GenealogyIndexer.org is a free website that offers full-text searching of thousands of pages of historical directories primarily from central and eastern Europe: business, address, telephone, and yizkor books, Polish and Russian military documents, community and personal histories, Galician secondary school reports, and much more. These sources contain millions of personal names—often with towns of residence, street addresses, and occupations, and sometimes with vital dates or patronymics. This huge and growing collection mostly comprises data from records not searchable elsewhere. Kleinwaks will reprise and update his popular presentation to us of several years ago.

Logan Kleinwaks is JewishGen’s Research Director for Danzig/Gdańsk, a former Board Member of Gesher Galicia, and creator of online genealogy research tools. His website GenealogyIndexer.org received an Outstanding Contribution to Jewish Genealogy via the Internet, Print or Electronic Product Award from IAJGS in 2012 and was one of Family Tree Magazine’s 101 Best Websites for 2015-2022.

Spotlight Talk: Non-Jews Remembering Jews in Poland: An Introduction to The Neshoma Project

Leora Tec has travelled widely across Poland recording conversations with Poles who are dedicating their lives to Jewish memory in different ways: through scholarship, guiding, grassroots activities and the arts. The work of these people, whom Leora calls “Rescuers of Memory,” can be an inspiration for those of us learning about our ancestors’ lives before and during the Second World War in Poland. 

Many Jews of Polish descent have reservations about going to Poland. In this talk, Leora Tec—the daughter of a Polish Holocaust survivor—lays out several reasons for visiting Poland, focusing on the “Rescuers of Memory” who are featured in The Neshoma Project.

Leora Tec is the founder and director of Bridge to Poland, which seeks to educate people about Jewish history of Poland with an emphasis on how the Jews are remembered by non-Jewish Poles today. Leora is the special projects partner of Brama-Grodzka-Teatr NN in Lublin Poland and in cooperation with them, has created an online video archive, The Neshoma Project: Conversations with Poles Rescuing Jewish Memory. Leora is a member of the JGSGB board.