Mel Comisarow is Professor of Chemistry at the University of British Columbia and has received awards from British, American and Canadian scientific societies. In 1999 and 2002 he traveled to his father’s birthplace in Ukraine and made contact with previously unknown relatives of his own family. He was treated royally as he was the first Westerner to visit the region. He located his grandfather’s land and also the house that his father lived in from 1912 to 1922, after his grandfather had immigrated to Canada. He returned with archival records from Ukrainian archives that are of considerable genealogical interest.

“Trip to Ukrainian Jewish Colonies” (Tues-123), 3:00-4:15 P.M.

In the 1840s several thousand Litvaks, Lithuanian Jews, settled on virgin agricultural land in Southeastern Ukraine and formed Jewish Agricultural Kolonyas. In 1999 and 2002 Mel Comisarow made trips to the Kolonya region and met the local Ukrainians and the few remaining Jews. He was treated royally as he was the first Westerner to visit the Kolonya region. He also made contact with previously unknown relatives of his own family and relatives of others in the West with Kolonya connections. He located his grandfather’s land and also the house that his father lived in from 1912 to 1922, after his grandfather had immigrated to Canada. He also visited the Ukrainian major cities of Kiev, Odessa, Dnepropetrovsk, Zaporozhe and Donetsk and he observed the post-Soviet resurgence of Jewish life in those cities. He returned with Kolonya records from Ukrainian archives that are of considerable genealogical interest.

Topics: Ashkenazic research, Cemetery research, Genealogy and Jewish history related to WWI, Holocaust research, Immigration and migration over the ages, Jewish history and culture, Jewish surname adoption and naming patterns, Repositories, Specific countries or geographic areas (Ukraine)