The Yidel Lieb Klotchman Family

This website describes the KLOTCHMAN Family, direct Descendants of Yidel Leib Klotchman and Sluva Marder. The name Klotchman probably comes from the Yiddish Klots, for Log; could have been a Logger.

The family started in Medzhibozh (Lat.49-26N, Long 27-25E), Khmelnitsky oblast, a small town in Ukraine. It is 154 miles WSW of Kiev and located on a major river, the Bug. The Jewish community was one of the oldest in Ukraine, dating back to 1518. The founder of Hasidism, the Baal Shem Tov, lived there from 1740 until his death in 1760.

In 1897, the town had about 8,200 people of which the 6,000 Jews represented about 74% of the population. The Jewish community was destroyed after the German occupation in 1941 and today has less than 10 Jews.

Part of the family started in Khmelnik (Lat.49-33N, Long 27-58E), Vinnytsya oblast, about 19 miles east of Medzhibozh. This town also had a Jewish presence dating back to the early 1500s. In 1897, the Jewish population of 6,000 was just over half of the total. The Jewish community also perished after the German occupation in 1941.

The family migrated to many other places including Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine; Astrakhan, Kuibyshev, Voronezh and Moscow, all in Russia; New York, California, New Jersey and Minnesota, U.S.A.; and Israel.