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This is a 1938 Polish copy of
a 1870 Russian original, written partially in Polish and partially in Russian
using pre-revolution spelling conventions, when the original Birth Certificate
is cited.
Blue text: originally in Polish
Black text: originally in Russian
Brown text: my comments (ZR)
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Birth
Certificate
A clerk of
the Register Office1 of the Brześć Kujawski Synagogue District hereby
certifies that the metrical books for the year 1870 contain the following Birth
Certificate, recorded as the item No 14.
No 14. It happened in the town of
Brześć on the 17 April 1870, at 9:00AM, that a Jew Jakub
Pietruszyński2, a tailor
living in this town of Brześć for 34 years since he was born, in the
presence of Jews: Mordka Rubinstein, a synagogue caretaker
[ШКОЛЬНИК]3, 55 years of age, and Salomon Bolimowski,
a merchant, living in the town of Brześć for 30 years since he was
born, has shown us an infant of a masculine sex, stating that this infant was
born in the town of Brześć on 10th April of this year at
11:00PM by his lawful wife Fajgla Itta4
nee Kaftanska5, 34 years old,
which infant, while circumcised, was called Icchak. This Act was read to the
person presenting the baby and to the witnesses and signed by myself and by the
witnesses. Signing the act were Chmielewski, S
Bolimowski6, M Rubinsztein6.
I confirm
the identity of the copy with the original act.
Town of Brześć Kujawski, 21 May 1938
Clerk of
the Register Office, Mayor7 [illegible signature]
A round stamp on the first
page: City Council, [part of the stamp missing, probably
Brześć] Kujawski
A 1 Złoty duty stamp
On the next page:
A rectangular stamp on the
next page: Włocławek
District (Starosta)
A rectangular stem just below: I confirm the authenticity of the
signature of the
Mayor of Brześć and authenticity of
the stamp
Włocławek, 25 May 1938
Starosta
of Włocławek
A round stamp: District
Starosta8 of Włocławek
A 1 Złoty duty stamp,
two 25 Grosze duty stamps9
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Comments
1. Polish ‘Urzędnik
Stanu Cywilnego’ means a clerk dealing with registration of births, deaths and
marriages. I wonder if English ‘Register Office’ is the best equivalent?
2. I transliterate the names
written in Cyrillic as they probably looked like originally in Polish.
3. Russian
ШКОЛЬНИК used in this document
means a school pupil, although taking into account the age of the witness, this
does not seem to be possible. This is a an obvious language mistake of the
Polish scribe, who literally copied an old Polish-Yiddish noun ‘szkolnik’,
meaning a synagogue janitor/caretaker.
4. I have never heard of a
Jewish female name Itta, but it looks like it is still used by the American
Jewish community, see: http://names.whitepages.com/first/Itta
It does not seem to be
particularly popular, as in the US there is 70-odd Ittas versus over 2000
Zbigniews.
5. Family name
Kaftański (‘kaftan’ meaning a cloak in Polish, quite typical Polish-Jewish
name) was wrongly transcribed to Cyrillic as Kawtanski.
6. Interestingly, although
the clerk Chmielewski (an obviously Polish name) signed the original in the
Cyrillic script, the witnesses, Bolimowski and Rubinstein, apparently preferred
to sign it using the Latin script. That was back in 1870, during a period of
forced russification following the failed January Uprising and tells something
about the cultural allegiance of Polish Jews at this time. Rubinstein also
used a polonised version of his name Rubinsztein.
7. It looks like in 1938 the
town of Brześć Kujawski had one person fulfilling the duties of a
mayor and more humble post of the Register Office clerk.
8. Poland was and still is administratively divided into Województwa (sing. Województwo, eng.
Voivodeship, currently 17, each with a larger city) and Powiaty (powiat), with
several powiaty in one Województwo. A chief government officer in a powiat is
a Starosta (‘Elder’), an old Czech term dating back to early medieval ages.
Starosta, even of a humble Powiat, was an appointed powerful figure in Polish
inter-war administration.
9. Four duty stamps, one on
page 1 and three on page 2, are together for2 zloty 50 grosze. 200 zloty was a
very good monthly in pre-war Poland.
Brześć Kujawski [Brest Kuiavien, בריסק קױאװסק] belongs to
the Polish region of Kujawy (eng Kuyavia). It used to be capital of a small
duchy, independent from XIII to XIV century. Future King of Poland, Wladyslaw the Short (Łokietek) who re-unified the country in the 1st half of
the XIV century was born in Brześć Kujawski and started his political
career as its Duke. A Polish equivalent of Magna Charta, known as “Neminem
captivabimus nisi iure victum”, was signed off by King Wladyslaw Jagiello here
in 1425.
It is here (note that there
are several towns/villages by the name Brześć in contemporary Poland and Byelorussia):
Currently it has 4500
inhabitants. In the 1877 census it had 2106 inhabitants. In free Poland, in the 1931 census, it had 6658 inhabitants, including 5998 Roman Catholics, 645
Jews, 7 Protestants and 8 East Orthodox.
Jews were mentioned in
Brześć for the first time in a XVI century document.
In 1493 Bishop of
Wielkopolska (Great Poland) Teodor was indebted to the Jews of Brześć
on a significant sum of 1600 Hungarian Zlotys.
In 1538 the Jews were allowed
to have 15 houses in the town; however, a 1565 census mentions 19 Jewish
homesteads. On 15 April 1656, during the Swedish ‘deluge’, Polish troops of
hetman (supreme commander) Jan Czarniecki (a Polish national hero, mentioned in
the current anthem), massacred the local Jewish population, killing around 100
families (according to some sources) or164 people (according to others),
including the local Rabbi. This was retaliation for alleged Jewish
collaboration with the Swedes. Before the massacre the Jews were offered a
baptism which would save their lives, but they refused. Some historians claim
that Czarniecki troops waged a fairly indiscriminative campaign of terror in
the region, which as a whole supported the Swedes.
In 1674 there were only 32
Jews in Brześć.
There is a record of a 1765
dispute between the local Jewish community, numbering 164 persons and the local
Roman Catholic parish priest about Jewish obligations to support the local
hospital.
After the partition of Poland, probably as a result of a particularly severe destruction of Brześć
during Napoleonic Wars, the Jews transiently left the town. A first Jewish
re-settler appeared only in 1851. In 1914 Jewish shops were looted by
Cossacks.
Local Jews were regarded as
relatively wealthy in the inter-war period of the Second Polish Republic. Most of them were tailors or merchants.
During the Second World War
the Germans burnt the synagogue, and established a local ghetto in 1940,
incarcerating around 600 people. It was later closed and remaining 400 Jews
were sent to the Łódź ghetto and the Włocławek ghetto (in
September 1941), from which they were further deported to the death camp in
Chełmno on Ner in April 1942, where they were all murdered.
A local Jewish cemetery was
destroyed during the last war. Polish communist authorities later decided to
build a town swimming pool in its site.
Currently, there is no
memorial commemorating the Jewish community in Brześć.
According to the official
town website:
http://www.brzesckujawski.pl/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=73&Itemid=117
and websites:
http://www.brzesckujawski.republika.pl/dzieje_brzescia.html
http://www.kirkuty.xip.pl/brzesc_kujawski
http://www.jewishinstitute.org.pl/pl/gminy/miasto/201.html
http://sasiedzi.zsel.edu.pl/strony/wloclawek/getto/getto.html
plus remarks in a few other
websites