Crossing the Ocean: Finding Your European Jewish History

This presentation explores how you can use US records to locate ancestral records in Eastern Europe, connecting the American documents for a family to their parents and siblings in Europe. The talk will first explore sources to find your ancestral town if it is unknown. It will then explore a variety of useful databases such as JRI-Poland and the All-Lithuanian Database to uncover birth records and revision records.

It will weave together records from these databases with Holocaust records, US marriage records, tombstones, and immigration records to clearly document the connections between American family members and those who remained in Eastern Europe. Along with navigating specific databases, this talk will teach attendees how to create finding aids to navigate archival documents in handwritten Russian.