Historian Zack Wilske of the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) will present a variety of historical federal immigration and naturalization records available from the USCIS Genealogy Program and the National Archives. Topics will include naturalization records, alien registration records, immigrant visa files, and other records documenting lives of Jewish immigrants during the first half of the twentieth century. Researchers will see example of files, hear tips on connecting the records to each other, and learn how to advance their immigration research beyond the basics. The handout for his talk can be found at uscis.jgsgb.org.

Zack Wilske is Historian for US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). His research interests include the history of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), the development of federal immigration and nationality policies, and the uses of INS records for historians and genealogists. He speaks regularly at academic and genealogy conferences and has published several articles on research with federal immigration and naturalization records.

Spotlight Talk*: Yizkor Books in Print
Speaker: Joel Alpert

Yizkor books offer a window into the lives of our ancestors and their communities. Also known as “Memorial books,” they contain important source material for researching Jewish life in individual towns and cities in eastern Europe before and during the Holocaust. Joel Alpert will discuss Yizkor books, the worldwide project to translate them from Yiddish and Hebrew into English, and the new Yizkor-Books-In-Print Project of JewishGen. Several Yizkor books will be on display.

Joel Alpert is creator and coordinator of the Yizkor-Books-In-Print Project of JewishGen. He is also the Translation Coordinator of the Dokshitz and Yurburg Yizkor books, creator of many KehilaLinks sites, and a long-term member of the JGSGB. He can be contacted about the Yizkor-Books-In-Print Project at ypip@jgsgb.org.

Research Help

12:30 pm – come early to join the following discussion groups:

Ask the Experts – for help with U.S. research
Bessarabia Special Interest Group
Litvak-Baltic Special Interest Group (covers Lithuania, Latvia & Estonia)
Poland Special Interest Group

3:30 pm – meet with the new Belarus Special Interest Group

Admission is free for members, $5 for non-members. Refreshments will be served.