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The Jewish Genealogical Society
of Great Britain
JGSGB Education
Jeanette Rosenberg
19 December 2013
Session 12
Eastern Europe – Where are
the records?
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Agenda
• Introductions
• Eastern Europe – Where are the records?
– Applied knowledge
– Country or place specific Information
• Session review
Eastern Europe
• Where?
• What? – Sephardi & Ashkenazi records
• How?
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Where?
• Baltics: Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania
• Belarus, Byelorussia
• Bulgaria
• Czech Republic, Slovakia, (Slovak Republic)
• Former Yugoslavia: Slovenia, Macedonia, Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo, Bosnia & Herzegovina
• (Balkans – all of these plus Albania, Greece & Turkey & Bulgaria, sometimes also Romania & Italy)^
• Georgia, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Armenia & Azerbaijan
• Hungary
• Kazakhstan, Nagorno Karabakh
• Poland
• Romania, Moldova, Transnistria, Bukovina, Transylvania, (Czernowitz)
• Russia, Pale of Settlement
• Ukraine
• Bessarabia (Romania, Russia, Ukraine)
• CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) Russia plus some former Soviet Union States *
• Ottoman Empire *
* European parts only
^ some Balkan states to be covered in Western Europe
Processes - 1
Doing it yourself:
• Using all available resources– Online
– Books & libraries
– Other researcher’s information
• Tracking the records down
• Letter writing
• Languages
• Paying for research and records
• Translations
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Processes - 2
Hiring someone else
• JewishGen & Other Guidance, e.g. SOG:
• www.jewishgen.org/InfoFiles/ProfGen.html
• www.sog.org.uk/leaflets/leaflets.shtml
• Eastern European Researchers – JewishGen page - www.jewishgen.org/InfoFiles/Researchers.htm
• This is all a minefield! Caveat emptor!
Assumptions:
• That you want at least
to try to do some of it
yourself!
• That you may have
questions we can try to
answer today!
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JGSGB Resources
Shemot Articles
All online in Members Corner JGSGB Guides – on sale now!
JGSGB Library - 1
Quellen zur Geschichte der Juden in den Archiven der neuen Bundesländer
• Lots of other finding aids
and printed resources too.
• Let’s investigate them!
• Guide shows excellent
resource for former East
Germany & Poland
• Copy of this book/series
also in LBI New York
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JGSGB Library - 2
• Archives and
Manuscript
Repositories in the
USSR: Ukraine and
Moldova
• By Patricia Kennedy
Grimstead
www.wienerlibrary.co.uk
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What Resources are there here?
• Memorial Books
• Lists of Survivors
• Reference Books
• Books on Cemeteries
• Phone Directories
• Newspapers & Journals
• Microfilms
• & much much more
On the Shelves
• 65,000 Books and Pamphlets, of which over 25,000 are available nowhere else in the UK
• 17,000 Photographs
• 1,500 Eyewitness accounts
• 1 million press cuttings
• 1,500 periodical titles and 175 current subscriptions
• 1,500 document collections of over 1.5 million pages with over 70 new collections added every year
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www.its-arolsen.org
The Archive of the International
Tracing Service - @ The Wiener Library
• The fullest record of Nazi
persecution in existence
• Until 2007, the largest
closed Holocaust archive
in the world
• 26,000 metres of shelving
• Records of approximately
17.5 million victims of
Nazism
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ABRAHAMOVIC (849)
JewishGen Resources
• Main Message Board
• Message Board Archives
• Sigs
• Sig Archives
• JGFF
• FTJP
• All Country Databases
• Yizkor Book Project
• JOWBR
• Info Files
• FAQ
• (esp. E. Europe FAQ)
• KehilaLinks (Shtetlinks)
• Community Pages
• Locality Pages
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Eastern Europe FAQ - 1
• 15 pages of A4 when printed out
• Introduction
– 4 ways to access records:
• Write to archival repositories
• Hire a researcher
• Visit the country to research on-site
• Use filmed records –e.g. LDS records
– bibliography
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Eastern Europe FAQ -2
• Country by country guide to resources
– History
– Record Keeping
– Archives
– Books
– LDS Microfilms
– Special Interest Groups (SIGs)
Eastern Europe FAQ - 3
• List of Provinces & Regions
– Definitions
– Explanations
– Maps
• New things added to JewishGen all the time,
so keep checking back!
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JRI Poland - http://jri-poland.org/
• A project to index all the Jewish vital records in Poland
• Regularly updated - 5 million records from more than 550 Polish towns are now indexed.
• More added every few months.
• Surname Distribution Mapper
• See also highly recommended book on Polish records by Judith Frazin - A Translation Guide to 19th-Century Polish-Language Civil-Registration Documents (including Birth, Marriage and Death Records).
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www.geshergalicia.org
www.litvaksig.org
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Sephardi Research
Avotaynu
• The Journal
– Under-utilised resource
– Full of good information
• Books Published
– See examples in JGSGB library and elsewhere
– E.g. WOWW, Beider, Auslander etc etc.
• Consolidated Surname Index
• Daitch-Mokotoff Soundex
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Avotaynu Books - Alexander Beider60 pages of surnames!
Avotaynu Books - 2
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Avotaynu Books - 3
Consolidated Jewish Surname Index
• www.avotaynu.com/csi/csi-home.htm
• gateway to information about 699,084 mostly
Jewish surnames from 42 different databases
• The databases combined contain more than
7.3 million records
• CJSI is sequenced phonetically rather than
alphabetically using the Daitch-Mokotoff
Soundex System
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Daitch-Mokotoff Soundex System
• Groups together spelling variants of a name
that sound the same.
• Info file at JewishGen -
www.jewishgen.org/InfoFiles/soundex.html
Other Books
• From a Ruined Garden –Poland resource.
• Yizkor Books
• Pinkas HaKehillot –community registers
• WOWW - the gazetteer of the Jewish communities destroyed in the Holocaust
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Miriam Weiner
• Routes to Roots Foundation
• Website - www.rtrfoundation.org/
- Packed full of resources for downloading!
e.g. Jewish History as Reflected in the Documents of the State Archives of Odessa
Region, Origin, Preservation & Access - www.rtrfoundation.org/Odessa.html
• Books
• Website, auto-plays music, you have been warned!
• Not the UK website of the same name – a charity for homeless people based in
Poole, Dorset!
• Miriam Weiner now at CJH in NY
Miriam Weiner’s Books
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The Mormons
• Filmed Records including images
• Records on FS Website, constantly updated!
• Info files and written resources
• Letter writing & alphabet guides
Knowles Collection -
http://knowlescollection.blogspot.co.uk
• Afghanistan
• Armenia
• Khazakstan
• Kyrgyzstan
• Tajikistan
• Turkmenistan
• Uzbekistan
• Etc. etc.
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Top Tips
• Many Jewish records hiding among non-
Jewish records – e.g. Slovakian Jewish records
now online under the misleading title:
"Slovakia Church Books, 1592-1910“
• Check records on Family Search – new records
added all the time
• Digitisation projects on Family Search &
JewishGen
Resources in the USA - 1
• Ellis Island
• Castle Garden
• World Gen Web
• Cyndi’s List
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Resources in the USA - 2
• Yizkor Books in NYPL (and accessible online)
• http://legacy.www.nypl.org/research/chss/jws/yizkorbooks_intro.cfm or http://yizkor.nypl.org/
• Center for Jewish History in NY
• www.cjh.org/
• USHMM in Washington
• www.ushmm.org/
http://legacy.www.nypl.org/research/chss/jws/yizkorbooks_intro.cfm
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www.cjh.org
The Ackman & Ziff Family Genealogy
Institute
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Discover Your Roots – Free Factsheets
www.ushmm.org/
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YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern
Eastern Europe
• Encyclopedia of the history of the Jews of
Eastern Europe
• online and searchable free at
www.yivoencyclopedia.org
• Not to be confused with: Encyclopedia of
Jewish Life Before and During the Holocaust
• Info about 6,500 towns listed at
• www.avotaynu.com/books/encyclopedia.htm
Resources in Israel
• CAHJP - http://sites.huji.ac.il/cahjp/
• Beth Hatefutsoth - www.bh.org.il/
• Yad Vashem -
www.yadvashem.org/wps/portal/IY_HON_We
lcome
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CAHJPAlgeria Danzig Ireland Rhodesia
Argentina Ecuador Israel Romania
Austria Egypt Italy Russia
Belarus El Salvador Latvia South Africa
Bolivia Estonia Lebanon Spain
Brazil Finland Libya Syria
Bulgaria France Lithuania Tunisia
Burma Germany Mexico Turkey
Chile Great Britain Morocco Ukraine
China Greece Netherlands USA
Colombia Hungary Panama Uruguay
Costa Rica India Peru Uzbekistan
Cuba Iran Poland Yemen
Czechoslovakia Iraq Portugal Yugoslavia
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CAHJP - 2
• “A pilot research trip by CAHJP to the former Soviet Union in 1990 revealed that much of the archival material created by Jewish communities, organizations and prominent figures had been preserved in the various state archives, which also contained considerable material created by various government agencies that also referred to Jews.”
• ”The first phase of the project was to create a database of information on Jewish record groups and material of Jewish content in general record groups. Local historians and archivists in the various states were employed to examine archival holdings and to compile detailed lists of the material relating to Jews. CAHJP makes all of this information available to historians, so that they may better plan their research projects. It also forms the basis for the ordering of microfilms. “
• “CAHJP attempts to film material on the small and distant communities as well as major communities.”
CAHJP - 3
• ”Byelorussia was one of the first states of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS, the former Soviet Union) in which the CAHJP began to work. The earliest sources on Jewish communities in the territory of modern Byelorussia date from the 14th century.”
• ”Most of the surviving documents pertaining to the Jews of Byelorussia are found today in state archives in Russia and Belarus although considerable material may also be found in archives in Ukraine and the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. The CAHJP attempts to collect and centrally catalogue relevant material from all of these countries.”
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Other resources
• Steve Morse www.stevemorse.org/
– Alphabets
– Telephone books
– Holocaust
– Soundex - Beider-Morse Phonetic Matching
• Logan Kleinwaks
– Genealogy Indexer http://genealogyindexer.org/
– Shoah Connect www.shoahconnect.org/
Beider-Morse Phonetic Matching
• An algorithm that emerged from a research
project sponsored and funded by the
International Institute for Jewish Genealogy.
• www.iijg.org/ToolsAndTechnologies/Phonetic
Matching.aspx
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http://genealogyindexer.org
• Find new holdings by following him @gindexer
on Twitter.
• OCR converts the scanned images to text using a
process that is not 100% accurate (but is much
faster than manual transcription).
• To examine the directories without searching, you
can find links to their scans and their original
titles at http://genealogyindexer.org/directories
• Uses free .DjVu web browser plugin
Genealogy Indexer
• Adds full-text and soundex search capabilities to important genealogical resources available elsewhere online.
• Search 323,000 pages of historical directories (business, address, telephone, etc.), 28,000 pages of 64 yizkor books (memorials to Jewish communities destroyed during the Holocaust), 32,000 pages of lists of Polish & Russian military officers, and 35,000 pages of community and personal histories.
• Most of the directories are from Poland, Galicia, or Romania.
• More genealogical resources are being added daily.
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FEEFHS - The Federation of East
European Family History Societies• www.feefhs.org/
• Great E European maps website!
• Umbrella organization promoting family research in eastern and central Europe without any ethnic, religious, or social distinctions.
• Provides a forum for individuals and organizations focused on a single country or group of people to exchange information and be updated on developments in the field.
• Primarily serves the interests of North Americans in tracing their lineages back to a European homeland, it welcomes members from all countries.
Further Online Resources
• Museum of Family History
• www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/
• Virtual Jewish History Tour: Central & Eastern Europe
• www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/vjw/easteutoc.html
• “Useful Web Sites and Addresses for Eastern European Genealogical Research”
• - from “the other JGSGB” (esp. For Poland).
• www.jgsgb.org/pdfs/Useful-websites.pdf
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Different kinds of documents
• Censuses
• Revision lists
• Metrikel – register or registry
• Pinkas ha Kehillot Community registers
• B M &D registrations
• Mohel Books
• Police records
• Travel documents
What’s a document?
• One of the biggest arguments today is, what is a document? The researchers consider a file a document, but the archivists want to consider each numbered sheet a document. Then they grade documents according to their value. The price list indicates that a valuable document has one price (to copy), a less valuable has another price, but it's up to them to decide what is valuable and to what degree. Every archive is a different story. So when you ask me to copy the entire file of 1,000 sheets, multiply 37 hrivna (about $7-9) by 1,000.
• Forget about quantity discount. Remember that if a copier breaks down, it may take weeks until it is fixed.
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How it used to be:
• Things have definitely changed since the days when personnel at Eastern embassies would say, “You want relatives; you go Red Cross!”
• It’s still is difficult for most Jewish genealogists to obtain information about family members who lived in the former Russian Empire.
• But the genealogical data can be found, and in lots of different ways.
• Today's Jewish genealogist needs to know the pros and cons of various available choices.
It’s not as easy as on the TV!
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On the ground research
• Write first, it isn’t all how it looks on TV!
• Currency issues ... and bribes
• “I had not realized that she was probably holding out for a little monetary persuasion.”
• “Most of the rest of the country seems to work that way.”
• Drivers
• Interpreters
• Local help
• Gardeners and weedkillers
• Patience is a virtue!
Important People - 1
• 2 Patricias:
– Dr Patricia Eames
• Formerly of US National Archives (d. Dec 2009) helped facilitate a relationship between US & Soviet archives that made possible genealogical research in Eastern Europe.
– Patricia Kennedy Grimsted
• Publishes books & resources on Russian Archives & Manuscript Repositories
• ArcheoBiblioBase: Archives in Russia – genealogy & family history www.iisg.nl/abb/abb_genealogy.php
• 26 page downloadable resource guide full of clickable links: www.iisg.nl/abb/rf_print.pdf
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Important People - 2
• Active on JewishGen & elsewhere
– Rita Bogdanova - Archivist at the Latvian Historical Archives in Riga, Latvia – on facebook!
– Boris Feldblyum, born in Zhitomir, Ukraine, lives in the U.S. President of FAST Genealogy Service.
– Alexander Dunai, Archival researcher, lives in Ukraine.
– Vladislav Soshnikov – Archivist & director of the Russian American Genealogical Archival Service (RAGAS) in Moscow, (now part of FEEFHS).
Issues in Eastern European Genealogy
• Territorial Issues– Borders have changed often in this part of the world, and it is not
always easy to establish who was in control at a given time, the work round is to use contemporaneous maps.
• Demographic Changes– Language and population shifts happen over time, places disappear or
are obliterated, this means keeping careful notes and sourcing data.
• Intellectual Challenges– Don’t just stick to English language sources, if you do you will miss out!
• Ethnographic Change– Data organisation won’t be the same as we’re used to here, it won’t be
consistently organised.
• Political Considerations
– Local control and flexibility will impact on access to data/records.
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East European Archival Internet Sites
• Kahlile B Mehr – He is a well respected Mormon missionary and genealogist,
• Has 25 years + experience of genealogy in eastern Europe
• Is very involved in Feefhs
• IAJGS Board Member!
• Writes for Avotaynu and has profiled the archival internet sites, most recently in 2007, for:
• Belarus, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Poland, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Ukraine.
• Summary: If not listed here the site isn’t much good!
http://yourjewishgem.blogspot.co.uk/
• Jewish Gem's Genealogy: Mining for Your Elusive Ancestors.
• Floridian retiree Marilyn Robinson’s new blog.
• Specialising in translated listings from foreign language websites – mainly Russian/E. European.
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The Pale of Settlement in Russia
• Established by Czar Catherine II in 1791.
• A territory in which Russian Jews were obliged to live.
• A system to rid Moscow of Jewish businesses and to concentrate the Jews in a relatively narrow and well-defined space.
• Included areas that had a VERY high concentration of Jewish inhabitants
• Included territory inside modern Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine and Belorussia.
• http://melbourneblogger.blogspot.com/2009/10/jewish-pale-of-settlement-in-russia.html
• www.movinghere.org.uk/galleries/histories/jewish/jewish.htm
Pale of Settlement
• Where? - Much of present-day Lithuania, Belarus, Poland, Moldova, Ukraine and parts of western Russia
• “From the eastern pale, or demarcation line, to the western Russian border with the German Empire and Austria-Hungary”. [Wikipedia.org]
• Formed at turn of 19th C.
• Dissolved in WW1.
• 80% of Jews lived there in 1880
• Afforded permanent residency to Jews, and beyond its borders, Jewish permanent residency was generally prohibited
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Departure from the Pale
• Moving Here - www.movinghere.org.uk
• The Jewish Migration History – well explained.
Emigration via Libau - Liepaja
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Russian time periods & genealogy
• Genealogical data must be organized according to the historic period in which it was created.
• We distinguish three periods, each of different duration and quite different with respect to the data available.
• The time before the partitions of Poland, i.e., before 1772. Poland then was part of the Commonwealth of Poland and Lithuania. Beginning in 1772, Russia annexed many formerly independent territories with significant Jewish populations. Of course, even before that time, a few Jews already resided in Russia. The majority, however, were classified as guests and were citizens of other states; otherwise, they were not counted as Jews officially.
• The second period is from 1772 until the Bolshevik coup in 1917.
• The third period is from 1918 until today.
Russian Archival Materials
• Russian archival materials are divided into four categories:
– Fonds
– opis' (inventories)
– delo (files)
– lists (leaves or individual sheets).
• From 1772 to 1917, Imperial Russia was divided geographically into guberniyas; a guberniya was divided into uezds (districts), and uezds were divided into volosts (small rural districts).
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Russian Passports
• Genealogists whose ancestors came from the Russian Empire bearing passports usually start their research with these documents.
• The so-called “inflexible” registration forms for issuing the passport are preserved in the passport bureau of the corresponding departmental militia. These have the same information as the passport and can serve as a source of genealogical information.
• Until the introduction of the internal passport, an “identity card” was issued on special forms with numbers (a type of certificate), which collected the same information as the passport, including data about marriage and divorce, registration, work, etc.
• Until the second half of the 19th century, the Russian czars did not want large numbers of their subjects to travel abroad. Those who asked for "absence abroad" for a certain period were required to apply to governmental authorities for an exit passport and pay 250 roubles (the equivalent of several thousand U.S. dollars in today's terms) for every family member listed on the passport.
Russia – Outside the Pale
• Not much known about Jews outside the Pale.
• Mainly very assimilated communities.
• Most privileged groups descended from "Nikolay's soldiers“ who served 25 years in the Russian Army in the first half of the 19th century and had hereditary rights to residence anywhere in the Empire.
• Most Jews outside the Pale were craftsmen, tailors and distillers invited by army outposts, farmers as well as wine producers seeking to establish production of European wines and liquors.
• Some were legal on temporary government permits, and some were illegal.
• Information about them found mainly in police archives:– Jews who left the Pale for work were given "worker visas“.
– They registered with the local police at the places where they arrived and were deported as soon as their "visas" expired.
– Lists were assembled of those to be deported and those whose residence permits were extended. In most cases, such extensions were granted in response to petitions from their employers or others interested in their work.
– Some lists contain names of people whose descendants later became known and famous.
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Imperial Russia
• Specialist genealogical research in Imperial
Russia
• Microfilms on loan from the Slavic and East
European Library of the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign, 225 Main Library, 1408 W.
Gregory Drive, Urbana, IL 61801 USA.
• www.library.illinois.edu/spx/
Modern Russian Resources - 1
• Churches and synagogues maintained birth registers until 1918 (in some regions, until 1921).
• Old house registers, up to early C20th. Kept in oblast or departmental archives and for recent decades in the housing office.
• In some places, records are in a system of private museums rather than civil archives, similar to situation in Byelorussia, the Baltic republics, and the Ukraine.
• More info in lots of articles in Avotaynu!
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Modern Russian Resources - 2
• Residential address and telephone directories-
mainly unavailable.
• City business directories have been published
annually since 1990.
• Residential and telephone directories
periodically appear on the Internet and in the
form of computer databases available from
street vendors in Moscow.
Modern Russian Resources - 3
• Pale of Settlement ����
• Belarus ����
• Russia ����
• Need to translate everything – I use Google chrome to auto translate
• http://svrt.ru/
• http://forum.svrt.ru/
• Genealogy alive and well in Russia!
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Modern Russian Resources - 4
• Boris Feldblyum
• Avotaynu
• JOWBR
• Yad Vashem 04/12“More than a million new
testimonial pages about Jews in the Soviet Union
will be released by Yad Vashem, starting next
week, in the wake of agreements with the KGB
archives and the national archives of Ukraine,
Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia”
Azerbaijan
• So-called Mountain or Tat Jews who inhabit
parts of north-eastern Azerbaijan, Dagestan
and the northern Caucasus, are among the
least studied of all Jewish groups, although
their history goes back to ancient times.
• Further information available from the Jewish
Genealogical Society in Baku, Azerbaijan.
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Hungary & Czech Republic – see
Austria’s – GenTeam!
• www.genteam.at
• 6,935,821 entries in database & growing!
• Labour of love by the professional genealogists involved
• Hungary
• Czech Republic
• [Austria]
People in Czech Genealogy
• Blanka Lednika (on
maternity leave)
• Very useful blog
• Read back-postings!
• http://czechgenealogy.b
logspot.co.uk/
• Julius Müller
• “Toledot” - Prague
Jewish Family History
Center
• www.toledot.org/
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Czech Genealogy
• Bohemia
• Moravia
• Silesia (Prussia)
• Czech Republic
• Slovakia
• (Austria)
• Czech
• German
• Latin
• English
Czech Jewish Records -1
• Dr. Lenka Matušíková of the Czech National Archives is custodian of the entire Czech Jewish collection [email protected]
• "When the Germans occupied Czechoslovakia between 1938 and 1945, the registers and documents of the Jewish communities suffered a fate similar to that of the Jewish population itself.
• In October 1938, Jewish registration offices were closed.
• Registers from the Bohemian border region were collected in Liberec, the centre of the so-called Sudetenland.
• The registers from the Jewish communities in the border regions of northern and southern Moravia did not survive at all and are believed to have been lost at the beginning of the German occupation.
• In 1942, the Office of the Reichsprotektor ordered that all original Jewish registers in the so-called Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia be sent to Prague.
• In April 1945, by order of the Gestapo, the original registers were transported to a paper mill in Prague and destroyed.
• Earlier in 1943, the duplicate registers also were collected, but thanks to the courageous Czech employees, they were stored outside Prague and survived.
• They were later declared to be valid originals."
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Czech Jewish Records -2
• All Jewish records are now in Prague
• Collection holds more than 3,000 volumes of Jewish birth, marriage, and death registers that cover Bohemia, Moravia, and the Czech part of Silesia for the period 1784-1949.
• Registers are accessible for research by visiting the archives in person or by hiring a private researcher.
• Reviewing the records takes at least two days if the visit is not arranged ahead of time.
• On the first day, one requests retrieval of the registers and then must return the next day to actually review the records.
• The collection inventory, organized by town name, is available on the National Archive website. http://www.nacr.cz/Upload/pomucky/id_3_2_zidMatrik.pdf
• The locality index is helpful in determining which register to order. http://www.nacr.cz/Upload/pomucky/id_3_3_zidMatrik_rejmist.pdf
• The National Archives is looking into digitizing the Jewish collection. In the meantime the archive will respond to a written request from an individual.
Czech Jewish Records -3
• Blanka’s Blog posting on 10 November 2010
on Czech Jewish Genealogy
• For further info on the Jewish collection in the
Czech National Archives, see the Czech
Republic Jewish Records article in the
FamilySearch Wiki
• See also records in the Knowles Collection.
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Czech Jewish Records -4
• The Prager Tagblatt online newspaper -http://anno.onb.ac.at/cgi-content/anno?apm=0&aid=ptb&zoom=3
• The Holocaust Cz site -www.holocaust.cz/cz2/eng/victims/victims
• (1850-1914) - Applications for Residence Permit of Prague Police Headquarters -http://digi.nacr.cz/prihlasky2/indexen.php
• Database is almost complete – to S by April 2011.
Prague Project on Geni
• Project of the Austria-Czech Sig at JewishGen
• Project linking old Prague Jewish Families
• Over 100 Surnames
• Many surnames are unique to Prague Jews
• Uses communal databases and other records
• Births 1770-1900
• 2/3 of trees end with Shoah victims, so it also has a commemorative role
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Geni - www.geni.com
• Jewish Genealogy Portal: A Guide to Jewish Projects and Resources on Geni
• www.geni.com/projects/Jewish-Genealogy-Portal-A-Guide-to-Jewish-Projects-and-Resources-on-Geni/13121
• Eastern Europe:
• Belarus
• Bessarabia
• Latvia
• Lithuania
• Poland
• Slovakia
• Ukraine
• Africa
• Asia
• Biblical
• Central/Southern Europe
• Eastern Europe
• Historical Projects
• Holocaust
• Middle East
• North & South America
• North Africa
• Notable Jewish Family Projects
• Other
• Rabbinic
• Sephardic
• Western Europe
Belarus
• Case Study:
• Belarus Sig Pages at
JewishGen
• www.jewishgen.org/belarus
• Typical of online Sig
resources.
• Discussion Group
• Etc. Etc.
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Belarus State Archives
• Available in English (See
button top R of
website)
• www.archives.gov.by
• Information on the central, regional and local state archives and institutions and their services
• Information on genealogy, archival publications, legislation, and professional training.
• A basic guide to archival Holdings - in archival directories
• Subject guides on various aspects of the history and culture of Belarus.
Hungary and Croatia
• Jewish communities pre-1914 registers of births, marriages and deaths of the Jewish communities have been microfilmed by the Mormons during extensive filming in the Hungarian National Archives in the 1960s.
• Some census records are also available.
• Some local records can only be seen in person.
• Researching Jewish Family History in Croatia, Slavonia & Hungary - Malcolm Scott Hardy AVOTAYNU (Vol. XVII, No. 3, Fall 2001).
• See also records in The Knowles Collection
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Czernowitz
• Where exactly is it?
• “Keep in mind when searching birth registers that administrative boundaries dividing a county changed repeatedly during the course of the century. As a result, documents about the births of individuals born in the same place, but in different years, might end up in different archives.”
• Czernowitz-L Discussion Group Website - http://czernowitz.ehpes.com/
• Blog - http://czernowitz.blogspot.com
• Lots of resources online and an active group
• Vital Records Digitisation Project – email me for more info, records at: http://microtarget.com/czernowitz/CzernowitzBMDindex.htm.
www.jewishgen.org/galicia
• Gesher Galicia Inc.
• The Galitzianer Journal
• New search engine
• All Galicia Database – July 2011
• 72,954 records from 41 different data sources
• Further new records added – most recently in May 2012!
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Latvia & Estonia
• State Archival
Information – Online
• Available to download
• Includes Finding Aids
• New info coming on
stream all the time!
Lithuania
• Birth, marriage, and death records of the Jews of Lithuania, some as early as 1800, have been found at the Central State Historical Archives in Vilnius
• Many new resources for Lithuania are coming on stream – Keep checking!
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Moldova/ Moldavia
• 3 places called Moldova/ Moldavia.
• All geographically contiguous.
• At one time or another, all had been part of Romania.
• Only one was part of Romania from its inception to the present time.
• The other two regions lie east of Romania and were a single unit until recently. They were shunted back and forth between Russian and Romanian influence for centuries and were for many years called Bessarabia.
• Major problem encountered in researching Moldovan ancestry is the fact that records from only a few places have been preserved.
Poland
• Polish State Archives Online – with images inc
1921 Census books at http://szukajwarchiwach.pl
• Some but not all items microfilmed by LDS
• Polish Interactive Map Site -http://gdn.republika.pl/polmap/mapy/polska1.htm
• Der Haynt 1908-39, in Yiddish Online at Tel Aviv
University -
http://www.jpress.org.il/publications/HYT-en.asp
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Polish Institute & Sikorski Museum in London
Romania
• Not many Jews remain in Romania today—but
many Jewish organizations do!
• Jewish records do indeed exist, but aren’t
complete.
• The general historical archive of Romanian
Jewry was microfilmed for the Hebrew
University in Jerusalem.
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Romania
• Rom Sig: current situation as at April 2012
• According to Dr. Dobrincu the National Romanian Archive and its branches do not respond to mail requests for family information as they have neither the staff, nor the funds to do that.
• Local repositories mainly have records more recent than 100 years, but access is strictly forbidden by Romanian Privacy Laws.
• Some towns possibly have records from 1900-1911, but those can only be obtained *from abroad* by direct family members, and proof relationship is required, with full information re the person or persons you are researching. Information given will only be excerpts and not full records.
• Suggestion – Try Genealogy Indexer instead!
Slovakia
• Lisa Alzo – expert in Non-Jewish Slovak info
• Good background for in country research
• Mass economic migration to USA 1880-1914
• Many returned home later
• The Slovak Jewish Heritage Center -www.slovak-jewish-heritage.org
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Ukraine
• Sig being rejuvenated by JewishGen
• Seeks volunteers & funding for records
• Facebook Page
• Ukrainian Genealogy – book by John D. Pihach
• Not specific to Jewish resources
• Primary focus to help Canadian & US citizens research their Ukrainian roots
Broiguses – 1 Polaks & Yekkes
• Both terms are derogatory
• 2 Jews, 3 opinions & 4 different groups,
• Definitely not discussing this one further!
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Broiguses - 2 - Galitzianer-Litvak Divide
• Saul Issroff’s article in Avotaynu.
• Anecdotal evidence – sweet or salty gefilte fish.
• Until recently, large numbers of Eastern European Jewry divided themselves into either Litvaks or Galitzianers on the basis of social, cultural, linguistic, culinary and other perceived differences.
• Actually all proven to have the same origins!
• Galicia was a geo-political region of Eastern Europe, (does not exist today), composed of contemporary south-eastern Poland and north-western Ukraine, running northwards from the Carpathian Mountains through the Vistula Valley to the San River.
• A Litvak is broadly defined as one whose ancestors were in Lithuania, Courland (a former guberniya or province now in Latvia) and the Vilna and Grodno provinces of contemporary Belarus.
• From a Yiddish cultural perspective, however, some other areas, such as Dvinsk (now Daugavpils, Latvia), Grodna province (now Hrodna, Belarus) and Chernigov (now in the Ukraine), also are considered to be Litvak regions.
• A number of good outlines of Lithuanian history and geography offer additional details: Levin, Dov. The Litvaks: A Short History of the Jews of Lithuania. Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2001; Greenbaum, Masha. The Jews of Lithuania: A History of a Remarkable Community, 1316–1945. Jerusalem: Gefen, 1995
Agenda - Review
• Introductions
• Eastern Europe – Where are the records?
– Applied knowledge
– Country or place specific Information
• Next session: 16 January 2014
Genealogy in Western Europe
• Please register on the link that will be sent out soon!
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Thank You.
Any Questions ?
The Jewish Genealogical Society
of Great Britain
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