Gedaliah and Rebecca Lechtus (my fraternal great-grandparents) lived in Muravanyye-Kurilovtsy.

Their son, Leiser (Lazer, Eliezer, Louis) Lechtus (my fraternal grandfather) lived in MurovanyeKurilovtsy, before he moved to Kopaigorod. His siblings lived there: Josef, Lieba, Moishe, Eisik, and Dincha. They were probably born there, Louis in 1870. Gedalyah and Rebecca were probably buried there.

Leiser moved to Kopaigorod, Ukraine, to marry Yiska (Eta, Eda) Maltzer (my fraternal grandmother). He moved there before 1895, when Baruch (Bennett) was born. The other Licht children were born there: Meilich (Mayer) 1897, Leah 1901, James 1903, Anne 1906, and Ella 1908.

Yiska Maltzer and her siblings lived in Kopaigerod. They are Yiska (Eta, Eda), Moishe (Morris), BenZion, Rivka (Rebecca), and Shyah (Sy). They were probably born there. Their birthdates are Eda 1874, Morris 1880, Ben-Zion 1886, Rebecca 1894 and Sy 1898.

The Lechtus family left Kopaigerod in 1913 -1914 and immigrated to the US.

It is useful to locate these two towns in relation to Mogilev-Podolski, which was a larger town nearby. Morovanye Kurilovtsy is north west of Mogilev-Podolski. Kopaigorod is farther directly north of Mogilev-Podolski, 29 miles. Mogilev-Podolski is located at the Dniester River, which is the western boundary of Ukraine. This is different than the Dnieper River, which is located more eastward, going from Kiev north to Odessa south.

The two towns have larger cities nearby: Chernivtsi is southwest, Kamyenets-Podilskyy is west, Vinnytsya is northeast.

Bar is north west of Kopaigerod, 15 miles. Ephraim Friedman was born in Bar in 1850, married Hinda Podgaitz, they moved to Kopaigerod and he died there in 1912. They are the parents of Israel Friedman (1873-1938), who married Dina Shulman. They lived in Kopaigerod with their seven children, including Samuel and Solman. Samuel' was born there in 1895, and Solman in 1897. Samuel and Solman Friedman left in 1913 and traveled to the United States with Mayer and Ben Licht (DF).

These towns are listed in Where Once We Walked: the Jewish population before World War II, and the location. This information follows:

• Murovano Kurilovtsy, Murovanyye Kurilovtsy, Muravna Krilovitz: 1239; 88 km SW of Vinnitsa, 48 degrees 44'/27 degrees 31'.

• Kopaigerod, Kopaygorod ;1,595; 62 km SW ofVinnitsa, 48 degrees 52'/27 degrees 27'.

• Bar: 5,270; 62 km SW ofVinnitsa, 49 degrees 04'/27 degrees 40'.

• Mogilev-Podolski, Mogilev Podolskiy: 9,622; 101 km SSW ofVinnitsa, 40 degrees 27'/27 degrees 48'.

• Kamenets-Podilskiy: 12,774; 62 km NE ofCherovtsy, 48 degrees 40'/ 26 degrees 34'.

• Vinnitsa: 21,812; 139 km WNW ofUman, 49 degrees 14'/28 degrees 29'.

• Chemovtsy, Cemovcy, Cemowitze, Chemovitsy: 42,932; 214 km SW of Vinnitsa, 48 degrees 18'/ 25 degrees 56'.

• Jewish Gen lists Chemevtsy, Cemivici, "not to be confused with the major city ofChemivitsi ... ", This is a small town, 48 degrees 32' / 28 degrees 7', 16 miles ENE of Mogiliv-Podilsk, Jewish population in 1900 was 2,274. ( vs. 22,000 in the city Chemivitsi) Small Chemivici was the birthplace of Sol Friedman.

Meriam Weiner, Jewish Roots in Ukraine and Moldova, has the Jewish population pre-Holocaust, as follows:

Mogilev Podolskiy: 9,622 (41.8% of the general population in 1926). Her book has 14 photos of this town, from 1916 to 1998.

Chemovtsy (Chemivitsi): 46,000 (40% of the general population in 1930). It is located west of MogilevPodolskiy, close to the Dnieper River which courses westward from MogilevPodolskiy. It is close to the border of Moldova, which is a small country next to Roumania. Her book has 21 photos of this city, from 1916 to 1998. (the location is 48 degrees 18' /25 degrees 56', which identifies it as the larger city, not the small town of the same name).

Miriam Wiener lists that the archives for Kopajhorod and Mohyliv-Podilskyy are located in Vi~ytsya.

The Jewish Gen web site has this spelling:

• Kopaygorod, Kopajhorod

• Bar, Ber

• Mohyliv-Podilskyy

• Mohyliv-Podilskyj

• Kamyanets-Podilskyy

• Chemivtsi, Cemivci

• Vinnytsya, Vinnycja

On a 2003 Ukraine map, these towns are spelled this way: Murovani-Kurylivtsi, Kopajhorod, Mohyliv-Podilskyy, Kamenetz-Podilskyy, Vinytsia, Chemivtsi.

The Jewish population in 1900: Kopaygorod 1,720, Murovani Kurylivci 7, (little) Chemevtsy 2274, Bar 5,773, Mohyliv-Podilskyy 12,344, Vinnytsya 11,689, Chemivtsi 22,000 (Jewishgen).

The total population in 2001: Murovani Kurylivci 7, Kopajhorod?, Bar 17,284, Mohyliv-Polilskyi 32,853, Kamianets-Podilskyi 99,610, Chernivtsi 240,621, Vinnytsia 356,665 (Wikipedia).

Sol Friedman was born in 1902 "in a little town called Chemevitzi in the Ukraine, about twenty miles from the Dniester River." His brother Morris, was one of the twelve children. Sol said it was in the Ukraine, and "we could travel from one part to the other. In Chemevitzi there were about 350 families, all Jews." It was a shtetl. (I wrote about his description in my chapter Shtetl). Sol said "in Yiddish they call it 'Chemevitz'. It is not the big Chemevitz, it's the little Chemevitz.(1-5)" This little Chemevitz, now Chemevtsy, is located 16 miles ENE of Mogiliv-Podilsk.

Sol, at age 18, left the Ukraine in 1920, crossing the Dniester River into Romania. He had to pay some people on the Ukrainian side and some others on the Romanian side who arranged the illegal crossing. In Romania he lived first in Zduritza, then Lipkon, and Bucharest. He connected with the Maltzer family. "who had left Kopaigerod and were in in Vale La Lui Vlad, also called Dombrovitz, not far from Beltz". (9) Sol and the Maltzers left for the United States together, which I reported later in the chapter The Second Wave. (Beltz is an un-verified location, Belz is 38 Miles N. of Lviv, Ukraine).

Chernivtsi is the large city located farther West. It is the birthplace of Aharon Appelfeld, and Professor Ruth R. Wisse.

Judy Lash Balint, Jerusalem Diaries wrote about Aharon Appelfeld. He had an idyllic and assimilated early childhood in Czemowitz..., a largely Jewish university town, that was then part of Romania (now it belongs to Ukraine)". "All that changed in 1940 when the Nazis occupied the region and along with their Romanian collaborators, rampaged from house to house murdering as many Jews as possible. Appelfeld's mother and grandmother were included, and soon Aharon, the eight year old and his father were driven from their spacious home into a room in the ghetto they shared with twenty others." Father and son joined one of the death marches toward a concentration camp. "Of the 2000 who started out, only 200 survived." Aharon was separated from his father, and escaped. For the next three years he survived at the peripheries of peasant villages, then a kitchen boy with the Russian Army, to Italy where he met members of the Jewish Brigade who got him to Palestine in 1946 at age 13 where he lived on a Kibbutz. He hadn't spoken for 6 years to hide his Jewish identity. At the age of 72 he is the author of forty books, in Hebrew. He returned to Czemowitz once, at age 69, and said "the town is dilapidated, and neglected, its Central European identity almost obliterated." (49-51)

Ruth R. Wisse was born in Czernowitz, then Romania. Her father, a chemical engineer, moved there from Poland in 1934 to build and manage a rubber factory. In 1940 her father and mother, brother and Ruth fled to Bucharest, because the Russians were coming, and although he had previously been a communist, he would then be judged to be a capitalist. They went through Greece, left Lisbon to New York, and went to live in Toronto, Canada (Commentary, April 1995). Ruth Wisse is Professor of Yiddish Literature and Comparative Literature at Harvard University. Previously she was the first professor offering courses in Yiddish literature at McGill University. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Carolynn and I heard her speak at Stanford, and later at. SFJCC in 2008, about her new book Jews and Power.

Mogilev-Podolsky, was called "the last Jewish city in Soviet Union" by Petersburg Judaica Center Director Valery Dymshits. "As recently as the early 1990's... Yiddish was widely spoken on the streets." When the Nazis were killing Jews, Podolia was the exception, the region which included Mogilev-Podolsky, which was then Romania. During the early years of Soviet rule "ethnic identification became taboo, and Jewish folkloric studies ceased". "Even in the 1970's and 1980's, the population of Mogilev was rougWy one-quarter Jewish, with the Jews heavily concentrated in the city center. It was the largest ratio of any city in the former Soviet Union." Yet from a peak prewar population of some 34,000, the Mogilev Jewish population shrunk from 9,000 two decades ago to just 350 people today." There is a Jewish bakery, a local library, one Synagogue where "men convene in the shul every night for prayers". "Many in the Mogilev diaspara return almost yearly for visits to their hometown. (October 12, 2007)