For questions contact info@avotaynubooks.com

 

Where Once We Walked:
Revised Edition
A Guide to the Jewish Communities
Destroyed in the Holocaust

by Gary Mokotoff and Sallyann Amdur Sack
  with Alexander Sharon

The award-winning Where Once We Walked (WOWW) has been completely revised and updated to reflect the changes in the political geography of Central and Eastern Europe since WOWW was published in 1991. There are also a number of improvements to the original edition noted below. The new edition identifies more than 23,500 towns in Central and Eastern Europe where Jews lived before the Holocaust. Includes 17,500 alternate names. Gives latitude/longitude, Jewish population before the Holocaust and cites as many as 50 books that reference each town. Includes soundex index and "nearby town" index.

8½" x 11"  736 pp.  hardcover                   $85.00


Major Revision!!
There are numerous improvements to the original Where Once We Walked (WOWW) in Where Once We Walked: Revised Edition (WOWW-RE)

   • 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, 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. WOWW-RE 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 WOWW-RE. 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-RE reflects these changes. WOWW was based on a 1966 version of BGN data. Perhaps due to better mapping capability through the use of satellites, BGN has changed the exact location of many towns throughout the world.
    •
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 WOWW-RE 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
3,290
3,288
2,252
1,434
1,289
856
635
634
603
460
330
225
219
175
116
64
61
52
33
18
5
45
1,337
23,581 www.avotaynubooks.com

 

FastCounter by bCentral