Of all the grandparents I never got a chance to know, I feel closest to my mother’s father Lucian. Perhaps it was my mother’s vivid storytelling that made him seem accessible. I’ve inherited his talents and his temperament; so I […]
“Galicianer Shtetl” – Jews of Galicia Remembrance Days – Tarnow, Poland, June 11-14
“The Galicianer Shtetl” – Jews of Galicia Remembrance Days program is an annual series of events scheduled this year from June 11th to 14th, in the town of Tarnów. The Remembrance Days are organized by the Regional Museum in Tarnów (Muzeum […]
Galicia: Land of My Ancestors
Some of my earliest memories are of my parents telling my brother and me stories of their journey from Vienna to America, which occurred several years before I was born. At some point I no longer needed to hear those […]
Navigating the ELA Database on the Polish State Archives’ Website
The database ELA (Ewidencje Ludności w Archiwaliach—Registers of Population in Archival Materials) of the Polish State Archives (PSA) is a valuable resource for genealogists researching communities in current-day Poland.1 Although many population registers were lost or destroyed during World War […]
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 […]
Online Polish Resources for Tracing Ancestry
This article surveys online resources that help genealogists determine where records were created and where they are found. Determining place names and jurisdictions are the basic skills a researcher must develop when searching for a Polish ancestor in the place […]
A Different Approach to Polish Research
This article first appeared in the e-report of the Australian Jewish Genealogical Society, (Sydney), July 2010— Ed. Researching my father’s paternal Nachemstein side over 25 years has yielded wonderful results both in record retrieval and in finding and meeting cousins […]
Jewish Vital Records in the Polish State Archives Not Listed Elsewhere
LDS (Mormon) microfilms of Jewish vital records from Poland are the most convenient sources of Jewish vital records.1 Although Miriam Weiner’s Routes to Roots website <www.rtrfoundation.org> does not include copies of records themselves, it is another highly useful […]
A Translation Guide to 19th-Century Polish-Language Civil Registration Documents (including Birth, Marriage and Death Records). 3rd Edition, by Judith R. Frazin
A Translation Guide to 19th-Century Polish-Language Civil Registration Documents (including Birth, Marriage and Death Records). 3rd Edition, by Judith R. Frazin. Published by the Jewish Genealogical Society of Illinois, 2009. Hardcover, coil-bound, 464 pages. $35.00. It has been about 20 […]
The Six Lives of Gregory Meisler: Jew, Warrior, and Polish Patriot
The deeds of man, when unconfirmed by the voices of the witnesses or written documents, are bound to pass swiftly away and disappear from memory. Prince Boleslaw V the Pious The history of the Holocaust is never ending. Every […]
From Cracow to New Orleans: How Google Helped Reunite a Family Separated by War and Migration
Our visit to New Orleans in December 2002 was the culmination of an exciting adventure in family history. Just a few months earlier, who would have thought that my mother, brother, and I would travel from Vancouver, Canada, to attend […]
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 […]
Cemeteries in Upper Silesia
The Shoah has been called the end of European Jewry, and it is hard to argue the point. In most places, though, memory—wanted or unwanted—persists. The many efforts to deny the past are eloquent confirmation of its continued presence. In […]
A Poker Player’s Approach to Genealogical Research
Last year I flew to Israel to visit my cousin, H. Daniel Wagner. For some of us, I guess, family ties and tales become increasingly important—or at least, more interesting—as we get older. The events of our youth acquire a […]
Directories
This section will discuss four categories of directories whose contents can be useful for genealogical research: city directories, telephone directories, biographical directories, and professional directories. All of these valuable reference sources can be found in the United States and internationally. […]
The Berliner/Berkenstat Connection
I am a second-generation Holocaust survivor. My mother, Lea, was born in Antwerp, Belgium, in 1925. Luckily, she spent the war years with her parents and brother hiding as a Catholic in Chateauneuf-les-Bains, France. My dad, Murray (Mordkhe, Motek) Berliner […]
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 […]
Accessing Archival Sources: Project Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia Judaica
Genealogical research does not always end with the compilation of a family tree. The desire for a colorfully illustrated tree of life often inspires the dream of putting specific faces to the names one has found, investigating more closely the […]
JRI-Poland Database and Rabbinic Data Merging
In the Spring 2008 issue of AVOTAYNU, in an article that focuses on tombstone identification, Professor Daniel Wagner highlights the integration of “family data from different sources and databases from different repositories” (“Tombstone Identification through Database Merging”). In a similar […]
Book Review: Posen Place Name Indexes: Identifying Place Names Using Alphabetical and Reverse Alphabetical Indexes, by Roger P. Minert
Posen Place Name Indexes: Identifying Place Names Using Alphabetical and Reverse Alphabetical Indexes, by Roger P. Minert, (Provo, UT: GRT Publications, 2004), 101 pp., soft-cover, ISBN 0-9716906-6-9. $9.95 from <www.grtpublications.com>. Note: Roger Meinert published a series of 23 books (and […]
IAJGS 2006: Strategies for Assigning Surnames to Early JRI-Poland Records
Jewish genealogists who trace family to the early 19th century frequently encounter difficulty trying to follow the trail back to the time when their ancestors did not use hereditary family names. Researchers who find records without surnames often cannot determine […]