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The purpose of this project is to identify and collect Jewish individuals from a small town in the North East Poland area called Raczk Raczki, In Suwalki.
Raczki rat͡ʂki (Lithuanian: Račkos) is a village in Suwałki County, Podlaskie Voivodeship, in north-eastern Poland.[1] It is the seat of the gmina (administrative district) called Gmina Raczki. It lies approximately 15 kilometres (9 mi) south-west of Suwałki and 100 km (62 mi) north of the regional capital Białystok.
Town records are sparse but some census of Jews are available for reference to families and eventually, in the mid 1800's to last names of individuals.
RACZK ( Russian Poland ) aka Raczki Imperialist Russians divided Poland into areas, renaming cities and persecuting the Jews that inhabited them.
Raczk is where Isaac Nusbaum (Nuzbaum) died. Last of 5 sons , Issaak is the father of Philip Nusboum, grandfather of Mary Nusboum (Steinberger) great grandfather of Regine Steinberger (Rosenberg) 3rd Great Grandfather of David P. Rosenberg, 4th Great Grandfather of Dale Rosenberg. Source: 19th Century Raczki Documents
Raczki is one of many Jewish shtetls where no vital records (births, marriages, deaths) have been found. However, two original taxpayer lists give the names of male Jewish taxpayers in the town of Raczki and surrounding villages at two fixed years in the 19th century. While not a census this give the names of Jewish families who paid taxes or were likely eligible for military service.
Click here for both lists: 1826 and 1863: https://kehilalinks.jewishgen.org/Raczki/1863Data.html
These lists include the head of household and working male adult children as well as occupations. These lists were found in the Suwalki archives by Alex Friedlander, a noted Suwalki area genealogist, whose family came from Suwalki Gubernia.
The 1826 list had 49 individuals with patrynomic names which link fathers and sons. By 1863 surnames were frequently used and these help identify close male family members but not necessarily the relationships. The general rule for surnames was one unique surname for each family in the same area. The 1863 List for Raczki has 243 residing in Raczki and 23 from nearby small towns. There are 8 alphabetic sublists that may be streets or close neighborhoods. We have no detailed maps of Raczki but one 1886 reference states that Raczki had 16 streets. Source: Dale Levey
JewishGen offers the Jewish Gen Family Finder (JGFF) project. For the town of Raczki there are about 75 JGFF researchers that have expressed interest in various family names tied to Raczki. Some of the names that are of interest include Aldersztein, Gudelski, Einfrank, Silver, Ratzkowski, Rachofsky, Tupas, Dworsky, Stoll, Ruslander, Stolowsky, Sable, Olenick, Zubaynski and Greenberg to cite a few.
The Town is well described with many entries on Kehila Links on Jewish Gen here: https://kehilalinks.jewishgen.org/Raczki/Index.html
Yad Vashem records establish a sizable number, about 250, of individual records for persons murdered by the Nazis.
Cemetery; There are a few items of interesting information about the Jewish Cemetery in the town of Raczki Raczk Rack at this site