Nu? What's New? Vol. 21 No. 3

Underlined words are links to sites with additional information.

Perpetuating Errors In Online Family Trees
You are searching for information about an individual on one of the many family tree databases on the internet. You find a match; no, two matches. You compare the information on the two trees, and they are identical. Excellent! Two people independently found the identical information giving you confidence of its accuracy.

Wrong! Two people may not have found the information independently. It is also possible that one person copied the information from the other. If the information is inaccurate, it may perpetuate false information.

This realization came to me when I received matches from the MyHeritage Smart Matching system which matches people on different family trees. It was obvious to me that the other person had copied information from my family tree, create the illusion that two people independently came to the same conclusion.

IGRA All Israel Database Top 1.5M Records

The Israel Genealogical Research Association (IGRA) has announced that their All Israel Database now includes more than 1.5M records. They come from a variety of sources and cover many time periods, from the Ottoman Empire period through the State of Israel.

Registration is required to access the database. The website is located at https://genealogy.org.il/.
The society now has 750 members from 22 countries.

RootsTech Has Jewish Research Oriented Events

The IAJGs 40th International Conference on Jewish Genealogy will be held in San Diego, California, from August 9–14 at the Sheraton Hotel & Marina. If that is not enough to satisfy your desire to attend genealogy conferences, consider attending the RootsTech conference in Salt Lake City from February 26–29.

Lara Diamond, a professional genealogist, notes there are plenty of activities for Jewish genealogists. As an example, there are at least five lectures focusing on Jewish research. One is "Challenges of Jewish Research: Names, Dates, Places" being given by Jeanette Silverman.

You can read Diamond’s comments at https://tinyurl.com/LDRootsTech. The RootsTech home page is at https://www.rootstech.org/.

Transparent Tombstones Being Placed Where Jewish Cemeteries Once Existed
Transparent tombstones are being placed in public places in Poland where Jewish graveyards once stood. Three Polish citizens created a list of 500 places which formerly served as Jewish cemeteries—places which should have remained undisturbed in perpetuity. However, history proved unkind and many of them are now schoolyards, parks, roads or car parks.

The results of the project have already been exhibited at the Polish Parliament and the Museum of the History of Polish Jews—POLIN. The project is still ongoing.

The complete article, with illustrations can be found at https://tinyurl.com/TransparentTombstones.

JewishGen Offering Course on “Brick Wall or Dead End”

JewishGen is once again offering their class, “Brick Wall or Dead End”, February 2–23. Are you at a dead end or experiencing a brick wall? Are you stumped by a small detail or is there a major block you can’t break through? Take the class. Work with an expert to review and analyze your data.

JewishGen classes are open 24/7 and taught in a private forum. Tuition is $150. Registration is open. Enrollment is limited. For more information, go to https://www.jewishgen.org/education/ description.asp?course=40201.

FamilySearch Adds More Than 4.5M Records This Week

A list of recent additions to FamilySearch, more than 4.5M index records, can be found at https://tinyurl.com/FamilySearch011320. This site provides direct links to the individual collections. Those identified with a dagger (†) are church records. They include records from American Samoa, Bolivia(†), Brazil, Canada(†), Cape Verde(†), Chile(†), Colombia, England, France, Honduras(†), Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, Peru, Sierra Leone, Slovakia, South Africa, Spain, and numerous states of the United States.

Nearly 3M index records are for France, Loire-Atlantique, Civil Registration, 1792–1960.

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 York City Department of Health's Helps Patron

The New York City Department of Health may receive bad publicity about their policies regarding public access to records, but at the one-on-one relationship between a patron and a department clerk, the story may be much better.

Leah Larkin calls herself the DNA Geek. On her blog, she relates a story about a woman who was adopted at birth and went seeking her New York City original birth certificate. (New York State now allows adult adoptees open access to their original, pre-adoption birth certificates.) The process took 2 hours throughtout—getting the application packet, having his signature notarized, obtaining a money order, waiting in line. Larkin reports that the office staff was incredibly helpful and kind. The adoptee reported, “They actually had a separate semi-private area set up for those like me—with a table in a cordoned off area that had “Congratulations” silver balloons attached—it was actually very touching and welcoming.”

You can read the story at https://thednageek.com/congratulations-new-york/.
You can see the state of adoptee rights in the U.S. at https://adopteerightslaw.com/ interactive-maps/.

Arolsen Archives Show Clothing Given to Displaced Persons

If you are in possession of one of the 2M Displaced Person cards that are part of the collection at Arolsen Archives, the bottom of the card identifies, by code numbers, clothing and everyday objects given to the person. The Archives has now placed online a description of what each of these code numbers represent. Examples are: woolen dress (7) as well as stockings (11) and gloves (14).

The list can be found at https://tinyurl.com/ArolsenDPClothing.

Jewish Dancing by Igor Moiseyev Ballet On YouTube
There is a delightful interpretation of Hassidic dancing at a wedding on YouTube performed by the Igor Moiseyev Ballet. An inaccuracy is they show the bride and groom holding hands at the start of the dance. It can be found at https://tinyurl.com/FBJewishDancing.

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