The following article has been adapted from a presentation given at the IAJGS conference in Salt Lake City in July 2007—Ed

The archival websites described here provide the greatest amount of detail on genealogical records and their locations. Many other sites of varying degrees of quality are not covered by this article. The countries included are east of Germany and north of Greece: the Baltics (Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia) in the north; the Balkans (Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Macedonia, and Bulgaria) in the south; and the corridor of Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Belarus, Ukraine, and finally, Russia. Archives in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Romania and Moldova do not yet have a web presence.

Archival sites help genealogists find original records, the foundation of genealogical research. They provide the contact information for repositories, databases and listings of records, and other information of value to those tracing their Eastern European ancestry. One general cautionary note is that site URLs and content change often, so this information may quickly become outdated. Fortunately, changes are often for the better; sites usually improve in quality and content over time.

Information on archival sites is not uniformly of value to Jewish researchers. As sites develop, however, more will likely be found on them. Some records described on these sites have been microfilmed and may be found in the collection of the Family History Library in Salt Lake City and its Family History Centers throughout the world.

Main Portal

A key portal to the world of archival sites is Repositories of Primary Sources <www.uidaho.edu/special-collections/ Other.Repositories.html>, posted by the University of Idaho, and located in the appropriately named city of Moscow. The directory lists, by country, a variety of public and private archives and libraries that maintain a site on the web. After selecting a region of the world, click on any of the countries listed on the page and retrieve a list of links to the sites for that country.

Some of the link names are in the native language, but it does no harm to click on a link to investigate further even if the title is not descriptive. URLs for most of the sites mentioned below may be found on this portal.

Archival sites described in this article are grouped into three categories: those most useful to English readers, those that are less useful and those with no English interface. The first group includes sites that provide a database or list of genealogical materials. This information lets the genealogist know prior to contact—whether by visit, post or agent—what can be found in the repository. Researchers must realize, however, that not all materials have been gathered into archives and that not all gathered material has been cataloged. Consequently, the fact that an item is not listed does not mean that it does not exist. English users may have some difficulty with these sites, because the search terms or lists normally are written in the native language.

Belarus

Belarus has a site that is one of the easiest to use and offers the most detailed information for genealogists, located at <http://archives.gov.by/eng>. Both the interface and inventory information are in English. The home page has a Genealogy link in the left column. Click on it and see a brief discussion of Belarus resources, plus four links to record inventories. The vital records link is just for Christian religious records, although some limited Jewish records are in the archive. These are described by the Belarus SIG on the JewishGen website <www.jewishgen.org>. Tax census records listed on the Belarus site, on the other hand, pertain to most of the population, except for individuals who did not pay taxes. The inventories describe records found at either of the two central historical archives in the country, one in Minsk, the other in Grodno.

Poland

Poland features a vital records database known as the PRADZIAD <www.archiwa.gov.pl/?CIDA=43>, an acronym for “Programme for the Registration of Records from Parish and Civil Registration Offices.” Click the Databases link in the left-hand column and select vital records and civil registers PRADZIAD. This page provides translations of key Polish terms that can be used by English speakers to understand the terms used on the search screen. Thus, when searching for Jewish records, the term is mojóeszowe. Click on the Database link along the right-hand margin of the screen. When the spelling of a specific place is unknown, select the province and the search term for Jews noted above from dropdown menus, and get a result set of only a few pages, which does not take too much time to browse. Clicking on “more” in the right hand column shows the archive in which the records are located. Another link off the home page in the left-hand column, State archives in Poland, lists links to URLs for each archive.

Hungary

Hungary also offers a database that permits a researcher to discover if records exist for a particular place: <www.mol.gov.hu/index.php?akt_menu=574>. Clicking on the Database finding aids link in the left-hand column retrieves a page with the link Parish Registers in the middle column. In Hungarian, the term for Jewish is Izraelita. Type in the name of the place and click Keresés. Searching for Budapest, for instance, one retrieves a list of nine records for Jewish congregations in the city. Virtually all genealogical records are found in the National Archive in Budapest.

Estonia

Estonia has a very progressive website at <www. eha.ee/english/english.htm>. In a first for Eastern Europe, it not only provides inventories of records but also images, and these are free of charge, although one needs to register in order to view them. To find this material, click on the Databases link in the left-hand column. Of the 15 databases currently available, at least 4 have value to genealogists:

• ­Number 8. Register of revision lists of the population. This is an inventory of census records. Search for a county (maakond) and the parish or place (kihelkond) by using the options in the dropdown boxes. Search at the county level if you do not know the specific place.
• ­Number 13. Kupits. Historic administrative boundaries. This database has clickable jurisdictional maps for various time periods where one can see, at multiple zoom levels, the boundaries between jurisdictions. The bottom layer is a historical map.
• ­Number 14. SAAGA. Digitized family history sources. This provides images of the original records. Currently, the only images are for Christian church records and early tax records known as Wackenbuch (contract books). The images were digitized from the films created by the cooperation of the Archive and the Genealogical Society of Utah (now known as FamilySearch Record Services).
• Number 15. Personal name indexes of parish registries. This looks promising, but none of the text is in English, so it is not possible to decipher details about the extent of the index. However, an entry for a surname indicates in what parish register it may be found. A researcher then can go to the images and look at the original entry.

Czech Republic

The website for the Czech Republic is hosted by the Czech Archival Society at <www.cesarch.cz/foreign.aspx? lang=en>. After a brief introduction to the Czech Archive Society, one finds two links. The first of these, Directory of archives in the Czech Republic, provides links to many archives in the country; Národní archiv means National Archive and Státní oblastní Archiv stands for regional archives. These archives hold most of the genealogical sources. Each of the sites has contact information. The second link on the home page, National Collection Register Archival Fonds (Archive Groups) in the Czech Republic, leads to a Ministry of the Interior database search. Selecting matriky (metrical or vital records) from the dropdown list for the Thematic description and “230000” (church institutions) from the dropdown list for Group of thematic records will retrieve 179 matches of material, two of which pertain to Jews. Those who can read Czech will make better use of the information provided by this database search. It is not clear at this time how complete this listing is for metrical or vital records.

Ukraine

The archival website for Ukraine at <www.archives. gov.ua/Eng/> has two links of genealogical value on the home page. A Genealogy link provides basic information on how to do this type of research in Ukraine. This page provides a link to a research group associated with the archives that performs genealogical research. The second link, Archives of Ukraine, provides a list of central and provincial (oblast) archives along with contact information. The information in the non-English portion of the site is much more complete; for example, it has digital versions of archival registers. An inventory for the Chernivtsy Archive includes a description of Jewish collections located there.

Lithuania

The Lithuanian archival website offers a search of record groups in all of the state archives. Genealogists need only search for records in the State Historical Archive. From the home page at <www.archyvai.lt/archyvai/ selectLanguage. do?language=en>, click the tab at the top for State Archives and select Lithuanian State Historical Archives. Contact information is provided on this page. In the left-hand column is a link to the database (National Archival Database) to search for collection descriptions. Descriptions of religious records in the historical archive can be retrieved by selecting “…(LVIA)” from the dropdown list under Repository and one of the topics under Tikyba (religion) in the dropdown under Subject. The result is in Lithuanian with a Russian translation, so acquaintance with either of these languages is needed to use the information effectively.

Slovenia

Most church vital records of Slovenia were transferred to religious archives in 1991 and are not found in the state archives. The website for the National Archive, however, has a digitized inventory of its collections. Clicking the link Use of Records Database, in the left-hand column of the home page, <www.arhiv.gov.si/en>, allows one to find English pages to search the inventory, but the actual search must be done using Slovenian words. A collection of church and civil vital records, AS 1067, is found under the link Catalogue Browsing Based on Structure and the down-arrow for the category M. Archivske Zbirke (Archival collections). Contact information for the various archives, including religious archives, can be found by using the Slovenian version of the site (click the Slovensko link in the top right-hand corner of the home page) and the link Uporabne povezave in the left-hand column. Links to regional archives are listed first, followed by links to religious archives.

Less Useful Websites

A second group of archival websites is less useful, mostly providing contact and other general information. This includes sites for Latvia, Slovakia, Croatia, Macedonia and Bulgaria.

• ­ Latvia State Historical Archives, where most genealogical resources are housed, has a page on the website for the Latvian Archival Administration <www.arhive.lv/engl/ en-dep-lvva.htm> that provides contact information, general research information and a map showing where the archive is located.
• ­ Slovakia State Archives’ home page, <www.civil. gov.sk/SNARCHIV/uk.htm>, has contact information for the regional archives where the genealogical sources are located. It is found by clicking on Slovak Archives Administration (a link on a bar toward the bottom of the page) and then clicking the archívy link in the middle of the next page. A list of collections is found under the link entitled Survey of Fonds, Collections and Their Accessibility in the middle of the home page, but this seems to be incomplete at this time.
• ­ Croatia has a website, <http://zagreb.arhiv.hr/en/index.html>, where contact information is found under the Archives in Croatia link in the right-hand column and the Regional State Archives link in the middle of the next page. Although the text is written in Croatian, the contact information is easy to decipher. Contact information for the National Archive is on the home page.
• ­Macedonia has a website, <http://arhiv.gov.mk/j_en/ index.php>, where contact information is found by clicking on the About Us link in the left-hand column. On the subsequent page are links to the State (national) Archives and to archives of each department (region or province).
• ­ The archival website for Bulgaria, <www.archives. government.bg/index_en.html>, is brief and has only contact information for the archive. This is found under the CDA (Central Government Archive) tab and the Contacts sub-tab. Most of the genealogical sources still are in local archives or the institutions that created the records.

Those With No English Interface

The third group of sites are those with no English interface, but, with a little effort, they can still be used and contact information obtained:

• ­­ Russia has considerable information including digital versions of collection guides that describe the records in a particular archive. Contact information for archives can be found by those who know enough Cyrillic to read place names. The link <www.rusarchives.ru/state/list.shtml> is not to the home page but to the list of archives. Clicking through this list, one can obtain e-mail addresses for most archives and URLs for some archives, all in Russian.
• ­­Serbia <www.archives.org.yu/index.htm> has a basic website that provides contact information for the central and regional (historical) archives where many of the genealogical records are located. All the non-Serbian speaker needs to find is the word !DN4&F8″ <D,0 on the list of links at the top of the page. Once again, knowledge of Cyrillic sufficient to read place names is needed to identify the archives. Many have e-mail addresses.

Conclusion

Twenty years ago, most of these archives were highly selective about the clientele from the West that they permitted to visit. Ten years ago, most archives did not have websites. Five years ago, these websites did not provide the level of detail that they do now. Now, some sites, such as the one for Estonia, are trendsetters. Whereas it was a struggle in the past to find out where an archive existed, the information now is only a few clicks away, and many archives have accommodated the needs of those who speak English. Whereas inventories once were kept secret, or at least the documents kept confidential, they now are available digitally. We are in the middle of a revolution in access to archival material that is sweeping when considered from a historical perspective. While access is still an issue and the relationship between genealogists and many archives tenuous, given the exclusive catering to academics and government officials in the past, genealogists should appreciate the tremendous advances that are underway and take advantage of them, if possible.

Kahlile B. Mehr, AG, MLS, MA (Family and Community History), has twenty-five years experience at the Family History Library as a collection manager, research guidance manager, supervisor and cataloger. He has visited archives throughout central and eastern Europe and has published 20 articles and a book on family and local history topics

 

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