Anybody heard of Koona, Russia?

[Glenn5]

God morning,
Some of my distant relations , Lutherans, moved to the UK then Canada.  One of them states the place of birth, 1896, as Koona, Russia.  Later, 1915 he states Koona ( or Koon ), Poland.

Having searched on line I cannot find a direct link to a current place.  The likely option is Kaunas in Lithuania. 

Anybody know for sure?

Thank you in advance.  Glenn

[AlanBoyd]

I don’t know for sure, but I searched for Koona in the 1921 census birthplace field at FindMyPast. There are 18 hits. Apart from those who simply have Koona Russia, I see:

A couple living in Leeds have entered "Russia Koona" and FindMyPast have recorded this as Lithuania. (FindMyPast have only done this in this instance)

A couple living in Liverpool have entered 'Russia keinstadt Koona"

A lady in Wales has entered "Poland, Koona"

A couple in Hull have entered "Briz Koona, Russia"

[hanes teulu]

I was directed by Wiki to Kovno Province (Kaunas).
One newspaper report refers to Koona, Western Russia.

This 1894 clippng has

[hanes teulu]

The Wiki article took me to "Kovno Governorate"
From OZ newspapers -
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/8729125

[AlanBoyd]

After a long and fraught conversation with an AI about where Krosche might be, we finally deduced that it corresponds to the now-Lithuanian Kražiai. See Wikipedia page for details of the massacre:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kra%C5%BEiai_massacre?wprov=sfti1

Because Kražiai is quite a way from modern Kaunas I then asked about their relationship at the time of the massacre and got:  "Kražiai was part of the Kovno Governorate (Russian: Ковенская губерния), the same province as Kaunas (Kovno), at the time of the 1893 massacre."

So Krosche, Koona = Kražiai, Kaunas

[hanes teulu]

Linking Krosche with Koona was to try and identify/place Koona as a province of Lithuania - as opposed to Russia or Poland as declared in a Census.
I'd checked German newspapers which delivered such as "West of Koona (Kowno) ...", "Koona, seat of German administration for Lithuania ..."
But those completing the Census - are they referring to the Town or the Province of Koona/Kovno/Kaunas?

Still, "one step at a time...." and more important AB "who Al"!!

[AlanBoyd]

Looking again at what I found in 1921 (see reply #1) I think that these census entries are referring to the province. Briz could be another settlement in Koona, and kleinstadt just means ‘small town”, so a small town in the province of Koona. Possibly they just didn’t see the point in naming a village that no-one had heard of.

These emigrants were of course mostly (or all?) Jews. Were Jews more likely to be living in small provincial places or in the capital?

And AI is Perplexity AI, my artificial intelligence friend.

[hanes teulu]

AB,
Re "Al" - just joshing. It's impossible to escape reference to it these days when I'm considered a Luddite re techie stuff

Re. the Jews, I had cast around and came across this item amongst others -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeshivas_Knesses_Yisrael_(Slabodka)
 

[PatLac]

See next post!