New York: Jews in the Turkic World

Although Tracing the Tribe missed reporting on this conference earlier, readers should know about such events which shed light on relatively unknown Jewish communities.

On November 23, the Azerbaijan Society of America (ASA) and Azerbaijani-American Council (AAC) joined the Turkish Coalition of America (TCA), the Assembly of Turkish American Associations (ATAA), the "Turk of America" magazine and the Uzbek Initiative organized a one-day symposium on "Jewish Identity in the Turkic World," at New York's Center for Jewish History.

Note that Azerbaijan was part of Iran and that Farsi is spoken there as well as Azeri, a Turkic language. Additionally, the city of Baku was famous for its oil production in the early 20th century, and many of our ancestors from Belarus (including some of mine) and elsewhere, moved there to work in the new industry.

The region is also important as many Russian Jews were evacuated to Uzbekistan and other areas at the time of WWII. Each of these Jewish communities had indigenous Sephardic components as well as Ashkenazi communities.

For centuries, the Jewish peoples have lived in Azerbaijan, Turkey, Uzbekistan and other parts of the Turkic world. Tens of thousands of "Sephardi Jews" lived in present-day Turkey since 1492, when Ottoman Turks provided shelter and acceptance to the Jews escaping the Spanish Inquisition. One of the largest Azeri-speaking communities in America are the Mountain Jews. They settled in Azerbaijan over two millennia ago and tens of thousands of them continue to live in northern parts of Azerbaijan today, enjoying prosperity and acceptance. The Bukharian Jews of Uzbekistan thrived in this region for 2500 years in an atmosphere of tolerance and mutual respect.

The program included speakers representing the Jewish communities of Azerbaijan, Turkey and Uzbekistan.

Jews in Turkey: History and Presence

David Saltzman (Turkish Coalition of America)
Yildiz Yuksek Blackstone (President, Luca Luca)
Alan R. Cordova (Columbia University):
"Sephardi Jewish history in Rhodes and Marmara region "

Jewish Heritage in the Turkic World

Sergei Weinstein (International Charity Fund of Mountain Jews):
"Islam and Judaism in Russia"
Rashbil Shamayev (Azerbaijani Jewish Community):
"Azerbaijani Jewish community relations with Azerbaijan"
Farkhod Muradov (Uzbek Initiative):
"Bukharian Jewish Congress of the U.S. and Canada"

Art, Music & Film Industry

Barry Habib (Broadway producer, "Rock of Ages")
Victoria Barrett (filmmaker):
"Desperate Hours," Screening and Talk on the role Turkish diplomats played in saving thousands of Jews during the Holocaust.

Habib and Blackstone spoke about their life experiences. Paintings by Stass Shpanin were displayed along with the copies of historical documents from the Ottoman Archives which illustrated Ottoman-Jewish historical relations.

The conference was also co-sponsored by the International Charity Fund of Mountain Jews (STMEGI), the Turkish-American Chamber of Commerce and Industry (TACCI), the Bukharian Jewish Community of the US and Canada, the Turkish American Action Committee and "Kavkaz" Jewish Youth Center.

For more information, click here.

Tashkent refugee cards - new online database

In a boon to genealogists, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum has placed online a database of 152,000 Jewish refugees who were in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, during 1941 and 1942.

According to the USHMM, more than 1 million Jews from the FSU, including annexed territories of Eastern Poland, the Baltics, Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina, passed through Tashkent as they fled before the German army.

Many evacuees reached Central Asia in this era. The USHMM database was prepared from the evacuees' card catalog in the Central State Archives of Uzbekistan in Tashkent.

From 2004 to 2006, Central Asia Research Project researchers, led by Prof. Saidjon Kurbanov, selected and digitized 152,000 cards of Jewish evacuees. The USHMM provided funding; Kurbanov and his team compiled the database and card images.

According to Kurbanov, the cards list only people whose initial stopping point in Uzbekistan was Tashkent. It does not include those who arrived after February 1942.

Data on the front of the card includes: family name, given name, father's name, relationship to head of household, gender, year of birth (or age at registration), place of birth, profession (education), nationality (Jewish), former residence, work place before evacuation, position, current residence/address, current place of work (organization and position), and reference/registration number in the Registry books (list number, page number and individual number on the list).

The card reverse (if there is one) contains (for dependants under age 16): Family name, given name, father's name, relationship to head of household, year of birth (or age at registration). I also found one card in a different format for a minor male, age 14.

The search engine is excellent. Search by just the first letter of the first or last name or location. Text comes up for several fields in English and scrolling to the right will bring up the same text in Cyrillic. This is a great help for those researchers who may not know how to spell the names they are looking for in Russian. Spelling is not standardized so some creative thinking may be required.

Clicking on the left-most column will bring up a digital image of the front of the registration card and, in some cases, the back of the card.

A search for TALALAI produced eight cards. Two of them information on the back, listing additional family members and addresses. Some of these individuals had previously been in my records only as small children, with no other information.

Of the names I found in this database, I already knew about the family branches from Moscow and Bobruisk, but a branch in Romny, Sumskaia USSR was a new one for me, and had clues to additional information.

Only 1,000 search results are listed at one time. When I conducted a Mogilev, Belarus search, the results also included people from Mogilev gubernia, as well as Mogilev Podulsk which is nowhere near Mogilev, Belarus.

A worthwhile database to be sure. Search here.

Let's hope that Professor Kurbanov is hot on the trail of card catalogs in other Central Asian archives.