I am pleased to announce the 2022 conference from the Polish Genealogical Society of America, which will take place virtually on September 16, 17 and 18th.
We assembled a wonderful lineup of Polish and American genealogists with six lectures over three days. Sessions begin each day at 11:00am Central time.
LECTURE TOPICS Getting More from Genealodzy.pl – the Little Known Databases Navigating Szukaj w Archiwach – Unknotting the Knots Russian Partition Discoveries – Beyond Family Search The End of Serfdom – Impact on the Records Maps for Family Research – More Than Geography Nazi Occupation of Rural Poland – History and Remembrance
MyHeritage added Jewish Historical Records from Vienna in partnership with the National Library of Israel. MyHeritage is making this collection available free to search. However, if you want to view or save the records to your family tree or computer you will need a MyHeritage Data or Complete Plan subscription-both are paid subscriptions.
The collection contains 228,250 digitized Jewish immigrant applications from Vienna between World War l and World War ll, It offers an important glimpse into the lives of Austrian Jews at this pivotal moment in history and is exclusive to MyHeritage. In May 1938, Jews living in Austria registered with the emigration department of the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde (the Jewish community organization in Vienna) if they intended to leave the country and escape Nazi persecution.
The MyHeritage blog post says, “Each head of household had to fill out a detailed questionnaire, containing the following information: name of the applicant, address, date of birth, place of birth, marital status, nationality, residency status in Vienna and whether and how long the applicant resided elsewhere, information about the profession and the last-held professional position, any newly learned professions, language skills, economic situation and monthly income, and additional comprehensive information related to emigration… In addition to the information about the applicant, the questionnaires contain information about any dependents, including degree of relationship, name, places of birth, dates of birth, and occupation. In some cases, the questionnaires also provide information about the applicant’s parents.”
The forms often have supplemental documents which include letters, affidavits, official papers and correspondence as well as stamps and hand-written notes that were added as part of the file processing.
The emigration papers are part of the extensive communal archive of the Viennese Jewish Community that constitutes some of the holdings of the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People (CAHJP) in Jerusalem.
To read more about this and see some examples of the types of records see MyHeritage’s blog: https://tinyurl.com/bdh8jxrf
The U.S. and the Holocaust will premiere on PBS September 18, 2022. Check with your local cable provider for the station. The U.S. and The Holocaust, a new three-part , six-hour documentary directed and produced by Ken Burns, Lynn Novick and Sarah Botstein, explores America’s response to one of the greatest humanitarian crises in history. Americans consider themselves a “nation of immigrants,” but as the catastrophe of the Holocaust unfolded in Europe, the United States proved unwilling to open its doors to more than a fraction of the hundreds of thousands of desperate people seeking refuge. Through riveting firsthand testimony of witnesses and survivors who as children endured persecution, violence and flight as their families tried to escape Hitler, this series delves deeply into the tragic human consequences of public indifference, bureaucratic red tape and restrictive quota laws in America. The series will air September 18, 19 and 20, at 8:00-10:00 p.m. eastern/pacific 7:00-9:00 PM Central (check local listings) on PBS, https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/us-and-the-holocaust/
Legacy Family Tree, a member of the MyHeritage Family of companies, will be holding a Webtember event all five Fridays throughout September. They are hosting 31 live an pre-recorded free webinars. The presentations will be free to view until the end of the month at your convenience.
Date: 15 Aug 2022Time: 7:00 pm MST Speaker: Janette Silverman Topic: Illegitimacy in the Jewish Communities of Galicia The many punitive and restrictive laws in the Austrian Empire resulted in choices made by the Jewish community to circumvent these. Originally instituted to curtail the size of the Jewish community and create boundaries, the communities themselves changed and found ways to work around the laws. Many birth, marriage and death records in the Jewish community use terms like “illegitimate” and “ritual marriage”. Sometimes our ancestors had multiple surnames, or even hyphenated surnames this session will discuss these and the insight we can gain about the lives of our ancestors
We are all aware of Newspapers.com, a great fee-based source for newspaper research. Your public library likely has free historical newspaper research tools along with a number of other free online tools. When I was researching the Bookbinders of Philadelphia restaurant fame, I wanted to check the Philadelphia Jewish Exponent. Newspapers.com did not have it, but Newspaper Archive did and was available through the Los Angeles Public Library. Using my LAPL card, I was able to access it remotely. This month’s Practicing Safe Coputing article discusses some of the resources likely available from your public library to advance your genealogical research.
“Free Online Databases Courtesy of Your Public Library” has been published in the August 2022 issue of “Venturing into Our Past”, the Newsletter of the Jewish Genealogical Society of the Conejo Valley and Ventura County (JGSCV). Current and prior newsletters are freely available at the Society’s website, https://www.jgscv.org
All Practicing Safe Computing articles published to date are available in a single searchable PDF. This resource is freely accessible at https://tinyurl.com/SafeComputingArticles . Consider placing a link to it on your society’s web site or otherwise sharing it with your members as an ongoing free resource
As a reminder, our August Webinar for the Polish Genealogical Society of America: “Members Sharing Knowledge” is coming up Sunday, August 21, 2022, 2-4 pm Central Time.
Our panel of three individuals with deep and varied experience in researching Polish roots will answer questions submitted by you. The types of questions to ask: – How do I… – Where do I find… – What is available… – Whom do I contact… Do not send questions regarding specific persons or family research.
EMAIL YOUR QUESTIONS at contactus@pgsa.org with “Meeting Question” in the topic line.
… and do not forget to register, with or without a question…
European Days of Jewish Culture (EDJC) kick off September 4th, however some events are starting in August. This year’s theme is “Renewal”. See: https://jewisheritage.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Renewal.pdf from the National Library of Israel. The EDJC is coordinated under the auspices of the AEPJ (European Association for the Preservation and Promotion of Jewish Culture and Heritage), in partnership with the National Library of Israel. This European-wide event, which has been organized since 2000, is to highlight the diversity and richness of Judaism and its local, regional and national historical importance, with the firm intention of promoting dialogue, recognition and exchange through conferences, concerts, performances, guided tours and other activities, which take place simultaneously throughout the continent.
A pan-European festival of tourism and education centered on Jewish built heritage, the EDJC takes place each year in more than two dozen countries across the continent, and has become Europe’s most successful cross-border Jewish cultural initiative.
Vatican News reports, “At the request of Pope Francis, the virtual reproduction of a collection preserving the requests for help addressed to Pope Pius XII by Jews from all over Europe after the beginning of Nazi-Fascist persecution is now accessible to all. It consists of a total of 170 volumes, or nearly 40,000 files. Only 70% of the total material will be initially available, but will later be supplemented with the final volumes currently being prepared…
A special documentary heritage that distinguishes itself from other archival series, already from the name assigned to it: “Ebrei” (Jews). A heritage that is precious because it gathers the requests for help sent to Pope Pius XII by Jewish people, both the baptized and the non-baptized, after the beginning of Nazi and fascist persecution.
The “Ebrei” series of the Historical Archive of the Secretariat of State – Section for Relations with States and International Organizations (ASRS). The series of 170 volumes in total are part of the Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs Collection (AA.EE.SS.) related to the Pontificate of Pius XII — Part 1 (1939-1948), and already available for consultation since 2 March 2020, in the Reading Room of the Historical Archive, by worldwide scholars.
The then Sacred Congregation for the Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs (from which the archival Collection gets its name), equivalent to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, charged a diplomatic minutante (Msgr. Angelo Dell’Acqua) to manage the requests for help that were addressed to the Pope from all over Europe, with the aim of providing all the help possible.
Requests could be made to obtain visas or passports to expatriate, find asylum, reunify families, obtain liberation from detention and transfers from one concentration camp to another, receive news regarding deported people, supplies of food or clothing, financial support, spiritual support and much more.
Each of these requests constituted a case which, once processed, was destined for storage in a documentary series entitled “Ebrei”. It contains more than 2,700 cases with requests for help almost always for entire families or groups of people. Thousands of people persecuted for their membership to the Jewish religion, or for merely having “non-Aryan” ancestry, turned to the Vatican, in the knowledge that others had received help.
After the pontificate of Pius XII was opened to consultation in 2020, this special list of names was given the name, “Pacelli’s list, (Pope Pius XII), echoing the well-known “Schindler’s list”.
As of June 2022, the “Ebrei” series will be available for consultation on the internet in its virtual version, freely accessible to all on the website of the Historical Archive of the Secretariat of State – Section for Relations with States and International Organizations.
In the Moment article there is an example of the types of letters that are being addressed in the article. To read the article see:
The Polish Institute of National Remembrance announced the burnt remains of approximately 8,000 victims of the Nazis were unearthed in a mass grave outside the town of Działdowo, a town in Northern Poland, located on the historical Prussian-Mazovian border, today belonging to the southern part of the Warmia-Masuria voivodeship.
The bodies are thought to have been dug up and burned in a Nazi operation to hide traces of their murders. The Nazis murdered Jews, political opponents and members of the Polish elite at Soldau.
The concentration camp was built in 1939 for transit, internment and extermination and used throughout the Nazi occupation.
Up to 30,000 people are thought to have been killed there and researchers hope to carry out DNA analysis of the remains to find out more about the victims. Among the Poles who were murdered were members of the clergy and intelligentsia. Mr Jankowski said two pits had been found near Soldau, now known as Dzialdowo, and further excavation would take place to search for more. The estimate of 8,000 victims is based on a person’s body weight estimated at 2kg.
Archaeologists have found hundreds of traces of clothing, buttons and other items, but nothing of value, indicating the bodies were robbed before being set alight.
General view of the excavations on the site of the Warsaw Ghetto.
Photo: Warsaw Ghetto Museum
Jewish Heritage Europe reported on excavations at the site of the Warsaw Ghetto where a child’s shoe, Kitchen utensils, Crockery, Books, Ceramic tiles, Corroded tools, were found during archaeological excavations this summer. The dig is being lead by an archaeologist and historian at the Warsaw Ghetto Museum. together with a team of scientists from Christopher Newport University in the U.S. and the Aleksander Gieysztor Academy in Pułtusk, Poland. The dig has been extended to the end of July.
The Ghetto Museum, currently under development, is due to open in a complex of buildings that was a pre-WW2 children’s hospital in April 2023 — the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
The excavations are concentrated on the site where two pre-war apartment buildings stood; they were located between two streets, with entrances at Miła 18 and Muranowska 39 and at Miła 20 and Muranowska 41. During the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, which began on April 19, 1943, a bunker in the basement that had been used by smugglers housed the headquarters of the Jewish Combat Organization, led by Mordechaj Anielewicz. On May 8, 1943, as the Germans closed in, Anielewicz and scores of other Ghetto fighters committed mass suicide in the bunker. The bodies were never exhumed.
The U.S. and the Holocaust will premiere on PBS September 18, 2022. Check with your local cable provider for the station. The U.S. and The Holocaust, a new three-part , six-hour documentary directed and produced by Ken Burns, Lynn Novick and Sarah Botstein, explores America’s response to one of the greatest humanitarian crises in history. Americans consider themselves a “nation of immigrants,” but as the catastrophe of the Holocaust unfolded in Europe, the United States proved unwilling to open its doors to more than a fraction of the hundreds of thousands of desperate people seeking refuge. Through riveting firsthand testimony of witnesses and survivors who as children endured persecution, violence and flight as their families tried to escape Hitler, this series delves deeply into the tragic human consequences of public indifference, bureaucratic red tape and restrictive quota laws in America. The series will air September 18, 19 and 20, at 8:00-10:00 p.m. eastern/pacific 7:00-9:00 PM Central (check local listings) on PBS, https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/us-and-the-holocaust/
Jewish Heritage Eurooe reports that the Oshpitzin Jewish Museum in Oświęcim, the town in southern Poland were the Nazis built the Auschwitz death camp, has launched a digital catalogue of its collection that makes information about its thousands of items available online. See: https://ajcf.pl/archiwum/en/
“The museum — which goes by the Yiddish name for the town — is part of the Auschwitz Jewish Center Foundation (AJCF) education and religious complex, an affiliate of the Museum of Jewish Heritage in NY, which is anchored by the town’s one surviving synagogue and includes the house where Szymon Kluger, the town’s last Jewish resident, lived.
The digital catalogue project took 18 months to complete and entailed surveying and cataloguing 1,378 artifacts, 8,058 photographs, 18,165 documents, 744 multimedia pieces and 4,096 books. more than 100 selected items also include pictures.
The aim of the Oshpitzin museum is to promote knowledge and understanding of the rich and diverse Jewish life that flourished in Oświęcim for centuries, up until the eve of World War II. “