The Lithuanian Link: Sara Manobla explores her family roots in the town of Zagare On July 13, 2012, veteran Israel Radio broadcaster Sara Manobla served as master of ceremonies at a memorial ceremony in the Lithuanian town of Zagare for the […]
Book Review: Lithuanian Jewish Culture, by Dovid Katz
Lithuanian Jewish Culture, by Dovid Katz. Originally published 2004 and reprinted in 2010, by Baltos Lankos of Lithuania. Large format, 400 pages, hardcover. ISBN 9955-584-41-6. www.baltoslankos.lt. Available online from: http://www.amazon.com/Lithuanian-Jewish-Culture-Dovid-Katz/dp/9639776513 Dovid Katz, the New York-born, award-winning Yiddish scholar who founded the […]
State Historical Archives in Vilnius: Lithuania Roulette
The following is excerpted from a larger article in Rodziny, The Journal of the Polish Genealogical Society of America, Winter 2010—Ed. with translation assistance from William F. Hoffman The collections of the Lithuanian State Historical Archives clearly reflect the geopolitical […]
Resources to Find Any Location in the Austro-Hungarian Empire; Similar Resources for Imperial Russia and Imperial Germany
The three large 19th-century European empires—Austria-Hungary, Germany, and Russia—all collapsed either during, or as a result of, World War I. New countries and altered boundaries emerged, often with different names or different spellings of geographical locations. Fortunately, finding aids for […]
Bibliography for Records of the Former Soviet Union
At the IAJGS conference in Los Angeles, July 2010, Professor Benjamin Nathans presented a report on the archives of the former Soviet Union. As part of his talk, Professor Nathans distributed the following list of sources. His book, Beyond the […]
How the Virtual Shtetl Project’s Website Can Help Genealogists
Much has been written about the Virtual Shtetl Project, but no detailed discussion of what this project can do for genealogy researchers has appeared until now.1 The website www.shtetl.org.pl/ has many resources for genealogists interested in researching the Jews of […]
Vilnius and Belarus: Genealogical Travel
“Do you speak Yiddish?” my newfound cousin queried on behalf of her father, a Holocaust survivor who had settled in Paris after the war. I had located him through research at Bad Arolsen in the International Tracing Service records. His […]
Vilnius Jewish Leaders Who Were Killed (1941–1945): Seeking Answers
In July 2007, I attended the IAJGS International Conference on Jewish Genealogy in Salt Lake City, Utah. After returning home, I received a message from Carol Rombro Rider, who also had attended the conference. During her visit to the LDS […]
Book Review: A Dictionary of Jewish Surnames from the Russian Empire: Revised Edition. 2 vols, by Alexander Beider.
Dictionary of Jewish Surnames from the Russian Empire: Revised Edition. 2 vols, by Alexander Beider. Avotaynu, 2008. $118.00. To order: http://www.avotaynu.com/books/DJSRE2.htm When the first edition of Alexander Beider’s massive Dictionary of Jewish Surnames from the Russian Empire came out in […]
Lessons Learned in Finding the Chajkielson Family of Suwalki
Many Jewish genealogists have wondered what happened to relatives who did not emigrate from Europe during the 20th century. Older family members typically report that “all communication was lost after World War II. They must have been killed in the […]
The 1897 All-Empire Russian Census
The 1897 All-Empire Russian Census was the first and only census conducted in the Russian Empire prior to World War II. Its major interest and value both for personal genealogy and for the history of Jewish communities is that the […]
Jewish Surnames Adopted in Various Regions of the Russian Empire
This article is adapted from a lecture delivered at the IAJG Conference in Chicago, August 18, 2008—Ed. Generally speaking, it is relatively easy to distinguish Sephardic surnames from Ashkenazic surnames. For example, if one sees two lists, the […]
Litvak Migratory Decisions in the 19th Century And Their Consequences: Prussian Transit Migration
This article is based on a lecture given at the 28th International Conference on Jewish Genealogy held in Chicago, August 2008. The history of Jewish migration from the Czarist Russian Empire beginning in the second half of the 19th century […]
Bringing the “Great Terror” Home
Family stories had Mowshe (Morris) Rosenfeld coming from “Minsk, Pinsk, Russia.” As my research progressed, I learned from Morris’ ship’s passenger list that he had, in fact, come from a place called Turovo. Slownik Geograficzny Krolestwo Poliskich, the multi-volume, standard […]
The Ties that Bind: Jewish Kinship Networks and Modernization in Darbenai and its Diaspora
From the outset of work on this project, I have developed a very large bank of data on which to base my conclusions concerning Jewish life and family networks and in the shtetl of Darbenai, Lithuania and its Diaspora during […]