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Category: Genealogy Related Articles

  • Jewish Records of Fürth (and its area)

    The Fürht Jewish Museum (by: wikimedia commons – Magnus Gertkemper)

    Recently someone asked via the gersig newsgroup (on Wed, 27 Jul 2011 03:43:05 -0400) about the availability of Jewish birth records from 1862 in Fürth (Bavaria). Another member’s reply was that there are dozens of postage stamp sized books for Fuerth vital registers at the Central Archives of the History of the Jewish People in Jerusalem (CAHJP).

    She continued to explain that

    […]”The books are painful to research and can only be read with a magnifying glass, and even then sometimes they are illegible because their sewn binding gets into the actual record and because much of the writing is very sloppy.”[…]

    and

    […]”It is my understanding that in Germany, they have blown up these miniatures and have more legible records available.
    If I am not mistaken, they are located at Detmold, or perhaps that is the place where they enlarged the miniatures. I am sure someone else will chime in with the proper details.”[…]

    Which Fürth:
    I checked with some Detmold archives but they did not know about microfilmed Jewish Vital Records and secondly, Detmold is in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia and not in the state of Bavaria.

    The city of Grevenbroich has a district called Fürth (Postal Code 41515). Grevenbroich is in the government district (Regierungsbezirk) of Düsseldorf, which is also the capital city of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. Detmold itself is another government district of North Rhine-Westphalia.

    The Jewish vital records at the Nürnberg state archives:
    The Nürnberg Staatarchiv told me that the Third Reich, more precisely the Reichssippenamt, attempted to seize and collect vital records (births, marriages and deaths) from all Jewish communities.

    These Jewish vital records were (more…)

  • Some of my family members in Cuba during WWII

    I mentioned in another article the fact that Belgian Jews exiled to Cuba during WWII. My relatives also stayed in Cuba. Many of the Jews who lived in Cuba during the War, were Belgian refugees. For more on this topic you may read Jews from Antwerp in Cuba.

    Cuba and some of my relatives:
    I found in the book “Jewish Community of Cuba – The Golden Years 1906-1958” by Mr. Jay Levinson (ISBN 78-0977620708) a paragraph on page 133 with a reference to the copy of La Voz de Betar:

    “Not all the Belgian Jews, however, confined all of their activity to their own closely-knit society. J. Dorf lectured to Betar on Jewish History; Ringler spoke to the meeting of Betar about geography of the Holy Land.”

    I found in that copy of La Voz de Betar (Cuba) which appeared in September 1944 (this file is known at the Jabotinsky Institute archives as file 3/239 bet), some names of people belonging to the Dorf family (my great-grandmother Liebe Dorf was married to my great-grandfather Gerschon Lehrer):

  • The State Archives in Belgium: Getting there

    (See also the links at the end of this article)

    How to get there:
    The State Archives of Belgium are on the following address:

    rue de Ruysbroeck 2
    1000 Brussels
    phone: +32 2 513 76 80

    [cetsEmbedGmap src=http://maps.google.com/maps?q=Rue+de+Ruysbroeck+2,+1000+Bruxelles,+Belgi%C3%AB&hl=nl&ie=UTF8&ll=50.842262,4.356058&spn=0.006436,0.014999&z=16&vpsrc=0 width=400 height=425 marginwidth=0 marginheight=0 frameborder=0 scrolling=no]

    It is easy to get there by taxi or public transportation. The national airport of Belgium, which is situated in Zaventem near Brussels, is about 14.4 km (8.95 miles) away and it takes about 16 minutes to drive by car (without traffic).

    The museum district “Kunstberg – Mont des Arts”:
    The archives are near the Kunstberg which in French is called Mont des Arts (hill of Arts).

    That area in fact serves as the Museum District of Brussels which was conceived by King Léopold II. King Léopold II decided to turn the whole district into what today is known as the Mont des Arts. The King dreamed of making Brussels a modern and cultural capital city and Mont des Arts the treasure of his country and witness to the history of Belgium.

    A plate memorializing Belgian kings Leopold II for conceiving the Mont des Arts, king Leopold III for implementing it and king Baudouin/Boudewijn I for establishing it. The Mont des Arts was dedicated to the memory of king Albert I

    The Mont des Arts is situated in about the same area which was known as the “Jewish (more…)

  • The abbreviation “v.” commonly found in Galician records

    The following is a post which appeared in the Gesher Galicia SIG digest from August 29, 2011.
    In this post, Suzan Wynne discusses the ‘v.’ which is commonly found in Galician records.
    (The Gesher Galicia Discussion Group is sponsored by Gesher Galicia and hosted by JewishGen, the Home of Jewish Genealogy. See for more here: http://www.jewishgen.org/galicia)

    Subject: abbreviation v is for vel non
    From: “Suzan Wynne”
    Date: Sun, 28 Aug 2011 20:04:55 -0400
    X-Message-Number: 1

    The abbreviation “v,” commonly found in Galician records about Jewish events, stands for vel non, a Latin legal term, which means “or not” or “alternatively.” This Latin term was adapted from the Latin that was commonly used for recording Jewish and non-Jewish vital events in Galicia until 1877 when the government authorized the kehillot to be responsible for collecting and maintaining Jewish births, marriages (civil), and deaths.

    The abbreviation was used when (more…)

  • An introduction to the Belgian Statearchives and its immigration files

    The Public Safety Organization:
    In 1840 the Belgian state, which was founded in 1830, entrusted the Public Safety (in Dutch: Openbare Veiligheid, in French: Sûreté Publique, in German:Öffentlichen Sicherheit) which was an autonomous board under the Minister of Justice, to monitor the aliens on its territory.

    Note: Both Dutch, French and German are spoken in specific parts of Belgium as can be seen on the following map:

    In order to preserve public order, the Public Safety Organization had to remove undesired aliens from Belgium’s territory. In order to be able to implement this order, they had to rely on the support from the municipal authorities who had in their turn to report each registration of any alien in the register of the municipality as soon as possible to the Public Safety.

    This Public Safety organization would then decide whether the person could remain in the country. If this was the case, the Public Safety organization would keep a close eye on the alien citizen during his or her stay in Belgium. All authorities, including the army and the judiciary, were supposed to forward any document about the foreigner to the Public Safety Organization.

    How was the information collected:
    Most information was obviously gathered from aliens who voluntarily went to the municipalities to register. In addition, information was directly obtained by the police who found foreigners on Belgian territory and of foreigners that had to resort to the use of public services such as hospitals, etc.

    Some files were opened on aliens even though they never reached Belgian territory. The organization opened these files preventively for “subversive” and possible criminal foreigners in order to be prepared in case they would enter Belgian territory.

    When the foreigner in question passed away or (more…)

  • A Swedish Family

    The Bernadottes of Sweden (source: wikimedia commons)

    I came a while ago across an interesting article in the Belgian newspaper “De Standaard“.
    They run each day during the holiday season a series  of short articles ( “Elders is het beter”, literally translated “elsewhere it is better”) in which they describe what other countries do better then Belgium.

    On Friday (July 29, 2011) the newspaper discussed the Swedish system of how family members are called.

    In English you would for example mention your mothers mother as “my maternal grandmother”, which in Swedish would be only six (!) letters short: “mormor”. My paternal grandmother would (more…)

  • Warsaw Books of Inhabitants – update

    Recently Mr. Witold Wrzosinski from avanim.pl shared the following information via one of the newsgroups, I think it could be useful and therefore I’m (re)sharing it:

    Subject: Warsaw Books of Inhabitants – update
    From: ww Date: Tue, 12 Jul 2011 16:43:37 +0200

    I have been to the Warsaw archive today and was able to update the list of available books of inhabitants from the XIXth century.
    It is fond 622 in the archive. The updated list is below.

    1. District XI, house 5579, Piekna 21
    2. District I, house 2646, Mariensztat 13
    3. District X, house 412, Krolewska 1/3/5/7/9
    4. District I, house 2645, Mariensztat 9
    5. District I, house 2729, Browarna 16
    6. District III, house 545, Dluga 18
    7. District XII, house 614h, Niecala 12
    8. District XV, house 17a, Kamionkowska 25
    9. District III, house 1808, Franciszkanska 17
    10. District I/XI, house 519, Podwale 24

    Also, I’ve noticed there is some more information on Warsaw inhabitants in the remnants of Russian Police books from the years 1823-1918 (fond 31).
    This data concerns the following addresses:

    • Chlodna 46
    • Dobra 2
    • Elektoralna 19, 20, 22, 23
    • Krolewska 15,19
    • Mirowska 6
    • Mostowa 8
    • Krakowskie Przedmiescie 46/48, 72
    • Koszykowa 18
    • Chopina 13

    Good luck in your research!
    Witold Wrzosinski
    avanim.pl

  • HebrewBooks.org

    One of the greatest projects for genealogists on the Internet and which are managed by different organizations, are websites with complete digitized books.

    One of these projects which can be interesting for Jewish family researchers, is http://hebrewbooks.org.

    Their mission as stated on their site:

    Hebrewbooks.org was founded in order to preserve old American Hebrew books that are out of print and/or circulation. Many American Rabbis wrote seforim (Hebrew books) in the early part of the 20th century. They have long since passed away and in many instances so has their holy work.
    Currently our mission has expanded to include all Torah Seforim ever printed. At Hebrewbooks.org you will be able to view and print the entire Sefer online.
    […]
    HebrewBooks.org is a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) organization. Our goal is to bring to life the many Seforim that were written and unfortunately forgotten, and to make all Torah Publications free and ubiquitous.

    I uploaded here on my website as an example a few (more…)

  • Yizkor books on Polish towns and cities

    One of the families which I do descend from, is Kalech.
    Other cities of which I do know already that they lived there is: Ustrzyki, Ulucz and apparently also Tarnobrzeg (Dinow).

    There are some sources where you can get to the yizkor books, one such source is the yizkor Books Project on JewishGen (http://www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/). That project’s goal as stated on their site is

    Our goal is to facilitate access to Yizkor Books and the information contained in them 

    Another great source is the online repository of scanned yizkor books on the website of the Dorot Jewish Division at the New york Public Library: http://yizkor.nypl.org.
    The goal of the Dorot Jewish Division as stated on their website is:

    The Dorot Jewish Division is responsible for administering, developing and promoting the exploitation of one of the world’s great collections of Hebraica and Judaica. Reference and research services are available in a dedicated Jewish studies reading room on the first floor of the Library’s landmark Stephen A. Schwarzman Building. Contact us.

    Primary source materials are especially rich in the following areas: Jews in the United States, especially in New York in the age of immigration; Yiddish theater; Jews in the land of Israel, through 1948; Jews in early modern Europe, especially Jewish-Gentile relations; Christian Hebraism; antisemitism; and world Jewish newspapers and periodicals of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

    If you are interested in hardcopies of these yizkor books, you can (more…)