Genealogy Chat

Hi everyone. Havent been here for awhile as ive got as far as I can. I am now trying to help my other half. She is Polish but has been recently told that her great father was a chap called Alfons Joczyn. We have been to his wifes grave and then got told he was imprisoned in the 1920s. Consequently dying there and being buried there. We believe there may not be even a death cert. Any idea how to find out? We think in the area known as Voronezh. Sometimes spelt Woronez. Done brief searches on the web, cant find census or anything. Cheers. Mark

Hello Marcas, Just trying to get an idea of his age-

Who was his wife? Is her grave in Poland?

Zofia?

Name Zofia Joczyn
Event Type Burial
Event Date 1971
Event Place Opole, , Opolskie, Poland
Photograph Included N
Birth Date 06 Dec 1877
Death Date 16 Mar 1971
Affiliate Record Identifier 170140202
Cemetery Brzeg Cemetery

Yes that's her. I visited the grave last week when we went over. The husband is completely missing. I found some other genealogy site that mentioned Alfons but no record of birth marriage or death. The story is she moved with the kids(5 I think) to Poland after.

Moved to Poland - - - from where? Russia ? After what? Alfons's death?

It seems many records were destroyed:

http://www.findrussianheritage.com/news/russian-ancestry-voronezh-archives/

Just a thought ..........

the 1920s were the time of Lenin followed by Stalin and pogroms in Russia ........

many records were destroyed, and many people died / were killed and buried without records if stories from that time are to be believed.

Stalin was General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1922 to 1952. Evidence from the Soviet archives showed records of 799,455 executions (1921–1953), around 1.7 million deaths in the Gulag and some 390,000 deaths during kulak forced resettlement – with a total of about 2.9 million officially recorded victims in these categories alone.

It makes for very scary reading. We have no idea why Alfons was imprisoned. Would it be hard to find the names in these archives?

The link given in the findrussianheritage site ( above) takes you to this:

https://tinyurl.com/ybt9tulu

Don't know if anything there would help you? Perhaps contacting them ??

Thanks. I will give it a look when home on the laptop. At the moment on a bus goin through Irish countryside. Hopefully find sone answers. Makes for more scarier reading than my Irish ancestry.