Nu? What's New? Vol. 20 No. 31

Underlined words are links to sites with additional information.

Arolsen Archives Ponders Making Its Records Available on the Internet

Should millions of documents about the victims of Nazi persecution located at the Arolsen Archives be freely available on the internet? Before the online archive went into development, it was the subject of intense debate at the Arolsen Archives. On the one hand, there was the need to make the documents that have been included on the UNESCO Memory of the World register available to as many people as possible worldwide. But might publishing the documents in this way violate personal rights and copyrights? The Arolsen Archives gave these questions careful consideration. The conclusion: most experts and, above all, the relatives of the victims feel that the opportunities afforded by an online archive are much greater than the risks involved.

“Our archive is an indispensable source of knowledge for society today,” says Floriane Azoulay, Director of the Arolsen Archives. “We must make it available online so that this knowledge can be accessed by younger generations too. The rights of the victims and their families to truth and information also has the highest priority for us.”

The Arolsen Archives are not subject to national data protection directives, but to specific international provisions. An International Commission, which consists of government representatives from eleven member states, supervises the work of the institution on behalf of the former victims of persecution.

What do the relatives and other interested parties say now that they can research online? In the first week alone, more than 100,000 people used the new online archive. Users are unstintingly enthusiastic about the new possibilities, states the Archives.

The full reported at https://arolsen-archives.org/en/about-us/statements/online-archive.

More Than 26 Million People Have Taken At-Home DNA Test
More than 26 million people have taken an at-home ancestry test. As many people purchased consumer DNA tests in 2018 as in all previous years combined. If the pace continues, the gene troves could hold data on the genetic makeup of more than 100 million people within 24 months. These are the findings expressed in Technology Review of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The article also provides statistics as to the size of the collection for the four largest testing companies:
• Ancestry, 14 million
• 23andme, 9 million
• MyHeritage, 2.5 million
• FamilyTreeDNA, 2 million

The article can be found at https://tinyurl.com/DNAStatistics.

Study Shows Hungary Has the World’s Second Largest Percentage of Population
with Jewish Ancestry
A study conducted by MyHeritage has revealed that the country with the highest proportion of Ashkenazic Jewish ethnicity after Israel is Hungary, and not the United States as was previously believed. MyHeritage collaborated with Dr. Daniel Staetsky, Director of the European Jewish Demography Unit at the Institute for Jewish Policy Research, who conceived the study.

Previously, many demographers believed that the countries outside of Israel with the highest proportion of Jewish inhabitants among the total population are, respectively, the U.S., Canada, France, Hungary, and Uruguay. In order to test these assumptions, MyHeritage analyzed a huge dataset of anonymized DNA tests taken by 1.8 million MyHeritage customers worldwide, focusing on Ashkenazi Jewish ethnicity.

Among the 100 countries included in the research, the country that stood out with the highest percentage of Ashkenazic Jewish ethnicity outside of Israel was Hungary. 7.6% of the 4,981 people living in Hungary who took the MyHeritage DNA test were found to have 25% or more Ashkenazi Jewish ethnicity (equivalent to having at least one grandparent who is fully Ashkenazi Jewish). This is a significantly higher percentage than the 3.5% observed in DNA test-takers living in the U.S. and the 3.0% in Canada.

The complete announcement can be found at https://blog.myheritage.com/2019/08/ hungarys-secret-new-study-by-myheritage/.

You Can Now Use Your Phone to Turn Old Negatives and Slides into Photos

An article in Family History Daily notes there are apps now available for your smartphone that scan old black and white and color film negatives and positive slides and turn them into digital photos. To begin scanning, you will need some kind of lightbox which can be described as a flat box with a side of translucent glass or plastic containing an electric light to provide an evenly lit flat surface.

The complete “how to” procedure is described at https://tinyurl.com/FHDScanning/.

Additions Made to JewishGen UK Cemeteries Database

A number of new burial databases have recently been added to the JewishGen UK Cemeteries Database.

Sunderland Cemetery database contains records of nearly 1,500 burials, including more than 1,260 photographs of headstones, with GPS coordinates for each individual grave (accurate to about one meter) together with a button which, when clicked, brings up a Google satellite image of the cemetery showing the location of the grave.

New Southgate Cemetery burials consist of 1,156 records (including 323 photographs of headstones) covering the period 1968–2016 and also includes records of cremations recorded in the synagogue’s burial register.

Elswick and Heaton Cemeteries, Newcastle upon Tyne. Newly transcribed burial records of these Newcastle cemeteries are now available and comprise 743 records with 567 headstone photographs for Elswick Cemetery and 404 records with 376 headstone photographs for Heaton Cemetery.

These records may be searched through either All-UK Database or JewishGen Online Worldwide Burial Register (JOWBR).

Chronicling America Receives Additional Grant to Digitize U.S. Newspapers

The National Endowment for the Humanities has granted Chronicling America an additional $2.7 million to digitize and index newspaper pages throughout the United States. Chronicling America is a website providing access to information about historic newspapers and select digitized newspaper pages and is produced by a partnership between the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress. To date, there are more than 15 million pages digitized and indexed.

The site is located at http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov. A search produces a list of digitized pages that satisfy the search request. The system also highlights on each page where the search argument appears.

The announcement can be found at https://tinyurl.com/NEHGrantChroniclingAmerica.

Article on Budapest Synagogues That Are No Longer Synagogues
Jewish Heritage Europe is planning a series of three articles on lesser known Budapest synagogues. The first of the series focuses on synagogues that are no longer used as synagogues. It can be found at https://tinyurl.com/JHEHungarianSynagogues.

Population Registers for Amersfoort Online

Eemland Archive has placed the population registers of Amersfoort for the period 1860–1915 online. This adds more than 50 thousand scans with more than 180 thousand personal names to the collection. The index on the population registers can now also be searched via Open Archives at http://www.openarch.nl. Open Archives states their site has information about 212 million people from 90 Dutch archival or historical organizations.

RootsTech London 2019 Announces Lineup of Keynote Speakers and Entertainers

RootsTech is coming to London October 24–26 at the ExCeL London. The world’s largest genealogy convention is hosted by FamilySearch. Keynote speakers and entertainers include Tre Amici, Nick Barratt, Donny Osmond, Steve Rockwood and Dan Snow. There will be more than 150 classes, one-on-one coaching corners and an exhibition hall filled with the latest in genealogy and technology.

Dr. Nick Barratt, a former genealogy consultant for Who Do You Think You Are? will host and emcee the convention. Dan Snow, popular historian, broadcaster, and television presenter, will be the featured keynote speaker. Steve Rockwood, CEO of FamilySearch International, will address the audience as a featured keynote speaker. Friday night, RootsTech will host the talented singing trio, Tre Amici—an international classical pop trio.

Additional information can be found at https://tinyurl.com/RootsTechUKKeynote.

FamilySearch Adds More 7 Million Records This Week

A list of recent additions to FamilySearch, more than 7 million indexed records, can be found at https://tinyurl.com/FamilySeach081219. This site provides direct links to the individual collections. They include records from Australia, French Polynesia, Germany, Honduras, Netherlands, South Africa, and the United States, including Arkansas, Rhode Island, Missouri, Kansas, New York, Ohio, and the Veterans Administration Master Index.

A number of these collections many be valuable for persons with Jewish family history. They include additions to the indexes of U.S. Veterans Administration Master Index (1917–1940); South Africa, Transvaal, Civil Death, 1869–1954; Rhode Island Naturalization Records 1907–1991; Kansas State Census, 1925; New York, County Naturalization Records, 1791–1980; and New York, Southern District, U.S. District Court Naturalization Records, 1824–1946.

Note that at the website, announced collections may not be complete for the dates specified and will be added at some later date. Also note that counts shown in the announcement are the number added, not the total number available in the collection, which can be greater.

New Collections at Ancestry.com

Ancestry has added/updated the following record groups at their site. The list with links to individual collections can be found at https://www.ancestry.com/cs/recent-collections. Announced collections may not be complete for the dates specified and will be added at some later date. There is also no indication of how many records were added to the updated collections.

New Collections
North Lanarkshire, Scotland, Poor Law Applications and Registers, 1849–1917
North Lanarkshire, Scotland, Electoral Registers, 1847–1969

Updated Collections
England & Wales, Civil Divorce Records, 1858–1918
Morelos, Mexico, Civil Registration Births, 1866–1920

Make sure the members of your family who were murdered in the Holocaust are not forgotten. Submit a Page of Testimony in thier memory to The Shoah Victims' Name Recovefr Project. Go to http://yvng.yadvashem.org/index.html?language=en. Click the words "Submit Pages of Testimony Online" or “Download Page of Testimony Forms.”

Pages of Testimony are special forms created by Yad Vashem to restore the personal identities and to record the brief life stories of the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis and their accomplices. These one-page forms, containing the names, biographical details and, when available, photographs, of each individual victim are essentially symbolic "tombstones". Since its inception Yad Vashem has worked tirelessly to fulfill our moral imperative to remember every single victim as a human being, and not merely a number. To date there are some two million seven hundred thousand names recorded on Pages of Testimony, written in more than twenty languages, stored for perpetuity in the circular repository around the outer edge of the Hall of Names. Many shelves remain empty bearing witness to the millions of individuals who have yet to be memorialized.