Discover Jewish Family History
Ancestry.com Building Significant Online Jewish Records Collection
Nov 2, 2008
The Jewish Records collection is in two parts. One is free and the other is called “premium”, which means you must pay to subscribe to it.
Anyone can sign in to ancestry.com and get a 14-day free trial. Every researcher’s needs are different, centering upon varying time periods, multiple geographical locations and differing historical events. The trial period allows for an analysis of how valuable individual databases are to a genealogist’s area of research.
Ancestry.com has just added the following Jewish records to its collection:
· Munich, Vienna and Barcelona Jewish Displaced Persons and Refugee Cards, 1943-1959 (JDC)
· Jewish Transmigration Bureau Deposit Cards, 1939-1954 (JDC)
· The Boston Jewish Advocate Index to Obituary Notices, 1905-2007
· The Boston Jewish Advocate Wedding Announcements, 1905-2007
· The Cleveland Jewish News Obituary Index, 1964-2007
· The Houston Jewish Herald Index to Vitals and Family Events, 1908-2007
· Boston Arrivals of Jewish Immigrants from Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) Records, 1882-1929
· The Philadelphia Jewish Exponent Obituary Index, 1887-2006
Some of the above records are large databases, provided in conjunction with the American Jewish Historical Society, located at Hebrew College in Newton Centre, MA; JewishGen, an affiliate of the Museum of Jewish Heritage; The Generations Network; and, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC).
The database of ”Munich, Vienna and Barcelona Jewish Displaced Persons” contains registration cards for approximately 85,000 Jewish displaced persons who registered with the emigration department of JDC in Munich and Vienna after World War II, plus cards containing information about Jewish refugees whom JDC provided care for in Barcelona during and immediately after the war.
The Jewish Transmigration Bureau database contains deposit cards for approximately 60,000 individuals who emigrated from Germany, Austria, former Czechoslovakia, Holland, Belgium, and Luxembourg, mostly between the years 1940 and 1942, though the cards document some travel being completed as late as 1956.
Ancestry.com also has many other resources in its Jewish records collection, including the following:
· Holocaust: Records from Ten Ghettos
· Hungary: All Citizen Census, 1869
· Belarus, Minsk, List of deaths, 1889
· Jewish Given Name Variations
· Russia: Duma Voter Lists, 1906–07
The “Records from Ten Ghettos” database contains information on thousands of Jews living in the following ghettos during the Holocaust: Balta, Transnistria (1941); Daugavpils, Latvia (1941); Kozienice, Poland (1939-1942); Kraków, Poland (1940); Lódz, Poland (1940-19444); Lublin, Poland (1942); Lvov, Poland (1942-1945); Pinsk, Belarus (1941-1942); Tirgu Mures, Romania (1945); and Vilnius, Lithuania (1942). Information listed may include: name, parents' names, spouse's name, birth date or year, birthplace, age, gender, occupation, and residence.
There is a good Ancestry.com entry page to the entire Jewish Collection.
A companion article lists online Jewish resources at JewishGen.
