Jewish Genealogical Society of Great Britain Blog

"This timely well-illustrated book examines Cumbria’s response to the refugee crisis of the 1930s and early 1940s.   The author makes use of a wealth of archive material and oral testimony to demonstrate that at that time many Cumbrians welcomed refugee groups from Spain, Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia into their communities.   Central to the narrative are a number of determined women who lead Cumbria’s response to the arrival of these refugee communities.   Foremost amongst these is Catherine Marshall who moved from suffragist activity to internationalism and refugee issues during the 1930s, but other, less familiar names, such as Mary Crewdson, Lady Cecilia Roberts and Clara Boyle are introduced to the reader.   Much was achieved with the support of voluntary organisations which enabled many more people to become involved with meeting the needs of refugees.   To provide context readers are introduced to a number of refugees and the stor...

News from MyHeritage: "E ach day, we will open one of our paid-subscription-only historical record collections to the public, providing full, free access to the collection. On some days, we’ll be opening two or three related collections for free. The collections we’ve chosen for this offer are not the collections you can find anywhere — they are rare and valuable, and many are exclusive to MyHeritage. We’ll be posting regular updates on Facebook , Twitter , and Instagram about the collections, so be sure to follow us and stay tuned so you don’t miss anything! In all, a total of 2,043,456,361 records will be made accessible for free during the month of June. This special offer is in the spirit of MyHeritage’s commitment to providing people with more opportunities and resources to further their genealogical research while at home." See https://blog.myheritage.com/each-day-of-june-a-different-record-collection-will-be-free/

From Hazel Atlass: Chilterns Regional Group Meeting Tuesday 19th May 2020   The latest meeting of the Chilterns Group took place on Tuesday 19 th May via Zoom. We had 32 members sign in, not only from the Chilterns Group but from further afield in the UK.   Our speaker was JGSGB’s former Vice-Chair, Dr. Joel Levy, who gave a very interesting and in-depth talk about his current researches. In fact the talk was most up to date as he was finalising the talk on the previous Sunday evening as he had just received more information.   Joel’s talk was titled “Coming full circle: using Israeli sources”. Joel has been working on his Gavenda/Gavendo/Gawenda/ Gawendo family for many years, tracing them from Poland to the USA and to Israel. The first part of his talk concentrated on the roots of the family in Poland and how they then went to South Africa and the United States.   One example of the research is Joel then found a relative that had emigrated to ...

From Anita Benson: Lockdown has brought its challenges. Full of good intentions, I planned to: (a) contact my many DNA matches (very few have ever contacted me); (b) go through my family tree with a fine-tooth comb looking for errors and people who need further research; (c) catch up with my reading; (d) learn some new Yiddish words; (e) brush up my Hebrew reading skills. To be truthful, most of the above did not happen apart from the DNA matches, and of those that did reply we could not manage to work out how we were actually related. I have learnt some new Yiddish words thanks to Facebook and Yiddish word of the day taught by a lady called Rukhl Schaechter. However, as I am fortunate enough to have a garden – albeit a rather messy one – I decided to grow vegetables. So far the potatoes are growing at an amazing rate, as are the runner beans, chard, onions and herbs. By the way, they are all in containers so even if you only have a balcony it can be achieved. Thank...

Having looked at the Pester Lloyd index on Genteam.at I have learned that there are death notices for some of my BREITNER family from Budapest in editions that are held at the Austrian National Library, but that have not yet been digitised on the ANNO database. Does anyone know whether it is possible to request certain pages to be copied and sent to me and if so how to go about it? I have not been able to find this information on their website. Thank you for your help. Jacqueline Szumko jacqueline.szumko@ntlworld.com

MyHeritage have just announced the publication of "three important Greek record collections: Greece, Electoral Rolls (1863–1924), Corfu Vital Records (1841–1932), and Sparta Marriages (1835–1935), comprising 1.8 million historical records. All three collections have been indexed by MyHeritage and for the first time are now searchable in English, as well as in Greek. These are invaluable genealogy resources for anyone with Greek roots. In one of the company’s pro bono initiatives, MyHeritage Founder and CEO Gilad Japhet personally traced the descendants of a Jewish family that was hidden during World War II on the small island of Erikoussa, north of Corfu. The entire population of the island collectively gave refuge to the family, and saved it from death. His genealogical detective work, combined with MyHeritage’s extensive global database of historical records, culminated in recognition for the courageous people of Erikoussa, who were presented with the House of ...

Peter Heilbrunn has sent in this announcement: The British History online (BHO) founded by the Institute of Historical Research and the History of Parliament Trust in 2003 with over 1,270 volumes, is a digital collection of key printed primary and secondary sources for the history of Britain and Ireland, with a special focus on the period 1300 to 1800. To 31 July 2020  they're making all transcribed BHO content  freely available for individual users. To start your search go to: https://www.british-history. ac.uk/search To read more about this see: https://blog.history.ac.uk/ 2020/03/british-history- online-makes-all-research- content-free-to-individual- users/

Help request: Someone who is researching past pupils of Salford Grammar is looking for information about Aircraftsman Sidney Binderman of Salford, who was killed in the war on 16th January 1942, and his brother Solomon. If you have any information on this family, please contact blog@jgsgb.org.uk and I will put you in touch. Thank you!

RootsTech 2020 - public access for the keynote sessions, and some classes are available for free. Keynotes and general sessions: https://www.rootstech.org/ category/2020-keynotes- general-session RootsTech sessions: https://www.rootstech.org/ category/2020-rootstech- sessions