JewishGen Discussion Group #JewishGen New data available from the Vilnius household registers project #general
Russ Maurer
LitvakSIG is very pleased to announce that batch 3 of the Vilnius
household register project, 5000 lines, is now available to qualified donors. To help you decide if this batch is relevant to you, we provide a full surname-frequency list of over 2000 surnames on the VHR home page, https://www.litvaksig.org/research/special-projects/vilnius-household-registers (short URL: https://tinyurl.com/yab5ojnv). During the period between WWI and WWII, Vilnius and adjoining areas (that today are within eastern Lithuania and western Belarus) were under Polish control. In Vilnius, the Poland imposed its system of household registration for population registration and mobility control >from 1919 to 1940. More than 13,000 household registers have survived. They contain a treasure trove of information about people who lived in or visited Vilnius. Typical records may include the first and last name, maiden name, names of the parents including the mother's maiden name, marital status, nationality and religion, place and date of birth (or age), place of previous residence, date of arrival to the lodgings, date of leaving the lodgings and next destination. We estimate that the collection, in all, contains several million entries, perhaps a third of them for Jews. Of particular note, because of the shifting national boundaries, the Vilnius household registers (VHR) will be of interest to a wider audience than one might imagine. There was no border between Vilnius and the rest of interwar Poland. People flowed freely between Vilnius and such other cities as Warsaw, Bialystok, Lodz, Lida, Disna, Oshmiany, Minsk, and others. If your ancestors were anywhere in that area between the wars, they could have stopped in Vilnius and made an appearance in a household register. Because this is a long-term project, we are releasing data 5,000 lines at a time. The first batch was released during the IAJGS conference in Warsaw in August. That batch is available free of charge, thanks to a Rabbi Malcolm Stern grant awarded to the project. Batch 2 was released a month ago. The data of each batch will be added to the All-Lithuania database about 18 months after release, where it will be searchable free of charge. All necessary information about these data releases, including how to become a qualified donor, can be found on our VHR home page linked above. Any questions should be directed to me at vhrproject@litvaksig.org Russ Maurer VHR project coordinator
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