Nu? What's New? Vol. 21 No. 30

Underlined words are links to sites with additional information.

Preliminary Program for Annual Conference Announced

A preliminary program for the IAJGS 40th International Conference on Jewish Genealogy has been announced. It can be found at https://s4.goeshow.com/iajgs/annual/2020/program_info.cfm. Because of the pandemic, it will be a virtual conference with a substantially lower registration cost.

The opening session will be at 10am ET on Monday August 10. This will be followed by a keynote address by Arthur Kurzweil and Avotaynu co-owner Sallyann Amdur Sack-Pikus on “The Way It Was: A 40-Year Retrospective.” Based on the preliminary program, there will be two concurrent sessions thereafter–six in total per day—ending at 7:30pm. The conference ends Thursday, August 13.

The schedule includes three films and provision for Research Division (SIG) and Birds of a Feather meetings.

Register for the conference at https://s4.goeshow.com/iajgs/annual/2020/registration_form.cfm.

Genealogically Relevant Internet Sites Subject of Hacking Attempts
MyHeritage reports there was a malicious attempt to steal credentials from their site. Perpetrators whose identities are unknown created a fake website called myheritaqe.com (same as MyHeritage, but with the letter Q instead of the letter G). On the fake website, myheritaQe.com, the perpetrators set up a phishing login form to receive login information intended for MyHeritage and harvest the password. The website was made to look like part of the real MyHeritage.com homepage, with all the functionality not working except the fake login. MyHeritage indicated they were in the process of having the domain name delisted. Complete information can be found at https://tinyurl.com/MHFraudulentSite.

GEDmatch reports that on the morning of July 19, they experienced a security breach orchestrated through a sophisticated attack on one of their servers via an existing user account. The next day, they discovered that the site was still vulnerable and made the decision to take it down until such time that they could be sure that user data is protected against potential attacks. The site is now up, so they apparently solved the problem. Additional information can be found at https://tinyurl.com/GEDmatchBreach.

Family Tree Maker, the software program used by many genealogists had a potential security vulnerability. Ancestry customers often sync family trees between Family Tree Maker software and Ancestry. Based on Ancestry’s investigation, they do not believe that any Ancestry systems or data have been compromised. The Ancestry announcement can be found at https://tinyurl.com/AncestryFTMBreach.

Joint Distribution Committee Adds an Index for Czech Emigration Assistance

The Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) Archives has indexed the names of those who received emigration assistance from JDC in Czechoslovakia in the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust. The index has nearly 11,000 entries. With the inclusion of the names of accompanying family, the total number of names indexed approaches 22,000. Although most of the émigrés were Czech Jews, the files also include many individuals who held Polish, Hungarian, or Romanian citizenship who traveled to Czechoslovakia as the first step in their efforts to leave Europe.

The announcement can be found at https://tinyurl.com/JDCCzechAnn. The index, in PDF format, can be searched at https://tinyurl.com/JDCCzech.

JewishGen Adds New Holocaust Database

JewishGen has added a new database to their Holocaust collection. It is Revoked Citizenship and Property Seizures 1933–1945.
Beginning in 1933, the German government revoked German citizenship for tens of thousands of German Jews as well as persons seen as political opponents, e.g. communists. This affected not only persons resident in Germany, but also persons who had left Germany and were resident in other countries. It took similar action against persons resident in parts of Czechoslovakia which had been annexed. Less well known was the revocation of business licenses or even seizure of firms which had been owned by Jews or political opponents. These public actions, totaling nearly 90,000 names of persons and firms, mixed together, were regularly published in the Reichsanzeiger, the German equivalent of the Federal Registry.

Additional information can be found at https://tinyurl.com/JGRevokedGermanCitizenship. All Holocaust-related databases can be searched at https://www.jewishgen.org/databases/holocaust/.

FamilySearch Announces Plans to Reopen Library and Family History Centers

During the pandemic, the Family History Library located in Salt Lake City is closed but they are offering free online genealogy consultations to assist patrons with their genealogical research. They are continuing to monitor the pandemic and evaluating reopening plans. When applicable, reopening will most likely occur in carefully monitored phases with priority admissions being granted to professional genealogists whose livelihoods rely on access to the Library’s records.

FamilySearch’s Family History Centers and libraries located throughout the world will consider the direction of their local and government leaders and then make informed decisions about opening their facilities.

The announcement can be found at https://media.familysearch.org/ familysearch-covid-19-updates/.

“Visiting Cemeteries to Preserve Family History”

MyHeritage has published an article on its blog about the basics of visiting cemeteries. It reminds me of an incident that occurred many years ago involving the then patriarch of my wife’s family, Uncle Abe. We were at a family event and I approached Uncle Abe, then in his 80s, to inform him that a cousin of the family was documenting his family’s history. Uncle Abe pondered my comment for a short while and then exclaimed, “Yes, but she is a little mishuggah (crazy).” I asked him why he felt that she was crazy. He responded with, “Because she takes pictures of tombstones.”

You can read the MyHeritage article at https://blog.myheritage.com/2020/07/ visiting-cemeteries-to-preserve-family-history/.

FamilySearch Adds 1.5M Records This Week

A list of recent additions to FamilySearch, 1.5M index records, can be found at https://tinyurl.com/FamilySearch072020. This site provides direct links to the individual collections. They include records from Austria, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, England, Fiji, Honduras, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico, Slovenia, S. Africa, United States and Wales.

Included is an update of 17,282 records to Austria, Vienna, Jewish Registers of Births, Marriages, and Deaths, 1784–1911.

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 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.

Updated
1861 Census of Canada
Nuevo León, Mexico, Catholic Church Records, 1667–1981
U.S., Civil War Soldier Records and Profiles, 1861–1865
Iowa, Marriage Records, 1880–1945
England and Wales, Death Index, 1989–2019
Scotland and Northern Ireland, Death Index, 1989–2019

Attend the 40th IAJGS International Conference on Jewish Genealogy

Visit the website at http://iajgs2020.org