update :
11/18/2010
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HOW TO USE INTERNET FOR YOUR RESEARCH
Short Introduction
You are now linked to Internet, how can you use it for your genealogical researches?
Use the e-mail, which allows you to exchange information at an incredible speed. Thanks to the e-mail, you can transmit several Megabytes as an attached file. If it is a family tree, it is recommended to put it in the GEDCOM format. Most present genealogical softwares use this format for exporting and importing such files.
Explore the present Website of the CGJ and its different sections:
Once linked to a Website, you have the choice between a research on-line (you keep the internet connection) and off-line. For the latter, you have first to download the file on your personal computer, which allows you to stop the connection and to read or print the file locally.
Search engines (Google, Alta Vista etc…, see below) will lead you to new Websites, if you submit key-words or even parts of sentences.
We would be grateful if you tell us about moved or suppressed Websites.
A few genealogical Websites for France
Note: most of these Websites are in French. A few have an English version.
In the link Section of the present Website, click on:
Judaism of Alsace and Lorraine : there is a section for généalogie, then, in this section (and not in the welcome page), click on Forum, a page similar to our questions-answers section in the present Website but restricted to Alsace and Lorraine.
Alliance Israélite Universelle
The Mémorial de la Shoah, new name of CDJC : can be reached on http://www.memorial-cdjc.org, or to find a name, directly here
Cercle Généalogique d’Alsace (http://www.alsace-genealogie.com) gives for Bas-Rhin the conditions to obtain a copy of any vital record act (1793 -1892).
Centre départemental d’Histoire des familles du Haut-Rhin,(http://www.cdhf.net/fr) at Guebwiller gives the same details for Haut-Rhin.
Bibliothèque Medem, the largest library in Europe for yiddish books (25 000 books), can be reached at http://www.yiddishweb.com/medem .
JEWISHGEN
It is by far the richest Website for international Jewish genealogy. You can reach it by the links of our Website or directly at www.jewishgen.org. English is the only language in use.
In the welcome page, let us note the two following sections, in the Research part:
- The JewishGen Family Finder (JGFF), similar to our Annuaire de Rapprochement des Familles. A large proportion of the surnames involved concern Eastern Europe, and especially Poland, Romania and the Russian Empire, but also Germany, Alsace etc… Consulting JGFF is free but to enter some new information, you need, the first time, to obtain a code (click on Enter).
- The Family Tree of the Jewish People (FTJP), a database of almost one million names, which merges the family trees given by members of JewishGen, of IAJGS (International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies), and of Beth Hatefutsoth (Tel-Aviv). To be entitled to consult FTJP, you must first have entered your own information in JGFF, so to obtain an identification code and a password. You cannot obtain any birth or marriage data for people born less than 100 years ago and still alive.
Back on the welcome page, click on Learn and on JewishGen FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions), by Warren Blatt. To save connection time, rather than read or print the text on-line, you should download it (the present edition has about 35 pages) and study it off-line.
The JewishGen InfoFiles (Information Files) are first listed by Topics , then by Countries) so that many files appear twice. The index has 11 pages. As an introduction to the files, one can find the JewishGen Discussion Group. The messages of this forum are daily received by tens of thousands of genealogists all over the world ; the corresponding archives will allow you to access to the ca. 90 000 messages exchanged since 1993 (questions and answers), on extremely diverse subjects, from those concerning a given surname to those dealing with the historical changes of state borders, or with the research methodology, or onomastics, etc.. All the interesting messages can be easily retrieved thanks to key-words and logical links or, and, then…. (the principle is well explained at the beginning). You can also subscribe to this Discussion Group, eventually ask yourself some question and receive all messages in your mailbox either instantly one by one, or, if you prefer, all together once a day.
In Genealogical Techniques, the East European FAQ (EEFAQ) file is an introduction, country by country, to the researches in the eastern european countries.
In JewishGen Sources, the section Sephardim give access to a specialized forum (Sephard Forum) and to Sephardim - Conversos (definitions, bibliography, links to other Websites).
For France, four files can be found as well as a link to the present Website.You can reach them directly by clicking here.
For Poland, a country from which many Jewish people emigrated, let us notice the section Jewish Records Indexing – Poland (JRI-PL), that you can also reach directly through www.jewishgen.org/jri-pl.
If you are interested by researches in a given country, you should connect to the Website of the corresponding SIG (Special Interest Group) and subscribe to the attached Discussion Group. There are at present 16 of these SIG’s and the number is due to increase. All the messages exchanged in these SIG are gathered in the SIG Lists Archives which are worth consulting.
One of these SIG's is devoted to France. It is called French-SIG and can be found among the SIGs of JewishGen.
If some of your ancestors come from the Sephardic world, you should have a look at SephardSIG.
The section ViewMate (http://data.jewishgen.org/viewmate) will allow you, provided you have a scanner at your disposal, to ask help for interpreting a picture or for translating a short text.. You just have to scan the document and to send the graphic file to a Discussion Group or to a SIG.
If you are not sure of where to look in JewishGen for a specific piece of information, you click on Search this website, at the bottom of the welcome page and you enter directly a name or a simple expression, between double quotes.
If you are looking for a place in Central or Eastern Europe, you can use the Shtletlseeker. Not only does it gives the coordinates of the place - even if you are not sure of the exact spelling - but it provides you with a map, thanks to Mapquest.
Some other Websites for International Jewish Genealogy
The two first ones are in English or French, at your choice, the next ones in English only.
The International Association for Jewish Genealogy GenAmi (www.genami.org) has many fields of interest.
As for ETSI, association for sephardic genealogy and history (no more site at present), is specialized to the sephardic world. Moreover, Beth Hatefutsoth , that you can also reach by our links in the present Website, has a section titled Genealogy, Jewish Genealogy on the World Wide Web, Sephardic Genealogy Page, where you can find several other sephardic Websites and miscellaneous informations.
From our links, you can also access to Avotaynu (www.avotaynu.com), which contains a very useful index, especially for the surnames from central and eastern Europ : the Jewish Genealogical Consolidated Surname Index (JGCSI). You just enter a name to to know in which database(s) it appears, among 42 indexed. Several of these databases can be found in our Library or in JewishGen. Beware, if you enter just the surname, you will get several hundred phonetical variants of the name. It is recommended to put between square brackets the parts of the name the spelling of which is certain. For instance [Leibovici] will yield only the answers with spelling, [Leibov]ici provides 14 different spellings and [Leibo]vici 24.
Yad Vashem (www.yadvashem.org) just finished numerizing a gigantic database, containg several millions names, which should be soon on the Web
The preceding list covers of course only part of all you can find on internet concerning the Jewish genealogy. of course (see e.g. www.cyndislist.com/jewish.htm).
The site of the "Routes to Roots" Foundation www.rtrfoundation.org provides the solution for an important problem: where are located the archives concerning a specific place at a specific period. This database covers Belarus, Lithuania, Moldova, Poland, and Ukraine.
The Mormon Websites
To obtain the list of places the archives of which have been microfilmed by the Mormons, consult the Website www.familysearch.org : click on Family History Library Catalog, and finally Place Search. Enter the name of the city or village of interest, with the correct spelling used in the country, and you will see on your screen all occurrences of the name, in the order “country, province, place”.
Choose from the occurrences and you will reach the list of subjects for which a microfilm does exist, e.g. Jewish Records. If several titles seem interesting, go to one of them and through View Title Details and View Film Notes, you will obtain one or several film numbers. Beware, titles are given in the local language.
For a really exhaustive research, you had better try again using the name of the province (or even the whole country), where your place is located since documents concerning this place could well be found there.
Note that there is a specific Website for France www.eglisedejesuschrist.fr/main.php?p=4, concerning French places and giving the addresses of Family History Libraries in France and neighboring countries.
Search engines
This survey would not be complete if we did not mention the « search engines ». One of the most powerful, in our opinion, is Google, which provides, in a few seconds, hundreds of occurrences of the word(s) you are searching with links to the corresponding Web Website. Click on help at the bottom of the welcome page if you are not sure of the way to use this engine. When familiar with this engine, try the option "Advanced Research" which is much more efficient.
If you are looking for a specific surname, you can consult the international genealogical database Geneanet (www.geneanet.org), which contained in September 2003 more than 85 millions entries (not specifically Jewish surnames) : each of them refers to the researcher (often an American one) or to the organization which entered the data. Especially for ashkenazi surnames, consult also the international index JGCSI of Avotaynu, already mentioned, which refers, among others, to the JGFF, to Klarsfeld’s Mémorial , to FTJP and so on. Use also the section Search this website of JewishGen and the archives of the Forum (JewishGen Discussion Group).
For surnames of the former Russian Empire, the dictionary part of the work of BEIDER, (A Dictionary of Jewish Surnames from the Russian Empire, 784 p., Avotaynu, Inc.,1993, cote L071 in our Library)(except its very interesting foreword) can be found on-line at www.ancestry.com/search/rectype/inddbs/3173.htm . First look at surnames, to understand how the Russian spelling was transliterated.
A few more Websites
A very rich Website, which refers to many other sources in the whole world, is jewishwebindex : click, on the left side, on Countries. The Website of Geneanet quoted above (www.geneanet.com) is also linked to many other Websites.
Concerning locations in Central and Oriental Europ, JewishGen provides a ShtetlSeeker (research of shtetls) indicating 600 000 places in that part of the world : go to JewishGen, Research, Databases, ShtetlSeeker, Town search, enter the name searched and, if possible, the country, and you will get the position relative to the caital city, as well as the longitude and latitude. With an extra click, you get a map.
A world index of cities and villages (nearly three millions locations including 80,000 french ones) can be found at www.calle.com/world. Another one, less extended, but easier to use is www.multimap.com.
If you want to translate a simple and unambiguous text from one of the main languages (english, french, german, spanish, italian, portuguese) to one of the other ones, you can TRY to use Websites such as babelfish.altavista.com, without any guarantee on the quality of the result. At least, you may have a good laugh !