Finding Jewish Ancestors from Romania

A guide to finding your Jewish Ancestors from Romania using Miriam Weiner's Routes to Roots Foundation.

Introduction to Routes to Roots Foundation
The Routes to Roots Foundation was created by Miriam Weiner, who is a genealogist specializing in the research of Jewish roots in Poland and the former Soviet Union. In her 30+ years of experience in Eastern European archives, she collected vast amounts of information and material. Much of her data was originally published in Jewish Roots in Ukraine and Moldova and Jewish Roots in Poland, but is now available online through the Routes to Roots Foundation website. The site includes many resources to help you research your Jewish roots including a town-by-town index/inventory of surviving Jewish records in archives, maps, surname and Holocaust list databases, informative articles, and much more!

Find the Town
In order to research your family in Romania, it is essential that you have identified the place where they came from. It is not enough to know only ‘Romania;' you must know the town name and the district/province name. The name of a nearby larger town can also be very helpful.

One of the best ways to determine information about your ancestor's pre-immigration origins is to investigate records in the country of immigration. Records that might give clues about your ancestor's birthplace include vital records like marriage or death, vital records of children or spouses, census, synagogue records, obituaries, naturalization/immigration and so on. Find a Wiki page for the country, state, or county that your ancestor immigrated to in order to discover what types of records might be available for the area they lived in. See this page on Miriam Weiner's Routes to Routes page for additional tips on finding your ancestor's hometown.

In your research to find your ancestor's hometown, you may come across terms such as "gubernia," "wies," "rajon," etc. These are not names of towns, but rather terms for administrative divisions, such as province, town, district, etc. For help understanding these terms, see the Administrative Districts and Divisions article on Routes to Roots Foundation.

Surname Databases
Over her 30+ years of working in Eastern European archives, Miriam Weiner collected vast amounts of material that can be searched using the Surname Databases. There are two surname databases - the Standard Surname Database and the OCR Surname Database. You may also be able to use the surname databases to help narrow down a more specific location for where individuals lived who shared your ancestor's surname. '''Information regarding Romania in the surname databases will be added in early 2022. Check back often for new additions.'''

Standard Surname Database

 * Use the Standard Surname Database if you know your ancestor's given name, surname, or town name. This database is comprised of name lists from local historians and heads of Jewish communities, name lists from books, and name lists from various archives. Most collections in this database cannot be found online elsewhere.
 * To search, enter a surname, given name, and/or town name into the search box. Collection results will then appear. The first column lists the collection type, while the second column contains the Collection Description (CD). The Collection Description includes information such as how the collection was acquired, references to Miriam Weiner's first visit to the town, photos (current and pre-World War I), links to other resources for the town, and/or document examples. The final column lists the number of records associated with the search term(s). Click on the blue hyperlinked number to view records, then click on the blue hyperlinked surname to see more details about the record.



OCR Surname Database

 * Use the OCR Surname Database (optical character recognition) to search for your ancestor's surname. This database is comprised of information from business directories, address calendars, telephone books, typed name lists, and name lists from books and from archives.
 * To search, type in the surname, and you'll find an automatic translation of the surname into Cyrillic appear in the second search box. Repeat the search twice - once using the Latin Letter search, and again using the Cyrillic Letter search. Searches may yield different results. Once search results appear, you may want to use Google Translate to help you navigate search results. If using the Chrome browser, right-click anywhere on the page and select Translate to English. Keep in mind if you are looking at a telephone directory, the original directories have been donated to the U.S. Library of Congress. View the original by selecting the Get Page Scan button.

Archive Database
Use the Archive Database to locate what records exist for your ancestor's town, and where to find them. Search for the name of your ancestor's locality, and the database will provide results for known surviving records from that location, and where the records are held. Remember to adjust the search criteria for Soundex options or spelling variations. Review the General Information about the Archive Database section for some helpful resources.

This database contains documents such as army/recruit lists, family lists and census records, Jewish vital records (birth, marriage, death, divorce), immigration documents, voter and tax lists, property and notary records, Holocaust documents, police files, and pogrom documents, school records, occupation lists, local government, and hospital records.

Accessing the Records
For information about the repositories referred to on Miriam Weiner's Archive Database, see the Archives in Eastern Europe page which includes archival contact information. Contact/visit the respective repository for details on their holdings. For instructions on contacting archives and accessing records, see Q11 on this Routes to Roots page. For help writing a request to an archive in Romania, see the Romania Letter Writing Guide. Online translators such as Google Translate are also helpful as long as you use simple and concise sentences.

Historical Photos
The Image Database on Miriam Weiner's website contains photographs and postcard views of many towns and cities throughout Romania and other select countries dating back to the early 1900s. These include pre-WWI and current town views, photos of synagogues, Jewish cemeteries, and Holocaust memorials. It's a great way to see what your ancestor's shtetl may have looked like at the time they lived there.



Image source: Unless otherwise noted, all photos were taken by Miriam Weiner.