We are going to Poland/Germany etc. in three weeks and going through old paper work found some documents that said our family lived on a small farm in a small town east of Baranowicze, the town was written on this paper as Swiskowscya, I can not find anything like this. They would have lived there between 1920%26#39;s and 1940%26#39;s on and off of course. We would like to be able to visit this area if possible but I need to be able to find it. We are going to Bialystok and then hopefully to this town. Any help or to long ago?
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Baranowicze (or Baranovichi) is currently situated in Belarus, neighboring to Poland country, so you won%26#39;t be able to get there from Bialystok directly without a visa.
In 1920-1939 this part belonged to Poland but later was taken by the Soviets.
I tried to look for this mysterious place on modern Baranovichi region maps but didn%26#39;t succeed.
http://karta.brestobl.com/03bar/16.html
this one for example
There are several reasons for that
1)this could be a village destroyed during Nazi occupation
2) if this was a Jewish shtetl they were not usually indicated on maps as they were considered to be the part of a bigger Belarusian settlement
3)and for the last one you should look carefully at the map i provided you with
you see the big town marked with big red capital letters БАРАНОВИЧИ, that%26#39;s Baranovichi. There is little place to the east of it , because there to the east starts a new region - Liahovichi region. Maybe you should stick to this place in the search, or even to a different oblast(several regions form an oblast - that%26#39;s administrative division of Belarus) which is further to north-east.
Anyway, your case is very complicated and needs knowing details and turning to special archives. If you still are interested in continuation of your search reply my post here. I%26#39;ll keep visiting this thread for a couple of weeks.
Yury Minsk, Belarus
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Thank you for your reply Yury, I almost sure it was not a Jewish shtetl as that would not fit the history. I may be able to find more information, for now I now it was right beside the Pripet Marshes? In my research I found a town? called Swizlocz, Svislac, Svisloc and wondered if that could have been it. I have to find english pages only. That is true about the visa%26#39;s, it looks as though we will not go to Belarus this time but I am still very interested in it for future trips. Thank you in advance.
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There is such a place in Belarus as Swislach(in polish), (Svislach(in belarusian),Svisloch(russian)). This is originally a name of a river. And it gave name to several places, that surprisingly are situated in different corners of Belarus.
1) Svisloch, situated in Grodno oblast, a town, centre of a region but!founded in 1940, so it%26#39;s a modern town.
2) Svisloch, situated in Minsk oblast, a village near Puhovichi
3) Svisloch, situated in Mogilev oblast, a vilage near Osipovichi
btw Puhovichi and Osipovichi regions are adjacent to each other though they refer to different oblasts (just to remind you: an oblast is similiar to a state in US and region is similiar to a county in US)
The nearest to Baranovichi Svisloch is #2.
I wish I could give you a link to a map in English but i didn%26#39;t manage to find any with those places even in russian. Maybe because those are really tiny and insignificant(not for you, of course ))) villages.
If you continue your search i got a piece of a very helpful advice for you.
In recent 10-15 years there%26#39;s been a project to create large history books about every single region of Belarus. There are 106 of them . This project is called %26quot;Pamiats%26quot; (belarusian for %26quot;Memory%26quot;). Every region gathered tons of information about its history, culture, economy and so on. They collected really valuable and rare material about every little place in Belarus.
I myself got a book of that kind about a region where all my ancestry came from. I read it from cover to cover and found even info about my dad and my granddad there. My granny found there stories about her neighbours and acquaintances from the village she came from. So those books are really very detailed. And you could find something concerning your serches there.
There are only three problems - they are in Belarusian, they come in a very limited edition and not every region has already published a Pamiats book of its own(they planned to finish this campaign by 2005 but i got no idea whether they managed to). So you will need a Belarusian translator(not from Russia, russian people understand only 60% of Belarusian language) and tons of luck to find the book of a necessary region in bookstores.
Good luck in your search!
need anything else to find out - feel free to ask
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photofile.ru/photo/…60521659.jpg
All such books have the same design.
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