PBS will broadcast today at 8PM/7PM CT another episode of Finding Your Roots to which we contributed. This time we helped Henry Louis Gates Jr. to reveal a family story of Iliza Shlesinger, a hilarious stand-up comedian who thought that her family came “out of now where ..read more

Good news from Ukraine. In July 2017 Bohdan Stanislavsky, a businessman in Obertyn near Kolomyia, restored and commemorated the Jewish cemetery. Stanislavsky is an owner of the former kolkhoz built by the soviets on the land where the Jewish cemetery once stood. In  the course of  restoration works, a barn was destroyed. Dozens of tombstones which supported construction of the barn were brought back to the cemetery. Opening of the memorial was celebrated on July 12th together with rabbi Koleshnik from Ivano-Frankivsk, municipality and local residents ..read more

  If it weren’t for Tomasz’s expertise our recent trip to Ukraine would not have been possible. Through incredible hard work, unparalleled knowledge and only a small amount of information with which to begin, Tomasz was able to find what we were certain no longer existed; A barn that had been a hiding spot for 18 Jews during the Holocaust. He was wonderfully helpful during pre-production and once we arrived in Ukraine helped organize scheduling, transport, security and interviews. He is an exceptional guide and a wonderful person to be around. We can’t recommend him highly enough. Thank ..read more

Lada guided us in Brody and Belz with determination to achieve all the goals we set for ourselves, while complying with a very tight schedule, and this was done to our satisfaction. During the tour we asked to visit inside Brody’s ruined synagogue, but it was closed. Lada faced the challenge, located the man with the key who opened the synagogue for us and we entered it. Throughout the tour, she demonstrated in-depth knowledge of Jewish heritage in Ukraine and neighboring countries, as well as comprehensive knowledge of general history and culture. The plan we set out for ourselves included lo ..read more

Ruth Ellen Gruber has posted a full report from our 2-day “reconnaissance” trip in Galicia. Read also her post about new tourist signage in Brody. Jewish Cemetery in Shchyrets – almost unaccessible in summer due to overgrown bushes ..read more

How Ukraine recognizes its Jewish past? Check a report from one of our tours on National Council on Public History ..read more

PBS will broadcast today a new Finding Your Roots episode on David Duchovny. The producers asked me to research his family story. We all knew his family is from Ukraine, but it wasn’t a shtetl… Can’t say anything more because of the NDA. Just watch tonight, 8PM/7PM CT. The truth is out there ..read more

Studia Judaica, the journal of the Polish Association for Jewish Studies, has published my new paper on the quality of vital registration in east-central Europe. I recommend reading it to everybody who wish to find out why there are so many missing girls in the Jewish birth records and why it so often happens that genealogists cannot find the record they are interested in. The paper throughly covers also legal aspects of vital registration of the Jews in Congress Poland, Galicia, Prussia and the Russian Empire in the context of Jewish emancipation processes. Full PDF is available for free on ..read more

Jewish Family Search team specializes in providing professional genealogical research services on the Jewish families with roots in Transcarpathia. We’ve carried out extensive research on both: Jewish families residing in the villages in Carpathian highlands in northern part of the region, as well as more urbanized and communities in the southern, more Hungarian part of Sub-Carpathia. Map of Sub-Carpathia from the Czechoslovakian (interwar) period Unlike in many other areas in Ukraine, primary sources for genealogy of the Jews of Transcarpathia in large extent survived the 20th century archi ..read more

Starting from October 3rd PBS will broadcast the new season of Finding Your Roots. Jewish Family Search has contributed to one of the episodes through extensive research on Jewish and general records from Vyzhnytsia (Wiznitz) in the State Archives of the Chernivtsy Region ..read more