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Personal Journeys: The Legacy of Lucian Skotnicki

Filed Under Holocaust, Personal Journeys, Polska By S. Nadja Zajdman on July 29, 2016

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

Filed Under Conferences, Holocaust, Polska, Україна By Jill Leibman on May 4, 2015

“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

Filed Under Polska By Michael Diamant on December 1, 2010

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

Filed Under Polska By Fay Bussgang on December 1, 2010

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

Filed Under Deutschland, Eesti, Latvija, Lita, Polska, Беларусь, Россия, Україна By Edward David Luft on October 1, 2010

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

Filed Under Polska By Kahlile Bliss Mehr on October 1, 2010

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

Filed Under Polska By Peter Nash on July 1, 2010

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

Filed Under Polska By Edward David Luft on April 1, 2010

     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

Filed Under Polska By BIll Gladstone on December 1, 2009

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

Filed Under Israel יִשְׂרָאֵל, Polska By Valery Bazarov on December 1, 2009

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

Filed Under Polska, United States By Arthur Wolak on December 1, 2009

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

Filed Under Lita, Polska, Беларусь, Россия, Україна By Edward David Luft on December 1, 2009

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

Filed Under Polska By Roger Lustig on October 1, 2009

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

Filed Under Polska By Henry (Herszl) David Wagner on July 1, 2009

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

Filed Under Deutschland, Israel יִשְׂרָאֵל, Methods, Polska, United States By Alex E. Friedlander on April 1, 2009

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

Filed Under Polska By Hannah Fischtal on December 1, 2008

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

Filed Under Eesti, Latvija, Lita, Polska, Surnames, Беларусь, Россия, Україна By Alexander Beider on October 1, 2008

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

Filed Under Austria-Czech-Slovak, Polska By Lenka Matusikova on July 1, 2008

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

Filed Under Indexing Projects, Polska By Neil Rosenstein on July 1, 2008

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

Filed Under Deutschland, Polska By BIll Gladstone on April 1, 2008

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

Filed Under Indexing Projects, Polska, Surnames By Martin Meyers on July 1, 2007

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 […]

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