200 years of Jewish life in shtetl Kaushany in Bessarabia

5 
 
APPENDICES ........................................................................................................75
 
A.
 
L
IST OF 
J
EWISH FAMILIES WHO LIVED IN 
K
AUSHANY FROM END OF 
19
TH
 CENTURY TO 
1940
S
 75
 
B.
  
S
OCIETY 
“D
AMEN 
F
EREIN
”
 
(“S
ERENE 
W
OMEN
”) ............................................................... 104
 
C.
  
D
ISPUTE 
M
EETING
 .............................................................................................................. 106
 
D.
  
B
USINESS 
D
IRECTORY
,
 
K
AUSHANY 
1924-1925 .................................................................. 109
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................................................................................114
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

---

6 
 
 
I.  Introduction 
 
 
Very little, if anything, is written about mestechko, the small towns or townlets in Eastern 
Europe with fewer than two thousand Jewish residents.  There is almost nothing about such 
places in Jewish scholarship.  If lucky, one may find that Jews lived there in a certain year, and 
that a synagogue or a burial society was created in another year.  For some small towns, there 
might be a line about Nazi atrocities.  There are some exceptions, for example an 800-page book 
There Once Was a World.  A 900-Year Chronicle of the Shtetl of Eishyshok, written by Yaffa 
Eliach
1
.  
 
Many Yizkor Books were written in the 1950s about the larger towns, with stories about 
Jewish life from the beginning of the 20
th
 century throughout World War II.  Most of them were 
published in Israel by societies connected to a town or a region
2
.  These books are great 
testimonies to Jewish life in Eastern Europe.  One of the major Jewish genealogical sources, 
JewishGen.org
3
, affiliated with the Museum of Jewish Heritage, has thousands of volunteers 
creating a memorial for the Jews who once lived all across Europe.   A section of JewishGen, 
KehilaLinks
4
, includes websites for many towns, sometimes very small communities in Ukraine, 
Lithuania, Moldova, Hungary and other countries.  All these websites were developed by 
volunteers with connections to these places; they usually include a history of the town, a history 
of the Jews in that town, old town photos and maps, memoirs of the residents, testimonials from 
                                                 
1
 
Eliach, 1998 Eliach, Y. (1998). There once was a world. A 900-Year Chronicle of the Shtetl of Eishyshok. Boston, 
New York, London: Little Brown and Company. 
2
 Many of the Yizkor Books are available online at NY Public Library: http://yizkor.nypl.org.  
3
 http://www.jewishgen.org  
4
 http://kehilalinks.jewishgen.org  

---

7 
 
the survivors of the Holocaust, reports of recent visits to these places, discoveries of cemeteries, 
or synagogues hidden close by and more.  
 
I have a special interest in the Bessarabia
5
 region because I was born in Kishinev
6
, which 
was once the capital of Bessarabia oblast and gubernia
7
.  My parents, grandparents, and great 
grandparents were all born and lived in Bessarabia.  In my 2006 Hebrew College course 
“Through Their Eyes” with Professor Jay Berkovitz, I engaged in a study of Jewish life in the 
whole region of Bessarabia/Moldova.  My final paper for the course was “A geo-historical and 
cultural overview of Jewish life in Bessarabia/Moldavia region up to the beginning of the 19
th
 
century.”  
 
In addition, I have an interest in pursuing my own Jewish heritage.  Because of the 
political situation of the 1940's to 1980’s I had been unable to pursue that interest when living in 
Kishinev and in Moscow.  Only after emigration from the Soviet Union in 1989 was I able to 
study Jewish subjects and be involved in historical and genealogical Jewish research. 
Why Kaushany? 
 
My mother and father, their parents and grandparents back six generations lived in the 
shtetl Kaushany, in the district of Bendery
8
, before the Great Patriotic War
9
 of 1941; my father 
was born there.  I am able to trace my relatives in Kaushany back to 1835, at which time it was 
in Bessarabia, in the Russian Empire.  My ancestors probably lived there long before that, when 
it was under Tatar rule as part of the Ottoman Empire.  Both my paternal and maternal ancestors 
                                                 
5
 Bessarabia is a region between Rivers Prut, Dniester, Danube and the Black Sea.  The name originally applied only 
to the southern part of the territory, and only in 19c under Russian rule the whole region was named Bessarabia. 
6
 Capital of Moldova,  the republic of the Soviet Union, and currently the capital of Republic of Moldova. 
A large part of Bessarabia was included after WWII into the Republic of Moldova, and southern and northern parts 
became part of the Ukraine. 
7
 Oblast, gubernia - province in Russian Empire. 
8
 A major town on Dniester River, now it is part of Transnistria, the self-proclaimed region. 
9
 The name used in the U.S.S.R for the War between the Soviet Union and Germany, 1941-1945. 

---