Journey to Teplyk - Roots of the Shefman Family - March 2017

I am not exactly sure when I asked my father where he was born, but I remembered that he told me, Odessa. I was old enough to know that it was in “the” Ukraine. That is what I had always understood to be the name of the country until quite recently I was told that Ukrainians found it offence for anyone to call their country that – It is just “Ukraine.” Of course, I discovered sometime later that he wasn't born in Odessa – Odessa is a large city hundreds of kilometres to the sout h . I n fact he was born in little shtetl, Teplyk (or Teplik) (in what used to be Podolia Province of the Russian Empire) and is now called Vinnyts’ka Oblast (province). An excellent article, Podolia and her Jews , a brief history of the Jews of Ukraine and specifically, Podolia Province is available at http://www.jewishgen.org/Ukraine/PTM_Article.asp?id=18 Russian Empire Map of Ukraine   Podolia Oblast (Russian Empire) showing location of Teplyk and Haisyn (G aysin) Ide