In addition to my reply to Sally (and Daniella) just sent, I would add to Peter Cherna that the JewishGen records do not exist in and of themselves, for no reason except documentation. JewishGen records exist to aid people searching for ancestral family, and as such, should, as far as possible, provide help to share knowledge which will allow other people finding records to make connections they might not otherwise have been able to make.

Helen Gardner

Hi,

 

It is often necessary to check the existence and spelling of Jewish surnames from various geographic origins. For this purpose, Steve Morse created a one-step web tool to search a name among several reference dictionaries of Jewish surnames. Two significant extensions were recently made:

 

The search tool for Ashkenazi reference books located at

https://stevemorse.org/phonetics/beider.php

now includes some 1,100 surnames published in Alexander Beider’s 1994 book, Jewish Surnames in Prague (15th-18th centuries), now out of print.

 

An entirely new search tool for Sephardic reference books is available at

https://stevemorse.org/phonetics/faig.php

It searches surnames from any of the four following dictionaries:

1. Dicionário Sefaradi de Sobrenomes, Guilherme Faiguenboim, Paulo Valadares, and Anna Rosa Campagnano (Rio de Janeiro 2003), around 16,600 surname entries.
2. Judíos de Toledo, 2 vols., Pilar León Tello (Madrid 1979), about 1,000 surname entries.
3. A Dictionary of Jewish Surnames from Maghreb, Gibraltar, and Malta, Alexandre Beider (2017). Approximately 10,840 surname entries.
4. A Dictionary of Jewish Surnames from Italy, France, and Portuguese Communities, Alexander Beider (2019), around 9,740 surname entries.

 

The tools can search the names either exactly, by Daitch-Mokotoff soundex or according to language-dependent Beider Morse Phonetic Matching (BMPM).

 

Both tools can also be accessed from Steve Morse root page (https://stevemorse.org) under the Phonetic Matching section.

 

 

Jean-Pierre Stroweis

Jerusalem, Israel

 

The philosophy “If it’s wrong, it’s wrong” can mean that some researcher never discovers the missing link to their blank wall.

To use an actual example from my family, my ggrandmother’s record gives her maiden name as Prefseizen but every other record indicates it is Presseizen (and that’s easy enough to understand given old German script). There’s one Prefseizen record, but a large family of Presseizens.  I would never have been able to follow the family through if someone hadn’t pointed it out to me. And someone searching for Presseizen may never find me via my ggrandmother. It’s not good enough if one person knows a record is wrong but the knowledge is not shared.

The issue of whether or not to correct records leads me to wonder whether in NextGen any thought has been given to a “comments” field, where one could say, eg, This record says Bloggowitz but every other record I have found for this person and their family indicates that it is Blinkowitz . 

Or

The record gives the date of birth as 1851 with no further details, but I have found the original birth record, which gives the dob as 15 Jun 1851 (or 1852 or 1854 …) which may help someone to slot some person into their tree or otherwise solve some mystery without having to actually change the record.

Regards

Helen Gardner

Good afternoon

I've posted 2 vital records in Polish for which I need a full and detailed English translation of the Polish words and Roman numerals.

They are on ViewMate at https://www.jewishgen.org/viewmate/viewmateview.asp?key=VM85116 and https://www.jewishgen.org/viewmate/viewmateview.asp?key=VM85117

Please respond via the forms provided in the ViewMate application.

Thank you very much.

Ms Terry Ashton

Melbourne

Australia

Ancestry partnered with the USC Shoah Foundation to release 50,000 Holocaust records, to be placed in a searchable database,  but some survivor families do not want their histories public.  The Ancestry records with the USC Shoah Foundation are an index to survivor video interviews. One would still have to go via a link to the USC Shoah Foundation to access the actual interview. They are free on the USC Shoah Foundation website (http://sfi.usc.edu/). Ancestry also added nine million records from the Arolsen Archives that Ancestry digitized this year.  Much of the Arolsen Archives records are free to search on the Arolsen Archives website ( https://arolsen-archives.org/en/search-explore/search-online-archive/) However, as reported by the New York Times, during a soft launch trial run, some survivors and their family members already concerned about such sensitive information made public, are wondering what is free and what is not.

The formal announcement of the partnership and media rollout that was set for August 26  has been postponed to September 2^nd.

Evidently, during the soft launch some individuals had an experience that led to the impression that materials were not free. There was a glitch and that is being fixed.  Ancestry said “they are working to ‘simplify’ the experience so that there is no possible confusion about the free availability of these two collections”—the Arolsen records and the index to the USC Shoah Foundation testimonies.

Meanwhile some survivors feel betrayed by Shoah’s move to add their family histories to a public website without consulting them given the psychology of victimhood and trauma of the Holocaust’s legacy.

USC Shoah Foundation executive director, Stephen Smith,  said when the survivors agreed to record testimonies with the Shoah Foundation, they effectively transferred the rights to them.

No money exchanged hands between the USC Foundation and Ancestry per Mr. Smith.

Ancestry has made its entire Holocaust collection free since 2008. The Holocaust collection has over 25 million records. Ancestry digitized the records at their own expense.   However, older records Ancestry obtained from the National Archives shows lists and registers of German Concentration camp inmates were visible only with a paid Ancestry membership. Ancestry said they have corrected an earlier oversight when the free designation for those records were missed.

To search the Ancestry Holocaust collection go to: https://www.ancestry.com/cs/alwaysremember

The collection is divided into three categories: Passenger Lists 1946-1971 -lists of displaced persons, in most cases traveling from a resettlement camp to a final destination, often the US.; Lists of Those Persecuted 1939-1947 registers of people living in Germany who were persecuted by public institutions and corporations. Some of these records include details on those who died, including burial information; and USC Foundation Holocaust Jewish Survivor Interviews. These are records relating to information from Holocaust survivor audiovisual interviews collected and preserved within the USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive ©

To read the New York Times article see: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/26/arts/ancestry-holocaust-records.html

At the time of writing this post there was no Ancestry blog post or information on their corporate site posted. The USC Shoah Foundation does have an announcement on their website which may be read at:

http://sfi.usc.edu/news/2020/08/28676-institute-announces-new-partnership-ancestry%C2%AE-provide-free-access-searchable-data

Jan Meisels Allen

Chairperson, IAJGS Public Records Access Monitoring Committee