
Salatky
Belke
M
F
f
29 F
27 F
0.1
Rosenthal
Ida
F
45 F
Rosenthal
Max
M
19 F
Rosenthal
Max
M
11 F
Rosenthal
May
M
11 F
Rosenthal
Reishe
F
19 F
S
F
F
F
F
F
F
F
F
F
Hambu
5 rg
Wakefi
1 el
Eugeni
1 e
11 Urania
11 Urania
11 Urania
11 Urania
11 Urania
11 Urania
11 Urania
11 Urania
11 Urania
73
74
123
72
74
124
63
57
57
57
57
57
57
57
57
57
75
75
75
75
75
75
75
75
75
75
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
11 Urania
11 Urania
H
McGre
1 g
Minerv
2 a
Minerv
2 a
1 Hansa
H
McGre
1 g
57
57
75
75
135
136
73
73
137
71
77
138
71
72
77
79
139
140
65
80
141
3 Falcon
3 Falcon
3 Falcon
Hambu
8 rg
Hambu
8 rg
Hambu
8 rg
Hambu
8 rg
Hambu
8 rg
55
55
55
80
80
80
142
143
144
73
81
145
73
82
146
73
82
147
73
82
148
73
82
149
88
Robert E Mitchell
Rosenthal
Salomon
M
35 F
8
Rosenthal
Simon
M
9 F
8
Rosenthal
Simon
M
8 F
8
Rothschild
Rothstein
Leb
Sarah
M
F
18 S
20 S
1
1
Sandolfsky
Serach
M
43 S
1
Scandlowsky
Barbara
M
28 S
1
Scherman
Jankel
M
19 S
1
Schlilansky
Besa
F
25 S
1
Schmul
Ettke
F
26 S
1
Schuster
Hillel
M
22 S
1
Sechariacz
Fransesco M
21 S
1
Silinsky
Itzig
M
5 F
3
Silinsky
Moses
M
32 F
3
Silinsky
Slandowsky
Rahel
Thomare
F
M
7 F
20 S
3
1
Slamowicz
Nathan
M
12 S
1
Solinsky
Solinsky
Starisky
Starisky
Stein
Nicholi
Schene
Marcus
Sahra
Abraham
F
F
M
F
M
36
0.5
20
22
25
2
2
2
2
3
Stein
Frommet
F
20 F
Stein
Leib
M
42 F
Warthelsky
Hirsch
M
49 F
F
F
F
F
F
Hambu
rg
Hambu
rg
Hambu
rg
Grimsb
y
Hansa
Br
Queen
Grimsb
y
Minerv
a
Wakefi
el
Archim
ed
L
Cardig
Panthe
r
Wakefi
el
Wakefi
el
Wakefi
el
Hansa
G
Queen
Gitana
Gitana
Urania
Urania
Urania
Minerv
3 a
Minerv
3 a
Britann
2 i
73
82
150
73
82
151
73
82
152
64
69
82
82
153
154
64
85
155
65
86
156
72
87
157
67
88
158
59
89
159
63
91
160
73
92
161
71
94
162
71
94
163
71
72
94
95
164
165
72
95
166
71
71
57
57
57
96
96
97
97
97
167
168
169
170
171
72
97
172
72
97
173
66
103
174
89
Robert E Mitchell
Warthelsky
Leb
M
31 F
Wartowsky
Moses
M
22 F
Wartowsky
Chane
F
30 F
Wartowsky
Enke
F
9 F
Wartowsky
Rifke
F
5 F
Britann
2 i
Britann
5 i
Br
5 Queen
Br
5 Queen
Br
5 Queen
Wartowsky
Schmuel
M
28 F
5
Watelsky
Beer
M
22 F
3
Watelsky
Hirsch
M
34 F
3
Watelsky
Moses
M
45 F
3
Weinbaum
Ende
F
19 F
2
Weinbaum
Hirsch
M
19 F
2
Wigtnsky
Leib
M
39 S
1
Wilenschik
Channe
F
25 F
3
Wilenschik
Meyer
M
30 F
3
Wilenschik
Schebe
F
3 F
3
Wolf
Wiskowsky
Ascher
Jacob
M
M
26 S
18 S
1
1
Witschkowitz
Leb
M
48 S
1
Zacharias
Esther
F
34 F
4
Zacharias
Hanna
M
25 S
1
Zacharias
Moses
M
2 F
3
Br
Queen
Grimsb
y
Grimsb
y
Grimsb
y
H
McGre
g
H
McGre
g
Archim
ed
Minerv
a
Minerv
a
Minerv
a
Leopar
d
Hero
Harleq
ui
Burling
ton
H
McGre
g
Burling
ton
66
103
175
70
103
176
70
103
177
70
103
178
70
103
179
70
103
180
66
103
181
66
103
182
66
103
183
72
103
184
72
103
185
56
105
186
72
105
187
72
105
188
72
105
189
65
64
106
106
190
191
64
106
192
55
107
193
69
107
194
55
107
195
90
Robert E Mitchell
Zacharias
Samuel
M
39 F
Zacharias
Zusel
M
4 F
Zallman
Isack
M
20 S
Zygnabowsky
Debora
F
6 F
Zygnabowsky
Else
F
30 F
Zygnabowsky
Schlome
M
8 F
Burling
3 ton
Burling
3 ton
Ger
1 Empir
L
3 Cardig
L
3 Cardig
L
3 Cardig
55
107
196
55
107
197
73
107
198
65
109
199
65
109
200
65
109
201
91