Nu? What's New? Vol. 21 No. 20

Underlined words are links to sites with additional information.

JewishGen Suggestions: “Five Things to Do While Stuck At Home”

Most of us will be spending more time at home during the COVID-19 pandemic. JewishGen is encouraging people to use some of that time to advance their family history research by logging in to the resources of JewishGen, such as:
1. Family Finder. Make sure you have entered all the surnames and ancestral towns you are researching into Family Finder. This program has been very successful in connecting family members separated by time and distance. https://www.jewishgen.org/jgff/
2. Unified Search. From one screen, search millions of records in more than 850 collections. Records are continually added and updated. https://www.jewishgen.org/databases/all/
3. Discussion Group. If you haven’t subscribed to the JewishGen Discussion Group, do so. Ask questions and share information with fellow researchers. It is as easy as sending an email. https://groups.jewishgen.org/g/main
4. Education. Learn from home. Sign up for one of JewishGen’s online courses. Those who have donated $100 or more in the past 12 months to the JewishGen General Fund are eligible to receive certain free videos and Value-Added Workbooks. https://www.jewishgen.org/Education/
5. Info Files. Have you accessed JewishGen’s InfoFiles lately? This resource contains a wealth of information on topics of relevance to Jewish genealogical research. https://www.jewishgen.org/InfoFiles/

Ancestry Canada Offering Free Access Through May 18

In celebration of Victoria Day (May 18), Ancestry Canada is offering free access to its collection through May 18. Victoria Day is a federal Canadian holiday observed on the Monday before May 25th each year. It marks the birthday of Queen Victoria (1837–1901).

The website is at https://www.ancestry.ca/.

Free Access to Records by Ancestry
Ancestry is opening free access to:
• More than 550M U.S. military records on Fold3, covering military conflicts as early as the Revolutionary War, open May 21-25. https://www.fold3.com/
• Nearly 500M records and images from the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration available on Ancestry, including all 36 million of the nation’s available World War II young man’s draft cards, open now through June 1 at https://www.ancestry.com/cs/nara.

The Genetic Detective TV Show Premiere Date Now June 2
The last issue of Nu? What’s New? noted a new U.S. television program, The Genetic Detective, to air on May 19 on ABC. The premiere date has been changed to June 2 at 10:00pm EDT. The show follows investigative genetic genealogist CeCe Moore as she tracks down criminals using state-of-the-art DNA technology.

Congress Funds United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Jan Meisels Allen, Chairperson of the IAJGS Public Records Access Monitoring Committee, reports that the U.S. Congress passed the Never Again Education Act that will fund the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum $10M over the next five years. The funds will allow the museum to increase teacher access to their educational programming and resources, maintain a museum website containing curriculum materials on Holocaust education, and support professional development programming.

For additional information, see https://tinyurl.com/CongressUSHMM.

Moravia Census Records 1857–1921 Now Available Online

A posting to the JewishGen Discussion Group notes that the Moravian state archives (MZA) in Brno has released on its website a collection of scanned images of census records for 1857–1921. The records span the collections of archives in Blansko, Brno-venkov, Břeclav, Havlíčkův Brod, Hodonín, Jihlava, Kroměříž, Pelhřimov, Třebíč, Uherské Hradiště, Vsetín, Vyškov, Zlín, Znojmo and Žďár nad Sázavou. The site is in Czech. Search at https://www.mza.cz/scitacioperaty/digisada/search.

FamilySearch Adds 2.7M Records This Week

A list of recent additions to FamilySearch, 2.7 million index records, can be found at https://tinyurl.com/FamilySearch051120. This site provides direct links to the individual collections. They include records from American Samoa, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Czech Republic, Ecuador, England, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Niue, Peru, Puerto Rico, South Africa and United States.

Included are 1.2M South Africa, Cape Province, Probate Records of the Master of the High Court, 1834–1989 and nearly 1M United States, GenealogyBank Historical Newspaper Obituaries, 1815–2011.

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 at FindMyPast

FindMyPast has added two collections associated with Great Britain during World War II.
• Durham Home Guard 1939–1945. More than 80,00 records.
• Faces of the Fallen 1939–1945. More than 1,000 photographs of those who lost their lives during World War II.

The announcement, which includes links to these collections, can be found at https://www.findmypast.co.uk/blog/new/ww2-records.

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
Finland, WWII Military Casualties, 1939–1945
U.S., American Samoa, Passenger Lists and Travel Documents, 1918–1965

Updated Collections
New York, Passenger and Crew Lists (including Castle Garden and Ellis Island), 1820–1957
Ontario, Canada, Marriages, 1826–1938
Scotland, Ireland and Wales, Militia Attestation Papers, 1800–1915
Finland, Pre–Confirmation Books, 1670–1918

Spring Issue of AVOTAYNU to Printer

The Spring issue of AVOTAYNU will go to the printer this week, a bit later than usual due to matters involving the pandemic. The lead article is about the Documentation of Jewish Records project (DoJR) which plans to produce “the ultimate catalog and repository for all Jewish genealogy sources of information--unrecognized, misfiled, unknown, uncatalogued, even known.” Leaders of the project are Stanley Diamond, Executive Director of JRI-Poland; Marlis Humphrey, past president of the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies; and Sallyann Amdur Sack-Pikus, editor or AVOTAYNU and co-director of a number of International Conferences on Jewish Genealogy.

The IAJGS International Conference for San Diego is no more, but an article shows what we missed. It should be especially of interest to people who have never attended a conference. A few other topics in the issue include Locating United States Naturalization Records Off and Online, How to Find Unindexed Records, Tracing Unclaimed Property Owners and Their Heirs Through Genealogical Research.

All told, there are 14 articles in the issue plus the usual columns: From Our Contributing Editors, U.S. Update, Ask Dr. Beider, Book Reviews (four reviews) and From Our Mailbox.

Subscribe to AVOTAYNU at https://www.avotaynu.com/journal.htm.

The complete Table of Contents is at http://avotaynu.com/2020SpringPage01.pdf.

Winners of AVOTAYNU Subscription Renewal Contest
Each year Avotaynu offers people who are resubscribing to our journal AVOTAYNU the opportunity to enter a contest to win a book of their choice published by Avotaynu. Those who resubscribe for one year get one chance in the pool. Two-year renewal provides two chances and three-year renewal gives three chances. The winners are selected by random numbers (last digits of the serial number on three one-dollar bills).

Winners of the drawing this year are Sara Sukol of Virginia (chose Where Once We Walked), Shaul Ceder of Israel (chose a volume of The Unbroken Chain) and Steven Gitomer of New Mexico (not yet chose book).

Do You Subscribe to AVOTAYNU?

Each year AVOTAYNU publishes more than 300 pages of useful, interesting information about Jewish family history research that can help you in your research. Now in its 35th year, an index to the first 24 volumes is available to all the major articles.

Published quarterly, our contributing editors from 15 countries throughout the world regularly gather important information that appears in our issues. Our publishers, Gary Mokotoff and Sallyann Amdur Sack, are on a first name basis with officials at institutions containing genealogical data throughout the world. Some institutions are U.S. National Archives, U.S. Library of Congress, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Leo Baeck Institute, Yad Vashem and Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People.

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