What
is "Felshtin"?
Felshtin
(pronounced fel-SHTEEN), sometimes spelled "Felshteen,"
"Fel'shtin," "Felstin", "Felstein",
"Felschtein", etc., was a small, rural Ukrainian town
that contained a Jewish community, or shtetl.
Felshtin
was located 78 miles north-northeast of Chernovtsy and 186 miles
west-southwest of Kiev.
It is sometimes confused with a completely different
town, "Felzstyn"
(Skelevka), 340 miles west
of Kiev, famous for its wooden synagogue.
During a brutal pogrom on February 18,
1919, an estimated 600 Jewish Felshtiners were massacred
-- about a third of the total Jewish
population. On Yom Kippur, 1941, Nazis exterminated most of
Felshtin's surviving Jewish population.
Today the town is known as "Gvardeyskoye." A few
Felshtiners
absent from the town during the holocaust returned after the
war. Born in 1947,
Polina Lerner is believed to be the last
Jewish person born in Felshtin. Her family left Felshtin in 1970,
and today she lives in Philadelphia.
What is the Felshtin
Society?
Felshtiners who came to the United States
established the New York-based First Felshteener
Progressive
Benevolent Association, which was organized in 1905 and incorporated
in December
1909.
The association provided relief to survivors of the 1919 pogrom, helping
them settle in the
U.S.,
Israel, and Latin America. The Association also created and published
a Felshtin yizkor
(memorial)
book
in 1937, sponsored social events, a memorial in Dimona, Israel, and
maintained
the Felshtin
section of a Staten Island cemetery. By the late 1970s, many Felshtin-born
Americans had
passed
away, and the Association grew increasingly inactive.
A renewed interest in
Jewish history and genealogy emerged in the 1990s. Led by Sid
Shaievitz,
Michael and the late Phyllis Nevins, Barbara
Fischkin, and others, in 1998 the Felshtin group
was reborn as
the Felshtin Society, dedicated to
translating and publishing an English version
of the Felshtin yizkor
book, restoring the Felshtiner section of
the Baron Hirsch cemetery in
Staten Island, and providing
forums for social and educational
interchange.
The Felshtin Society's first event was highly successful. Drawing more than
100 people,
a "reunion"
for Felshtiners and Felshtin descendants was held in New York City on
February 7, 1999.
The event
featured a keynote talk by David Roskies, Professor of Jewish
Literature at the
Jewish Theological
Seminary of America.
A second reunion was held in
Manhattan on May 3, 2009. The Felshtin Society continues to coordinate
several projects, including creating a memorial to pogrom victims in
Gvardeyskoye (formerly Felshtin),
collecting photographs and family
histories from descendants of Felshtiners, planning a trip to
Gvardeyskoye, and translating the Felshtin yizkor book.
Why is
the Felshtin yizkor book important?
According to
Zachary Baker, head librarian of Yivo, in style and content, Felshtin's
670-page
memorial book, written almost entirely in Yiddish
and published in 1937, was the prototype of a
literary genre that proliferated after the Holocaust.
The Felshtin book presents the most
detailed account of a Ukrainian pogrom and of Ukrainian
shtetl
life of its era. The book is a valuable
resource to for those interested in Jewish history
and literature and for descendants of Felshtiners seeking
information about their roots.
How may
I find out more about Felshtin and the Felshtin Society?
Extensive resources about Felshtin
appear in www.felshtin.org. For information about the
Felshtin
Society, send e-mail to Alan Bernstein.
Updated May 2009
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