Writes About Status of
Search Bureau Records
AVOTAYNU wrote to the Central Zionist Archives (CZA) in Israel asking why the database of the Jewish Agency’s Search Bureau for Missing Relatives, created many years ago under the direction of Batya Unterschatz and now held by CZA, is not on its website—Ed.
The database of the Relative Search Bureau of the Jewish Agency is not on the Internet (www.zionistarchives. org.il) because the database was typed into a—by now—antiquated program and can be worked only on a computer with Windows 98. In 2006, we had the database extracted and the contents imported into our current in-house system. It is not yet on the Internet; that is the next step.
I should add that also last year we received the Relatives Search Bureau files that the database refers to, 300 meters of personal files to which we provide access, to those who send requests.
In addition, in 2006, we sent out to a commercial company more than 1,100,000 cards from seven or eight genealogical databases for scanning and typing. At the moment we are in the long and complicated process of importing this new material into our in-house system.
This year we hope to finish importing the 1,100,000 cards and the 700,000 names in the Relatives Search Bureau designing a combined search screen and individual screens for viewing the results (including the scans, where relevant) into the in-house system. It’s clear to us that this material will then go up on the Internet.
Please note: The CZA will be closed for the annual summer vacation from August 19, 2007, for two weeks and will re-open on September 2, 2007.
Rochelle Rubinstein
Deputy Director, Archival matters
Central Zionist Archives
Jerusalem, Israel
Clarifies List of Given Names
A reader has asked, “In Constructing a Town-Wide Genealogy, Spring 2007, Carole Vogel writes (on page 31) ‘If you index everyone with these names such as Yitzchak and Isak,… Why are both Yitzchak and Isak listed? Weren’t all the names in that list (including Yitzchak and Isak) a variant of the Hebrew name Isaac? If so, then why wouldn’t it have been sufficient simply to list them all as Isaac?”
Isak is a secular name; Yitzchak is a Hebrew name. Not all Yitzchaks used Isak as their secular name. Many Yitzchaks in Mattersdorf were called Ignatz. For many people we had only the Hebrew name or only the secular name. We found that occasionally our assumptions about Hebrew and secular names were wrong. For example, someone called “Simon” most likely had the Hebrew name “Shimon,” but once in a while, a Simon had the Hebrew name of “Simcha.” Tracking Hebrew and secular names separately was essential. With a dual language tracking system, we avoided assigning a person an incorrect Hebrew name.
Dual tracking helped me to distinguish between two lines of Osterreicher families where both lines had a significant number of Simons. One turned out to be Simchas, the other were Simons.
Carole Garbuny Vogel
Lexington, Massachusetts
Corrects Location of CAHJP
The Spring 2007 issue of AVOTAYNU has just arrived, and there is a mistake in “Israel Report, Spring 2007.” The new location of the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People is the Givat Ram campus of Hebrew University in Jerusalem—not as written, Ramat Gan, the location of Tel Aviv University.
Batya Unterschatz
Moshav Beit Zeit, Israel
Rabbi Shalom Bronstein also wrote to tell us of the error—Ed.
