If you are on Facebook, join this group to ask for assistance researching Argentinian Jewish history.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/Gen.Judia.AR/

The discussions tend to be in Spanish, but the translate button under each post does a decent job and you can write to the group in English.

The Facebook group belongs to: Agrupación de Genealogía Judeo-Argentina

http://www.agja.org.ar

The group organizer can be reached by email:

consultas.agja@...

Ancestry’s president and CEO, Margo Georgiadis, announced a 6 percent reduction in the company’s workforce blaming a slowdown in consumer demand for the company’s DNA service over the past 18 months. Over sixteen million people have taken a DNA test with Ancestry and the statement says 30 million people worldwide have taken a NA test with some company, not only Ancestry.

Ancestry is not the only DNA company that has noticed a slowdown in consumer demand for DNA testing. Georgiadis said, “Future growth will require a continued focus on building consumer trust and innovative new offerings that deliver even greater value to people.” … “Future growth will require a continued focus on building consumer trust and innovative new offerings that deliver even greater value to people.”

To read the statement see:

https://blogs.ancestry.com/ancestry/2020/02/05/our-path-forward/

Jan Meisels Allen

Chairperson, IAJGS Public Records Access Monitoring Committee

The Arolsen Archives has added an online tool to describe documents the e-Guide. The new part online focuses on documents about people who were looked after by the Allies as survivors of Nazi persecution during the period after 1945.The first part of the e-Guide supplied information on concentration camps.

Following the war the displaced persons (DP) were included with the survivors that aid organizations took care of from concentration camps and the liberated forced laborers.  The new part of the e-Guide deciphers numerical codes and other abbreviations for items the DP needed and recorded on their registration cards. The documents explained in the e-Guide make it possible to trace the paths taken by DPs, starting from the place where they first received support and continuing on through to their emigration.

The post-war file is now available on the e-Guide.  All the personal data within this card file is available online in early 2020, and provides additional explanatory information on the contents of the card file, which contains about 3.5 million documents.

To access the e-Guide to the Arolsen Archives see: https://eguide.arolsen-archives.org/en/  Samples of documents are available on this page as well.  It suggested to use the guide on PCs. While it can be used on smart phones not all the features will be available.

The third part of the e-Guide which will focus on Eastern and Western European forced laborers will be available at the end of 2020.

To read the press release see:

https://arolsen-archives.org/en/news/neues-wissen-ueber-die-ueberlebenden-der-ns-verfolgung/

This is available in English and German. See the dropdown box in the upper right hand corner.

The Arolsen Archives (its predecessor was the International Tracing Service -ITS)  are an international documentation center on Nazi persecution and the liberated survivors.  It preserves documents about concentration camp prisoners, foreign forced laborers and the postwar registration of Displaced Persons (DPs)

Jan Meisels Allen

Chairperson, IAJGS Public Records Access Monitoring Committee