Nu? What's New? Vol. 21 No. 16

Underlined words are links to sites with additional information.

Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Memorial Day) Is This Tuesday
Yom HaShoah (יום השואה) commemorates the approximately six million Jews who perished in the Holocaust. In Israel, it is a national memorial day and public holiday. It is held on the 27th of the Hebrew month of Nisan (April/May), unless that date is adjacent to Shabat, in which case it is shifted by a day. This year, the date translates to Tuesday, April 21. The holiday actually begins at sundown on Monday, April 20.

Arolsen Archives Now Has 26M Documents Online

Arolsen Archives has announced they now have 26M documents online containing information about 21M people. The Archives have recently expanded the collections on the internet to include documents on forced laborers and on deportations to concentration camps. The project is a joint effort with Yad Vashem.

They consist of two record groups:
• Card index of forced laborers – original documents and copies of documents about millions of forced laborers that make it possible to trace the fates of individuals: registration cards, questionnaires, correspondence
• Deportations of Jews, Roma and Sinti from the former German empire, Austria, Bohemia, and Moravia: transport and deportation lists with information about millions of people deported to concentration camps and ghettoes.

The announcement can be found at https://tinyurl.com/Arolsen26M. The collection can be searched at https://collections.arolsen-archives.org/en/search/.

MyHeritage LIVE 2020 Postponed

MyHeritage annual users conference, which was scheduled for October 25–26 in Tel Aviv has been postponed to an unspecified date. All MyHeritage LIVE tickets purchased will be refunded. The purpose of the conference is to make MyHeritage users and potential users aware of the latest in genealogy, DNA and MyHeritage features.

The announcement can be found at https://blog.myheritage.com/2020/04/ myheritage-live-2020-postponed/.

Major U.S. Genealogy Conference to Go Virtual

Due to the worldwide pandemic, the National Genealogical Society (NGS) 2020 Family History Conference has changed from an in-person conference to a virtual conference. It was originally planned for May 20–23 in Salt Lake City, Utah.

The virtual conference will be a mixture of live and on-demand programming. A full day of NGS 2020 Live! is planned for Wednesday, May 20. The balance of the conference sessions will be by streaming access starting in July.
Regarding the financial aspect of the conference, NGS will soon provide its registrants, speakers, award recipients, exhibitors, and sponsors with specific information, including how all prior commitments to social events, meals, workshops, and tour fees, as well as registration, will be handled in the coming days.

The announcement can be found at https://conference.ngsgenealogy.org/covid-19/.

New Television Series: The Genetic Detective
An all-new U.S. television series, The Genetic Detective, will premiere on ABC, May 19 at 10pmET. It follows investigative genetic genealogist CeCe Moore as she uses her research skills to transform the face of crime solving. By working with police departments and crime scene DNA, Moore is able to trace the path of a violent criminal’s family tree to reveal their identity and help bring them to justice.

Moore’s skills were originally highlighted on the ABC program 20/20 in October 2018. The show can be seen in its entirety at https://abc.com/shows/2020/episode-guide/ 2018-10/05-the-dna-detective.

Exploring UK National Archives Family History Resources

The UK National Archives has posted to its blog an article about “Exploring Our Family History Resources.” Described as meant for “budding genealogists,” it would be equally valuable for researchers who are unfamiliar with the Archives.

For example, it notes that the Archives has nearly 200 research guides explaining how to use their military records, wills, the census and a wide range of other records to trace your ancestors. Also available are podcasts that provide more information on some of their key collections. Example:
Introduction to Immigration Records. They even have a live chat service available Tuesday to Saturday, from 09:00 to 17:00.

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

How to Interview a Relative Remotely

In this era when interviewing relatives remotely has become the norm, in better times, interviewing relatives to glean family history from them is still a skill. MyHeritage has posted to its blog an article on “How to Interview a Relative Remotely.” It provides pointers for three techniques:
• Over the phone
• Video chat
• Mail and email correspondence

I have found that I get poor results in merely asking relatives by mail/email to provide information such as date/place of birth, date/place of marriage, death date/place of birth of relatives, names of relatives and vital information about them. I have found that an effective way of getting this information is to provide a narrative asking them to fill in the blanks. Typical is:

“My name is __________, I was born on (date)_________ in (place)________. My spouse’s name is __________, s/he was born on (date)_________ in (place)________.” Etc., etc., etc. To make it easier for the individual, I fill in those blanks where I had the information. If it turned out it was erroneous, the interviewee was motivated to correct it.

The MyHeritage article is at https://tinyurl.com/MHInterviewRemote.

List of Rhineland Emigrants Now Online
Posted to JewishGen: The Landesarchiv NRW has online an Excel file containing 63,348 persons who emigrated from the Rhineland between 1814 and 1939. The list contains name, profession, year of emigration, home town, destination and the shelf number and page to find more information from the archive. The file is located at https://tinyurl.com/RhinelandEmigration.

USHMM Has More Than 10K Linked Digitized Documents for Lvov Ghetto

Peter Lande reports that the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has linked digitized documents to the 10,513 name records in this existing Holocaust Survivors and Victims collection: Lvov Ghetto Database. They can be searched at https://www.ushmm.org/online/hsv/ source_view.php?Sourceid=20775.

During the Holocaust period, a number of Jews fled from their home towns to the major city of Lvov. A Mokotow family from Garwolin, Poland, travelled more than 300km (200 miles) to Lvov where they thought they would have a better chance to survive. They did not.

St. Petersburg Archives offering Free Access to Their Online Records
The St. Petersburg (Russia) Archives is offering free access to their online records during the pandemic, through April 30th. These include birth, marriage and death records from metrical books and civil registration records, as well as historical photographs and more. Registration is free and image access fees are waved during this period. The site, at https://spbarchives.ru/paid_access, is in Russian.

Jewish Burial Records for São Paulo, Brazil

The São Paulo Chevra Kadisha Association has a database containing information about tens of thousands of Jews buried in the four Jewish cemeteries in São Paulo. These names are not in the JewishGen Online Worldwide Burial Registry (JOWBR) but can be searched at no charge.

The database is located at http://extranet.chevrakadisha.org.br:12499/ws/u_cwebm004.apl. It is in Portuguese.

JewishGen Offering Class on Researching Galicia

Starting May 15, JewishGen will offer a three-week class on “Research in Galicia.” The course is in two parts:
• Researching Galicia town information and vital records at four key websites: JewishGen, Jewish Records Indexing - Poland, Gesher Galicia and Routes to Roots Foundation.
• Studying the historical background of Galicia, naming conventions, how to use the Polish Archives—what is online and what is not, websites and records (census, military, directories, etc.), Holocaust research, languages, hiring a researcher and more.

This is a personal mentoring program which features an online Forum where you will be encouraged to post one ancestral branch (one surname), set goals for your research, and work one-on-one with the instructor to research your branch.

Additional information is at https://www.jewishgen.org/education/description.asp?course=40213. Enroll at https://www.jewishgen.org/education/edu-courses.asp.

Genealogy Sites are Providing Free Resources During the Pandemic

Family History Daily has produced an article: “These Genealogy Sites are Providing Free Resources During the Pandemic.” It describes in greater detail:
• MyHeritage: Unlimited Use of MyHeritage in Color and Free Census Records
• Ancestry: Access to NARA Records and History Lesson Plans
• Family History Daily: Free and Discounted Courses
• Legacy Family Tree Webinars: Free Video Lessons
• Additional Fun Family History Activities

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

FamilySearch Adds More Than 30M Records This Week

A list of recent additions to FamilySearch, more than 30M index records, can be found at https://tinyurl.com/FamilySearch041320. The unusually high number is caused by indexes to:
• France, Insee Social Security Death Index, 1970–2019, 25,030,960 index records
• England Death Record, 3,293,133 index records

This site provides direct links to the individual collections. They include records from American Samoa, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Denmark, Dominican Republic, England, France, Italy, Peru, Puerto Rico, Sierra Leone, South Africa and United States.

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
Washington, Various County Census Records, 1850–1914
Alabama, Episcopal Diocese of Alabama, Church Records, 1837–1970
U.S., Pennsylvania, Grand Army of the Republic Membership Records, 1865–1936

Updated Collections
U.S. Public Records Index, 1950–1993, Volume 1
Tennessee, Death Records, 1908–1965
New York, Grand Army of the Republic Records, 1866–1931

A Dictionary of Jewish Surnames from Italy, France and “Portuguese” Communities

Avotaynu has just published Dr. Beider’s second book on surnames of the Mediterranean region: A Dictionary of Jewish Surnames from Italy, France and “Portuguese” Communities. His first book of the Mediterranean region is A Dictionary of Jewish Surnames from Maghreb, Malta and Gibraltar, published by Avotaynu in 2017.

Why “Mediterranean region” rather than “Sephardic.” Because Dr. Beider has the preciseness of a person who got his first doctorate in Applied Mathematics. He notes that the surnames of the region include names based on Arabic, Judeo-Arabic, Berber, Hebrew, Aramaic, Spanish, Judeo-Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and French. There are also Ashkenazic surnames in the region.

The book is 882 pages, hardcover. Cost is $89.00 plus shipping. Addtional informaton, including the Table of Contents and sample entry, can be found at http://www.avotaynu.com/books/Italy.html.