. NICK'S

6066 W. Maple • West Bloomfield, Olichigan 48322 • (248) 851-0805

rent scenes are side by side. In a section
called "People and Places," she includes
photos of daily life today, with glimpses
of the last remaining Jews.
In 1997, Weiner published Jewish
Roots in Poland: Pages from the Past
and Archival Inventories, and this new
book, published in cooperation with
the Ukrainian State Archives and the
Moldovan National Archives, is much
expanded in format. Now, she is
working on the third volume on
Belarus and Lithuania.
In each of the articles that have been
written about Weiner over the last
decade, the description of the 57-year
old as passionate about her work appears
prominently. That quality is in evidence
within sec-
onds of
being in her
energetic
presence.
She
worked on
JElf1S11
this book for
i■ iSGES PRoM 1011,A,S1 AND
eight years,
shuttling
between her
home and
office in
Secaucus,
"Only one who has
N.J., and an
worked
in these archives
apartment in
and
with
these
people can
Mogilev
understand the magnitude
Podolskiy in
of[Miriam Weiner)
Ukraine.
achievement," writes
There,
Michael Berenbaum, for-
Weiner, who
mer president and CEO
speaks only
of the Visual History
about 100
Foundation in Los
words of
Angeles, in the book's
Russian and
introduction.
enough
Hebrew to
make out tombstone inscriptions, travels
with a driver and translator who is the
former mayor of Ataki, Moldova.
Weiner tells of her excitement in
visiting the towns in Ukraine her fam-
ily came from, entering archives that
had been controlled by the KGB and,
in 1991, finding in Priluki the birth
certificate of-her grandmother, after
whom she was named. The document
was "a link to something I didn't know
I needed or wanted," she says. "Once I
experienced it, it took over my life."
Before doing this work, Weiner was
a private detective, road manager for
country singer Bobbie Gentry, a para-
legal, and was executive director of the
American Gathering of Jewish
Holocaust Survivors. She says that she
uses all of the skills she developed in
her years of investigating, interview-
ing, report writing, assembling press

ARCHIVAL

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kits and writing briefs in her work
with "Routes to Roots" and in prepar-
ing these books. "Who would have
dreamed?" she asks. "Never, never."
About contemporary Jewish life in
the places she visits, she says, "I am over-
whelmed with the enormity of the job
of rebuilding the Jewish community in
these countries, and at the same time,
I'm thrilled that I'm seeing it. It's part of
my passion — not just holding birth
certificates, but seeing people who could
very easily have been my relatives."
She tells of older people who greet
her in Yiddish, with lots of hugging;
several times she has been approached
by the last Jewish survivor of a town.
For people thinking of tracing their

"At the turn of the
20th century, more
than one-third of
the Jews in western
and central Ukraine
lived in towns and
shetlach where they
formed an absolute
majority.

— U-M Professor Zvi Gitelman,
in "Jewish Routes in
Ukraine and Moldova"

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roots and visiting ancestral towns,
Weiner notes that there is a two-fold
urgency. First, as years pass, the possi-
bility of discovering relatives is less
likely. Second, the archival documents
exist in original copies only.
"Like all museums, libraries and
archives, these places have security
concerns about protecting their hold-
ings," she says. "In the former Soviet
Union, vital record books have a way
of walking out of archives. I want to
emphasize that this happens all over
the world. It's better not to wait to do
archival research." I

Excerpts of Jewish Routes in
Ukraine and Moldova are avail-
able at the "Routes to Roots"
Web site, www.rtrfoundation.org .

Uftl,, Q.:04WA:4*ZOS:eigMert:,0„ 44,6:

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1999

Detroit Jewish News

97