Nu? What's New? The E-zine of Jewish Genealogy From Avotaynu Gary Mokotoff, Editor Volume 22, Number 4 | January 24, 2021 Every government puts value on preserving its history. That is why we have national archives. Genealogy preserves history; the history of a family. It cannot be done without access to records, just as historians cannot preserve a nation's history without access to records. It is a greater good than the right to privacy. It is a greater good than the risk of identity theft. Past issues of Nu? What's New? are archived at http://www.avotaynu.com/nu.htm

Underlined words are links to sites with additional information. News of the IAJGS 41st International Conference on Jewish Genealogy The IAJGS 41st International Conference on Jewish Genealogy, will take place in historic Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, at the Sheraton Philadelphia Downtown Hotel. The conference will be more focused over a shorter time frame—now four days and nights—from August 2–5, 2021. Registration will open on March 1. Early Bird full registration will be $350; Partner/Spouse Early Bird full registration will be $250. Speaker acceptances have gone out, and the program is scheduled to go public by the end of February. Hotel reservations will open in March. While an in-person conference is anticipated, contingency plans are in place for any eventuality. The conference is more than six months away and the conference committee is working with local health guidelines to continue evaluating the conference’s path. The International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies is the umbrella group of more than 80 Jewish genealogical societies throughout the world. A list of members is at https://www.iajgs.org/membership/member-societies/. Website Has Online Searchable Death Indexes and Records The website https://www.deathindexes.com/ is a directory of links to websites with online death indexes for the U.S., listed by state and county. In addition, there are separate indexes for Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, New York City and St. Louis. Some of the links are to government sites, but others are fee-for-service sites such as ancestry.com. Archivist of the United States Reflects on Tenth Anniversary of Wikipedia On the occasion of the 20th anniversary of Wikipedia, the Archivist of the United States, David Ferriero, discussed the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) philosophy of openness, transparency, collaboration and participation. Since NARA began to work with Wikipedia, it has contributed more than 450,000 digital copies to Wikimedia Commons. NARA’s digital copies have been used in over 80 thousand Wikipedia articles. The numbers of views NARA’s records have received on Wikipedia “has been astounding.” In fiscal year 2020 alone, digital copies of NARA’s records received almost two billion page views on Wikimedia platforms. NARA’s digital copies in Wikipedia have received: 1,152,043,520 views (English); 140,460,507 (Spanish); 102,478,210 (German); 80,559,405 (French) and many more languages. NARA’s records are also available on Wikibooks, Wikinews, Wikivoyage, Wikiquote, Wikiversity, and Wikisource. Ferriero stated that “the world of Wikipedia opened up to a universe of Wiki platforms that provided new kinds of access to the records of the National Archives.” Read the entire article at https://aotus.blogs.archives.gov/2021/01/15/happy-birthday-wikipedia/. International Holocaust Remembrance Day This Wednesday, January 27, is International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Many institutions will memorialize the day with various activities. For example, Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center, located in Jerusalem, will once again have its IRemember Wall project. Each participant who joins the event will be randomly linked to one of the individuals recorded in Yad Vashem's Central Database of Shoah Victims’ Names, which now includes more than 4,800,000 names. Their names will then appear together on the IRemember Wall. Participants can also choose additional Holocaust victims from the Names Database to commemorate on the Wall. Those who join are encouraged to share the stories on their social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. The IRemember Wall will go live on 24 January 2021. Additional information can be found at https://www.yadvashem.org/press-release/21-january-2021-07-57.html. RootsTech Will Match Registrants Trees One of the features of previous RootsTech conferences was they would compare registrants’ family trees to demonstrate if two persons were related to each other. Called “Relatives at RootsTech,” this feature will be offered at the virtual RootsTech conference next month. But instead of matching against a mere 20,000 on-site registrants, the virtual conference will likely have more than 200,000 registrants. Participation in the project is optional and requires you submit your tree to the RootsTech database. Here is what to do:    • Visit http://familysearch.org/connect.    • Sign in with your FamilySearch account.    • Follow the instructions on the opt-in page for joining the experience and confirming your registration.    • See your results. The announcement can be found at https://www.familysearch.org/blog/en/relatives-rootstech/. FamilySearch Adds 8M Records This Week A list of recent additions to FamilySearch, 8M index records and images, can be found at https://tinyurl.com/FamilySearch120919. This site provides direct links to the individual collections. Those identified with a dagger (†) are church records. They include records from Australia, England, France, Luxembourg, Namibia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Paraguay, Spain and the U.S. states of Arizona, California, Florida, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Texas. Included is a marriage index for Hawaii (1909–1989). It includes the marriage of President Barack Obama’s parents. 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 Dakota, U.S., Naturalizations, 1873–1952 Germany, Deaths of German Citizens Abroad, Registers from Berlin Standesamt 1, 1939–1955 Updated Collections 1911 England Census Berlin, Germany, Marriages, 1874–1936 Berlin, Germany, Births, 1874–1909 Every Family Has a Story 72 articles that have appeared in our journal, AVOTAYNU, each story focusing on the human side of genealogy—how genealogists have been personally affected by their research and how the research of genealogists has affected others. Some stories will make you laugh, others will make you cry. Some will shock you, others will make you feel warm inside. Additional information, including an annotated Table of Contents plus a sample story, can be found at  https://www.avotaynu.com/books/EveryFamily.htm.

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