Jewish Genealogy round the World Part 4 - More from Poland/Russia

Lodz Cemetery

http://www.jewishlodzcemetery.org/

Cemertery Street, Bracka in Lodz was founded in 1892 . It is estimated that in it are  buried about 160 000 people. Here also are buried the victims of one of the most tragic events in human history - the Holocaust. On the part of the cemetery called " Ghetto Field "are buried about 43 000 victims of the Lodz ghetto who died from hunger and exhaustion.

Jewish Web Index

http://jewishwebindex.com/poland.htm

This is an Index, a Directory of Jewish Genealogical Resources and Links

The Chronicle of Bialystok  (Białystok, Poland)

http://www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/bialystok/bialystok.html

The history of the Jews in Bialystok until the period after the First World War,

The Polish Genealogy Project

http://polishgeno.com/?page_id=2

Ancestry the Polish Connection

http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~atpc/index-atpc.html

All the research I have done has not helped me in any way to trace my family before they came to England. The only document I have is my maternal grandmother's aliens book which gives details of her Russian passport.

Health and Living

Nothing to do with Genealogy but all about health and living. I thought that I would write about our experiences this week.

Diane has been a bit down the last couple of weeks with a chesty cough, but was determined to keep going, because we were invited to a big Jewish charity fundraiser on Wednesday 2^nd March where the main speaker was the Prime Minister, David Cameron.

We had a great evening but the following morning I dragged Diane to the Doctor. She was told that she had a virus and probably a chest infection and was put on a course of antibiotics.

The coughing continued despite a myriad of over the counter remedies and in the early hours of Monday morning Diane had a violent coughing fit, which affected her stomach badly and she was doubled up in pain. I phoned the emergency doctor who called an ambulance and at 6am Monday morning we arrived at Barnet General Hospital A & E department.

The doctors diagnosed that she had an irreducible mass in the abdomen and decided that she needed an emergency paraumbilical hernia repair. At 11.15am she was taken to the operating theatre. The surgeons then noted that she had low potassium and refused to operate. She was taken back to the ward and put on a potassium drip.

At 6.40pm she was taken back to the operating theatre, the repair was carried out and by 9.30pm was back on the ward. On Wednesday 9^th March she was discharged from hospital. The District Nurse has twice been to change the dressing and said that it will take a couple of weeks to get back to normal (whatever normal is) since her body had suffered a trauma. However, on Saturday, she had a high temperature and I called the emergency doctor. He diagnosed an infection that must have been picked up in hospital. But said that the antibiotics given by the hospital would clear it up.

Diane realised that I had suffered a trauma as well, what with hanging around the hospital for 3 days and insisted that I go home and watch my beloved Arsenal on Tuesday night even if they did lose to Barcelona in the Champions League and then again on Saturday evening when they lost to Manchester United in the F A Cup. That was even more trauma for me.

I suppose that we never know what is round the corner and must live life whilst we can.

Jewish Genealogy round the World - Part 1

Whilst researching our family history we have joined three Yahoo Groups, which have helped us to link up with Cousins around the World.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/casamendoza/

This is a place for members and descendents of the Sephardi Jewish Mendoza family to share information on their history and genealogy.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/harthunters_group/

Researchers interested in the surname Hart. The aim of the group is to try and connect early Hart families settled in England probably before 1851 and any one else researching the name HART. The Hart families would be Jewish or originally Jewish.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/dutchSIG/

"dutchSIG" ~ is the international home for discussions on genealogy and the special interest group on family history for all those around the world with a Dutch Jewish ancestry.

Jewish Genealogical Resources in England (D to J)

Couldn't think of any from D to I but here goes with J

JCR-UK (Jewish Communities and Records - United Kingdom)

http://www.jewishgen.org/JCR-UK/

This website contains some 5,000 pages including details of more than 1,200 congregations and includes current communities and those that no longer exist.

A joint project between the Jewish Genealogical Society of Great Britain and JewishGen

JEWISH EAST END CELEBRATION SOCIETY

http://www.jeecs.org.uk/index.html

Their aim is to raise awareness of the history and culture of London's Jewish East End, to preserve what remains and record what has now gone.

JEWISH EAST END OF LONDON PHOTO GALLERY

http://www.jewisheastend.com/london.html

London's East End Synagogues, cemeteries and more. 

JEWISH GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY OF GREAT BRITAIN

http://www.jgsgb.org.uk/

The JGSGB promotes and encourages the study of Jewish genealogy. It assists all those tracing the family history of their Jewish ancestors. It encourages Jewish genealogical education and research and promote the indexing, transcription and preservation of old records.

Jewish Genealogical Resources in England (A to C)

British Jewry

http://www.british-jewry.org.uk/

You'll find many basic questions on researching British-Jewry here.
You will also find a positive treasure trove of databases, links and other information.
 

Cassini Maps

http://www.cassinimaps.co.uk/shop/tna1.asp

The National Archive Registration District Historical Maps. Find any location in England and Wales. Maps from 1805 to the present day  Create personalised site centred maps See how the landscape has changed over time

Cassini Publishing, in partnership with The National Archives, has made available on-line digital versions of the original Registration District maps from the 1871 census. This set of maps is the only known collection of this type in the world.

Corporation of London

https://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/Corporation/LGNL_Services/Leisure_and_culture/Records_and_archives/london_generations.htm

London Generations is a database compiled from genealogical sources held at London Metropolitan Archives. It can, for example, tell you which parish registers are held for Saint James Clerkenwell, which workhouse registers are held for the Kensington area and how many admission and discharge registers are held for Shelburne Road School. The registers date from the sixteenth century to the present day, so you could find registers which mention several of your own London Generations.

Charles Booth Online Archive

http://library-2.lse.ac.uk/archives/pdf/Jewish_notebooks.htmlhttp://library-2.lse.ac.uk/archives/pdf/Jewish_notebooks.html

Four notebooks from the Charles Booth collection relating to the Jewish community in London in the 1880s and 1890s have been digitised and are available online.

This is only part of the archives held on his survey into life and labour in London (1886-1903) which can be found at  http://booth.lse.ac.uk/

These sites are useful for anyone researching English ancestors.

Things to do in London

The Jewish Genealogical Society of Great Britain (JGSGB) has alerted members to the following:

For those visiting London in March or April this year, there are two exhibitions worth visiting.

Firstly, in partnership with the Museum of London Docklands, JEECS (the Jewish East End Celebration Society) is organising an exhibition "London Under Siege: Churchill and the Anarchists, 1911."
This exhibition is now open and marks the centenary of the Houndsditch murders and consequent Siege of Sidney Street, an iconic East End event that had a big impact on the Jewish community.

The exhibition runs at the Museum until the end of April and entry is free.

The Docklands museum is at West India Quay, Canary Wharf, London, E14 4AL
and is served by many bus routes and the Jubilee tube line. 

Secondly, The Old Jewish East End: Journey through a Vanished Shtetlis an exhibition being held at the Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archive (Bancroft Road) and curated by the Jewish East End Celebration Society.
Running from March 1st until April 16th, the previously unseen collection of photographs and rare archives illustrates the experiences of Jews in Tower Hamlets over one hundred years ago."

The Bancroft library can be found at 277 Bancroft Road, London E1 4DQ
Tel:020 7364 1290

Jewish Genealogical Resources in England

I note from many American blogs that mention is made of the fact that many Jewish families in America originated from England.

We have in England a wealth of information for Jewish genealogists. Jews were expelled from England in 1290 and were eventually readmitted in 1656 by Oliver Cromwell following the Civil War in 1649. Yes, we had a civil war long before the American Civil War.

The Jewish Genealogical Society of Great Britain (JGSGB) has a wealth of information on British Jewry and many Americans are members. The JGSGB promotes and encourages the study of Jewish genealogy. It assists all those tracing the family history of their Jewish ancestors. It encourages Jewish genealogical education and research and promote the indexing, transcription and preservation of old records.

There are numerous other resources which I will try a list over the coming weeks.

The JGSGB is constantly advising members of new resources:

Deceased Online http://www.deceasedonline.com/  is the first central database of statutory burial and cremation registers for the UK and Republic of Ireland.  It is a unique resource for family history researchers and professional genealogists.

When families chose not to have a religious burial for their loved one, they often used a municipal site.  This paid for website may be useful in searching for members of your family Until the creation of this website, to search these records you had to approach about 3,000 burial authorities and nearly 250 crematoria in the UK alone, each independently holding their own registers, mostly as old fragile books, because no official central repository exists.

Deceased Online is working to change this by making it possible for burial and cremation authorities around the country to convert their register records, maps and photographs into digital form and bring them together into a central searchable collection.

The growing database, holding records mainly from the 1850s onwards, can provide invaluable information for researching family trees, and can reveal previously  unknown family links from other interments recorded in the same grave.

Only this week it was announced that the records of 800,000 people buried in the UK's largest cemetery at London's St Pancras and Islington Cemetery have gone online thanks to the completion of a major digitisation project.

Records can be searched for free by surname and other names, with images of all the original documents available to download on a pay-per-view basis.  The new additions bring the total number of London records on the site up to more than a million.