To read an article or news release excerpted in U.S. Update, order the issue of the publication in which it appeared from the appropriate JGS. A list of Jewish Genealogical Societies can be found at iajgs.org/members/members.html. A list of Special Interest Groups can be found at www.jewishgen.org.
Conejo Valley & Ventura County (California)
Vol. 5, No. 6, March 2010
Venturing Into Our Past
Ron Arons has a new book: WANTED! U.S. Criminal Records: Source and Research Methodology. <> The Laguna Niguel office of the National Archives and Records Administration has a new address, (23123 Cajalco Road, Perris, CA 92570) in Riverside County; the Orange County location is closed. <> The 1921 United Kingdom census will not be available publicly until 2021. Meanwhile, 1939 National Registration data is available for those deceased (from Britain and Scotland, but not yet from North Ireland) http://tinyurl.com/yc3hpjs or www.gro-scotland.gov.uk/ press/news2010/1939-identity-register.html.
Vol. 5, No. 8, May 2010. Resubmit queries sent before 1990 to the Red Cross Holocaust Tracing Service, which has new information sources. <> DDD schedules from the U.S. census list people identified as “defective, dependent, or delinquent.” Ancestry.com publishes 1880 DDD data for 14 U.S. states. <> Steve Luxenberg substituted morning reports for military personnel records that no longer are available.
Vol. 5, No. 11, August 2010. Includes 2010 award winners named by the International Association of Jewish Genealogy Societies. <> Family stories provide clues for research, whether or not the stories are accurate. <> The Los Angeles Family History Library (formerly Family History Center) has finally reopened. <> Eugeen Van Mieghem used art to document the seafaring Jewish migration from Antwerp 1873–1934, www.vanmieghemmuseum. com.
Vol. 5, No. 12, September 2010. Includes a list of data available at the National Personnel Records Center, St. Louis, Missouri. <> An online database from the Israel Genealogical Society will publish immigrant surname changes, beginning in 1949, and 19th-century data from the Montefiore Census.
Vol. 6, No. 1, October 2010. The society celebrates its fifth anniversary. <> Go to the Kansas City office of the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration for access to 1940–44 Alien Registration files (for individuals born through 1909). <> Jewish genealogists provided information about banker Achille Levy to the Museum of Ventura County for the exhibit, “History Unexpected.” The museum needed a team of genealogists to translate a two-page, Yiddish letter, deciphering one clue at a time. Find similar team efforts at www.jewishgen.org/viewmate/. Note that Yiddish-speaking Germans honor someone deceased with the word selig rather than the abbreviation z”l.
Vol. 6, No. 2, November 2010. Find Latvia’s Riga Ghetto Museum online at http://shamir.lv. The Russian-language site includes a memorial to Latvian Jewish children killed in World War II at http://shamir.lv/ru/item/8-U_kazhdogo_rebenka_est_imya.html. <> Genealogy blogs may announce research successes or quandaries. To investigate this resource, visit http://blogfinder,genealogue.com/ jewish.as, or http://tracingthetribe.blogspot.com. <> View art objects looted 1940–44 by the Germans at www.ERR project.org/jeudepaume/.
Illinois Vol. 25, No. 1, Spring 2010
Morasha / Heritage
Ava Cohen demonstrates how to expand on family stories with photographic clues. <> The Hungarian Special Interest Group has published about 365,000 transcribed records to date. These H-SIG records come from Transcarpathian Ukraine and the Romanian counties of Bihar and Maramures. <> Martin Fischer (U.S. National Archives and Records Administration) explains how to use standard genealogical resources to find living, rather than historical, relatives.
Illinois & Indiana Fall 2010
Illiana
Trudy Barch befriends relatives on Facebook in order to send group announcements. <> Arthur S. Meyers describes the Volunteers for Israel program.
Michigan Vol. 25, No. 1, Spring 2010
Generations
The Polish Mission of Orchard Lake has a 1922 presentation book with student signatures and art, organized by town and school. Look at similar material in the 1926 Library of Congress collection, www.loc.gov/rr/european/ egw/polishex.html#intr and the circa 1920 Hoover Institute collection at www.hoover.org/publications/digest/3050566. html. <> Ruth Blackman owns an archive of Yiddish letters (1905–39) exchanged between her Latvian grandfather, Moyshe Zeeve Shtokler, and his children in Canada and the United States. <> Yad Vashem’s traveling Auschwitz Album exhibits 1944 photographs of a Hungarian transport, identifying many of the individuals shown. <> Consider Care and Maintenance (CMI) questionnaires among International Tracing Service (Arolsen) records. These are emigrant statements of wartime experience.
Vol. 25, No. 3, Fall 2010. Includes the JewishGen list of professional genealogists for East Europe. <> Meet society founder Betty Provizer Starkman, granddaughter of Gittel and Mayer Rachmiel Provizer, of Ilza, Poland, and daughter of immigrants from Poland via Palestine (Rose Bodenstein and Jack Provizer). <> Continuation (L-Z) of a list matching Hungarian towns with their Yiddish names. <> Research participants in Orthodox Jewish events at onlysimchas.com. <> Useful websites provide information on Polish shtetls www.sztetl.org.pl/?cid=15&lang=en GB, emigrants to South Africa from Eastern Europe via England, http://chrysalis.its.uct.ac.za/shelter/shelter.htm, Eastern European directories, http://genealogyindexer.org, and Argentinean immigrants, www.amia.org.ar/register/sepelio.aspx?sid= 128.
Southern Nevada Vol. 13, No. 1, Spring 2010
Family Legacies
Jewish genealogy society names Ella Perla its Person of the Year for her success raising the society’s public visibility. <> The Ancestry.com Learning Center is an underused resource. <> Arnold Ismach reviews the role of Jews in the globalization of chocolate consumption.
Vol. 13, No. 3, Fall 2010. Includes the 2010–11 genealogy society program schedule and the list of 2010 International Association of Jewish Genealogy Societies awards. <> Jack Oliver notes that children and adults remember the same events in different ways.
New York Vol. 31, No. 3, Spring 2010
Dorot
Allan E. Jordan uses great-grandfather Jacob Joseph’s data to demonstrate the process and results of requesting a U.S. passport file. <> The New York County Clerk holds records for a variety of property and contract issues from predecessor courts in its Division of Old Records (31 Chambers Street). Steve Stein lists record types and relevant dates. <> Hadassah Lipsius of Jewish Records Indexing-Poland recommends sources for Polish research. Includes lists of online resources and types of records regarding Bialystok, Galicia, Prussia (with Posen and Silesia). <> The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (AJDC) records will be digitized when organized and indexed. The first online records probably will describe institutional JDC data, 1930s Dominican Republic Settlement Association (for German Jewish refugees), 1940s Sali Mayer collection (World War II-era Jewish resettlement, especially for Hungarians). <> First vice-president for Programs Roni Seibel Leibowitz has roots in Belchatow and in Lodz. <> The Center for Jewish History adds Sunday hours for the Ackman & Ziff Family Genealogy Institute (Monday 9:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m., Tuesday through Thursday 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., Friday 9:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., Sunday 11:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.) http://www.cjh.org/collections/genealogy/index.php. <> Review finding aids for the Yeshiva University archives at http://libfindaids.yu.edu:8082/xtf/search. <> Ancestry.com and Footnote.com have begun indexing and digitizing National Archives and Records Administration records. Initial results are incomplete and contain errors. <> Book summary: Annie’s Ghosts: A Journey into a Family Secret (Steve Luxenberg). Book reviews: Getting Started in Jewish Genealogy (Gary Mokotoff, Bergenfield, NJ: Avotaynu, 2010); Handbook of Ashkenazic Given Names and Their Variants (Alexander Beider, Bergenfield, NJ: Avotaynu, 2010); The Jews in Poland and Russia, 3 vols. (Antony Polonsky, Oxford, UK: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2009); Synagogues in Lithuania: Catalogue A-M (Vilnius, Lithuania: Academy of Arts Press, 2010).
Vol. 31, No. 4, Summer 2010. Researchers can find so much data online that they can almost do without family interviews. Ann Rabinowitz tested this theory, researching the family of Marc Mezvinsky—husband of Chelsea Clinton, son-in-law of former U.S. President Bill and of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Her tools included biological information from Google.com and Newspaperarchive.com, relationship information from Ancestry.com, U.S. vital records from various state archives, ancestral names from both vital and burial records at www.findagrave.com, European vital records from Ancestry.com, and miscellaneous data from JewishGen at www.jri-poland.org/index.htm. Includes a list of online sites providing some information about U.S. naturalizations. <> Nancy Polevoy corrects the article in a previous issue: Sulzdorf Jews used the cemetery in Klein Steinach until 1832. <> New York University has started online access to its Berman Jewish Policy Archive (295 Lafayette St., #3013, phone: 212-998-7564). <> Records of U.S. military service through 1947 are available from the National Personnel Records Center.
Palm Beach Vol. 17, No. 3, 3rd/4th Quarter 2010
Scattered Seeds
The Jewish genealogy society approaches its 20th anniversary. New officers are beginning their terms of service. <> Miami-Dade Library contains resources useful for genealogists, e.g., city directories and selected ship arrivals. <> Map shows Lithuanian Jewish communities 1723–64. <> Book review: Annie’s Ghosts (Steve Luxenberg).
San Francisco Vol. 30, No. 3, August 2010
ZichronNote
Find links to online newspapers at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspaper_archives_online. <> David Krut publishes information about Maine Jewry at http:// davidkrut.com/pj/index.php. <> Researchers post comments about professional genealogists at www.jewishgen.org/ infofiles/researchers.htm. <> Explore the Salzburg, Austria, Jewish cemetery via photos www.flickr.com/photos/ cam37/sets/72157605240340950/. <> The Latvian State Archives posts historical documents from Latvia and Courland at www.lvva-raduraksti.lv/de.html. <> Additions to Canadian data online include city and area directories 1819–1906 (by province) at www.ancestry.com/search/ rectype/recent.aspx, and wartime military deaths circa 1940–55 at www.cjccc.ca/archives/casualties.php. For a roster of Israeli and earlier Palestinian soldiers 1870 forward, see www.izkor.gov.il.
Southwest Florida Vol. 15, No. 3, Fall 2010
Scattered Seeds
Arolsen Records is another name for data from the International Tracing Service—an outgrowth of World War II-era population displacements. Note each record is in the language of its author(s). Larry Oppenheimer recommends patience when you request data—response takes at least three months. ITS holdings are described in detail at www.its-arolsen.org. Researchers may access the records through the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, but Oppenheimer has found ITS uniquely able to draw answers from outside archives.
Washington, DC Vol. 29, No. 4, Fall 2010
Mishpacha
The Jewish Genealogy Society celebrates its 30th anniversary and will host the next IAJGS summer conference, August 14–19, 2011. <> Generate a commission for JewishGen.org by going there to register (or renew registration) for Ancestry.com. Your registration will include access to digitized photographs from the Joint Distribution Committee (Jewish rescue and relief), 1914 forward. <> Rabbis deceased while on active U.S. military duty will be honored with a memorial at Arlington National Cemetery, Fall 2010. <> Tony and Toby Hausner track her Brickman family in Warsaw, Wyszogrod, and Plotz, Poland, and his Hausners through Vienna, Austria, Milan, Italy, and Ukraine: Lviv, Borschiv, Skala Podilska, Mielnitsa, Chortkiv, Kalush. <> The Family Tree of the Jewish People continues, now as a partnership between JewishGen.com and MyHeritage.com.
Special Interest Groups (SIGs)
Gesher Galicia Vol. 17, No. 4, August 2010
The Galitzianer
Includes a list of relevant sessions from the 2010 IAJGS summer genealogy conference. <> Chris Nicola is publishing The Secret of Priest’s Grotto to relate information regarding the cave he found near Korolowka, a World War II-era hiding place. Nicola will also release a documentary film. <> Brian Lenius continues to find and inventory new cadastral, or landowner, records held in the L’viv archives. Maps for 9 towns and records for 12 towns should be posted online: maps for Brody, Dora, Mosciska, Podhajce, Rohatyn, Rozniatow, Swirz, Trostianiec, Zurawno, and records for Brody, Buczacz, Kolomea, Krystynopol, Mosciska, Rohatyn, Rozlucz, Rozniatow, Staremiasto, Strzeliska, Nowe Swirz, and Ulaszkowce. Alexander Dunai is copying cadastral maps for at least nine towns in Ternopil oblast—maps held in the Oblast State Archive: Grzymalow, Korolowka, Mikulince, Monasteryska, Polupanoska, Romanowe Siolo, Skala, Zbarazh, Zborow. Poland is haltingly transferring 100-year-old records, through 1910, out of the Urzad Stanu Cywilnego (civil records office) to a facility with public access. Research at the USC is limited to requesting a record’s abstract. Fumigation and necessary repairs create delays. <> Continued list of Ukrainian towns, each with its Polish names, autonomous district, and oblast. <> Current list of Kolbuszowa Region Research Group towns from the Administrative Districts of Kolbuszowa, Lancut, Mielec, Nisko, Pilzno, Ropczyce, Rzeszow, Strzyzow, Tarnobrzeg. Administrative Districts for the Suchostaw Region Research Group are Borszczow, Buczacz, Czortkow, Husiatyn, Skalat, Tarnopol, Trembowla, Zbaras, Zaleszczyki. <> Headstone photographs are available by subscription for the cemeteries of Jezierzany, Podwoloczyska, and Zbaraz. <> Asher Bar-Zev introduces his ancestor Rebbe Elimelech of Lezajsk and describes the town’s Jewish cemetery. A neighboring hostel provides accommodations and tickets to the cemetery. <> William Liebner celebrates Polish rabbi and Captain Yeshayahu Drucker for restoring children to their Jewish families after years of wartime concealment among gentiles. Liebner tells the story of Edzio Rosenblatt, hidden by Jozef Balczyniak.
