One of the largest genealogical databases compiled in recent years is the All-Lithuania Database, containing more than half a million records of Litvak ancestors. This talk will describe the continuing efforts to procure, translate, and make available vital records (birth, death, marriage, and divorce), census records, tax and voters lists, candle and box tax lists, etc.Joel Ratner has been responsible for the LitvakSIG Vital Records Translation Project since 2004. This project’s goal is to translate records that the Mormon Church microfilmed as part of its worldwide ancestry endeavors. Joel Ratner was also the Vilna District coordinator for the LitvakSIG Research Group from 1998 to 2006. LitvakSIG can be accessed at www.litvaksig.org.

Problem solve with our “experts.” Learn how to get started or get over that “brick wall” in your family research. Visit various roundtables, some with computers connected to the Internet for online research.

Included are tables dedicated to the following topics:

• Immigration, Naturalization and Vital Records
• Getting started with Jewish genealogy (e.g., using the JewishGen and Steve Morse websites)
• Holocaust research (e.g., using the Internet and Transport Books)
• Austria-Czech Roundtable
• Galicia Roundtable
• German Roundtable
• Lithuania Vital Records
• Moldova/Bessarabia Roundtable
• Polish Roundtable
• Ukraine Roundtable
• Translation of foreign-language documents (e.g., Yiddish, Hebrew, Polish, German, Russian)

Genealogical reference materials will be available for perusal. So bring in your research questions and your foreign documents for translation.

If you want help at the meeting in obtaining information about a relative, please try to have at least their name and their date and place of birth.

The film portrays the ups and downs of a genealogical search from an initial curiosity about why her family never spoke of this Eastern European background, through the process of interviewing family, going to archives, and visiting people and places in Poland. As is not atypical in family history research, surprises pop up, and there is an appreciation of the impact world events have on individuals, and how they reverberate through the generations.  In Kaplinsky’s case, one example is that she learns that her great-uncle survived the Holocaust as a member of the Bielsky Brothers resistance in the forests of Poland (the subject of the newly-released movie, Defiance !).

After the film showing, experienced researchers will field questions about research methods.

This presentation will offer general guidelines about contacting and accessing Israeli archives.  Interesting case studies will be shared on how family mysteries were solved by accessing some lesser-known Israeli archives. Archives to be discussed include shtetl tax rolls, migration records from Galicia to New York, ketubot from the world over, Polish vital records, Yad Vashem resources, and even data on assets owned by ancestors who never left Russia.

Michael Goldstein, the featured speaker, is a Jerusalem-based genealogist who carries out worldwide Jewish research and guides North Americans in locating and connecting with their Israeli family. He is the current president of the Israel Genealogical Society, as well as a member of the Association of Professional Genealogists.

Michael’s Handout

ChaeRan Freeze is an Associate Professor in the Near Eastern and Judaic Studies Department and Women’s and Gender Studies program at Brandeis University. She has focused her research on the history and culture of the Jews in Russia, Jewish family history, and women’s and gender studies. She is the author of Jewish Marriage and Divorce in Imperial Russia, which received the Salo Baron Award for the Best First Book in Jewish Studies. She also edited Polin: Jewish Women in Eastern Europe with Paula Hyman and Antony Polonsky. She is currently finishing her book, Everyday Jewish Life in Imperial Russia, 1825-1914: Select Documents (coauthored with Jay Harris, 2010) and working on her second monograph, Sex and the Shtetl: Gender, Family, and Jewish Sexuality in Tsarist Russia.

Marx has been researching his German roots since 2001 and can now trace his ancestors back to the mid- 1600. Much of his success has come from searching the World Wide Web, and his primary tool has been Google. He is the treasurer of the JGSGB.

Professor Cannato will discuss why such an inspection station was created in 1892 on a small island in New York Harbor and how America’s immigration law evolved during this period. He will explain the inspection process and the reasons that some immigrants were excluded. Copies of Professor Cannato’s new book, “American Passage: The History of Ellis Island,” will be available for sale and signing following his talk.

Vincent Cannato teaches history at the University of Massachusetts, Boston and is the author of The Ungovernable City: John Lindsay and His Struggle to Save New York. He has written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post.

Besides being a passionate genealogist who has used DNA testing in his own research, Jay had a fleeting personal connection with early DNA research, having spent a summer in graduate school working on a biochemistry project in the laboratory of Walter Gilbert — his physics professor turned biochemist — who later received the Nobel Prize for advances in DNA sequencing.

Eastern Europe, home to 80% of American Jews, was an area of diverse religious practices, political ideologies, Yiddish pronunciation, foods, customs, and dress. Some of this diversity carried over to America, but it has faded in the post-immigrant generations. This talk will explore the differences among Eastern European Jews and the stereotypes to which they gave rise, illustrating the richness and vitality of a civilization that continues to inform Jewish life in Europe, the Americas and Israel.

Professor Zvi Gitelman is the Tisch Professor of Judaic Studies and Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan where he has won major teaching awards. Professor Gitelman also served as Director of the Frankel Center for Judaic Studies and Director of the Center for Russian and East European Studies at the University. He is the author of Ethnicity or Religion? The Evolution of Jewish Identities, and A Century of Ambivalence: The Jews of Russia and the Soviet Union since 1881. He has written or edited 14 books and written over 100 articles.

Professor Zvi Gitelman is the Tisch Professor of Judaic Studies and Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan where he has won major teaching awards. Professor Gitelman also served as Director of the Frankel Center for Judaic Studies and Director of the Center for Russian and East European Studies at the University. He is the author of Ethnicity or Religion? The Evolution of Jewish Identities, and A Century of Ambivalence: The Jews of Russia and the Soviet Union since 1881. He has written or edited 14 books and written over 100 articles.

More American Jews have roots in Poland than in any other country. The Poles kept very good track of their citizens through metrical records (birth, marriage, and death records), population registers, and other documents. While many of these records were destroyed during the war, a surprising number has survived and can be found in Polish Archives, even for the localities no longer in Poland. Many of these records are now accessible through the Internet.

Ms. Bussgang has authored over 20 articles published in genealogical journals, as well as the “Russian Poland” section of the Avotaynu Guide to Jewish Genealogy. She and her Polish-born husband, Julian, have done extensive genealogical research during twelve trips to Poland. They have also translated two volumes of war-time accounts of child survivors still living in Poland. Ms. Bussgang served as co-president of the JGS of Greater Boston 1998–2000.