By Gary Mokotoff and Sallyann Amdur Sack with Alexander Sharon
The award-winning Where Once We Walked (WOWW) identifies more than 23,500 towns in Central and Eastern Europe where Jews lived before the Holocaust. The index includes 17,500 alternate names including Yiddish, pre-World War I, interwar and post-world War II names. Gives latitude/longitude, Jewish population before the Holocaust and cites as many as 50 books that reference the town. A soundex index allows locating the town when only how to pronounce the name is known.
8½" x 11" 736 pp. hardcover $85.00
This Revised Edition contains many improvements to the original Where Once We Walked -
• 4,500 more synonyms. An additional 4,500 synonyms for towns (new total: 17,500) were made possible due to our discovery of two remarkable name-change gazetteers that gave the pre-World War I names for towns that were once part of the German and Austro-Hungarian Empires.
• Hundreds of towns located. Hundreds of towns that could not be located in WOWW have now been located and their exact latitudes/longitudes have been added.
• 800 towns added. The original version of WOWW was rather rigorous, containing nearly 23,000 towns. This new work includes an additional 800 towns.
• Town names changed to contemporary names. With the collapse of the Soviet Union happening since the first volume was published, thousands of town names in Belarus and Ukraine have been changed from their Russian names to Byelorussian and Ukrainian names. For example, Grodno, Byelorussian SSR, is now Hrodna, Belarus. Kamenets Podolskiy, Ukrainian SSR, is now Kam"yanets'-Podil's'kyy, Ukraine. This WOWW reflects the town names as they exist today, and the Russian names for these towns are now identified as synonyms.
• Expanded and improved soundex. The Daitch-Mokotoff soundex index has been expanded and improved. Certain Polish and Romanian letters that do not sound identical to their English equivalents have been double coded.
• Diacritic marks added to town names. The current names of all towns include their correct diacritic marks.
• Integration of WOWW Companion. Avotaynu has previously published another book titled WOWW Companion, that made it possible to determine which towns listed in WOWW were in the vicinity of a particular shtetl. We have incorporated an updated version of this entire work into this edition of WOWW. See example.
• Eleven new sources of information about the Jews of Central and Eastern Europe have been added including all the towns identified in Miriam Weiner's books Jewish Roots in Poland and Jewish Roots in Ukraine and Moldova, the new Pinkas Hakehillot (Encyclopedia of Towns), Finding Your Jewish Roots in Galicia, and others.
• Many original sources have been updated, such as the yizkor book collection, the holdings of the LDS (Mormon) Family History Library, and those of the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People.
• Contemporary countries identified. Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia no longer exist. WOWW-RE identifies the country in which the towns of these former political entities are now located.
• Latitude/longitudes corrected. The latest data available from the United States government Board on Geographic Names has slightly different latitude/longitudes for many of the towns. WOWW reflects these changes.
• Regional names included. Sometimes what is perceived as the name of a town, is, in fact, the name of a region. We have included 45 regional names such as Banat, Bavaria, Bessarabia, Bohemia, Dalmatia, Franconia, Galicia, Gubernia, Kurland, Lietuva, Moravia, Podolia, Pommerania, Prussia, Transylvania, Volyn, and Westphalia to name a few.
Sample entry:
Bilhorod-Dnistrovs'kyy, Ukr.; (Akerman, Akkerman, Belgorod Dnestrovski, Belgorod Dnestrovskii, Belgorod Dnestrovskiy, Cetatea Alba, Ir Lavan) pop. 4,239; 42 km SW of Odesa; 46°12'/30°21'; AMG, CAHJP, EDRD, EJ, GUM4, HSL, JRUM, LDL, PHR2, SF, YB.
The number of towns identified in this edition are listed here by country:
| Poland Germany Ukraine Hungary Romania Czech Republic Belarus Moldova Slovak Republic Lithuania Austria Latvia Croatia Russia Serbia Greece Bosnia Slovenia Bulgaria Estonia Macedonia Montenegro Regions Not determined TOTAL | 6,160 |
NOTE WE CANNOT SHIP THIS PARTICULAR BOOK OVERSEAS. U.S. ADDRESSES ONLY PLEASE.