Jewish Genealogical Society of Great Britain Blog

Artists Rick and Laura Brown are not Jewish and not Polish, and yet they set out to rebuild Gwoździec, a magnificent wooden eighteenth century synagogue in Poland that was later destroyed by the Nazis. Their vision inspires hundreds of people to join them, using their hands, old tools and techniques to bring Gwoździec’s history, culture, science, and art back to life.  See https://www.polishsynagogue.com/about-the-film [If you're viewing this post via the summary email and the links don't work, please go to https://jgsgbnews.blogspot.com/]

From the Galicia Jewish Museum:   Sunday, 21.03.2021 Please note: the times of this event have changed. 6 p.m. (Krakow time) 5 p.m. (London time) 1 p.m. (New York time) 10 a.m. (San Francisco time) “Rememories of Poland: Family Stories and Returns” Meeting with Adam Schorin Online event We would like to invite you to a meeting with Adam Schorin, former co-director of Krakow’s FestivAlt, born in the US, living in Poland. Adam is the grandson of two Holocaust survivors, Richard Ores, from Krakow, and Celia Ores, from Dubienka. This meeting will be devoted to uncovering an unusual family story inscribed in photographs, memories, and the return to places connected with their family history. This event is a preview of an upcoming year-long temporary exhibition at the Galicia Jewish Museum, which will be devoted to three generations of the Ores family and will open at the Galicia Jewish Museum in August 2021. The meeting will be led by Jakub Nowakowski, Galicia Jewish Museu...

ONE-DAY ONLINE CONFERENCE TO LAUNCH VOLUME 33 OF POLIN: STUDIES IN POLISH JEWRY  Jewish Religious Life in Poland since 1750      Published by the Littman Library of Jewish Civilization/Liverpool University Press   Monday January 11th 2021 10am-3.30pm Organised by the Institute for Polish-Jewish Studies and the Institute of Jewish Studies, UCL with JW3 London. Co-organised and supported by the Polish Cultural Institute, London This event honours the memory of Ada Rapoport-Albert, who edited the volume with Marcin Wodziński. Following tremendous advances in recent years in the study of religious belief, this volume adopts a fresh understanding of Jewish religious life in Poland. The contemporary reassessments, with their awareness of emerging techniques that have the potential to extract fresh insights from source materials both old and new, show how our understanding of what it means to be Jewish is continuing to expand.  Conference convenors: Dr F...

Our next meeting in the JGSGB Virtual Meeting Programme is a meeting from the JGSGB Chilterns Regional Group (RG) by Zoom. Here is the information for this meeting: Date: Tuesday Dec 8th 2020 Time: 19:30 London (note, 14:30 New York, 11:30 San Francisco, 21:30 Jerusalem) Title: “Polish Ancestral Tourism, Part 2: Busting a Gut in Warsaw, Łódź & Łomża” Speaker: Leigh Dworkin Description: This talk details Ancestral Tourism in Warsaw, Łódź and Łomża (pronounced “Wutch” and “Womja”). It describes the speaker’s second trip to Poland at the time of the IAJGS (International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies) Conference in Warsaw back in 2018. This time the trip was meticulously planned with a gaggle of cemeteries, memorials and ancestral towns/villages explored, not forgetting the occasional archive, synagogue and museum too. Had everything gone exactly to plan it would have been boring … Learn how to ignore medical emergencies whilst extending your family histo...

Our next meeting in the JGSGB Virtual Meeting Programme is an extra meeting from the JGSGB Eastern European Special Interest Group (EE SIG) by Zoom. This is the first of three speakers on Eastern European ancestral tourism in November, as well as an Anglo Special Interest Group meeting and a South East Essex Regional Group workshop open to all. Lots more details about those meetings will follow in the coming weeks. Here is the information for the next meeting: •       Date: Sunday Nov 1st 2020 •       Time: 14:00 London (note, 09:00 New York, 06:00 San Francisco, as the US clocks change early Sun Nov 1st) •       Title: “Polish Ancestral Tourism – Wolf Hunting in Womja” •       Speaker: Leigh Dworkin •       Description: This talk details ancestral tourism in Warsaw and Lomza (pronounced “Womja”), Poland with minimum budget and embarrassingly little planning … It descri...

News from Galicia Jewish Museum: The Galicia Jewish Museum’s mobile application aims to present the wide and complete spectrum of photographic projects dedicated to Polish Jewry. With one image at a time, we would like to broaden the knowledge of the work of great photographers who directed their lenses at Jewish Poland, but first of all – knowledge of Jewish history in Poland. Regularly published photographs will be accompanied by captions, placing them in their historical and social context. With time, this carefully curated collection will become a visually powerful statement of Polish-Jewish history, allowing for an insightful look into Jewish past and present in Poland beyond the stereotypes and misconceptions. The application will be online soon, so stay tuned so you won’t miss its launch! It will be accompanied by a program of online lectures and webinars, which will start in August and will run through December. More information about upcoming Galicia Jewish Museum applica...

JewishGen announcement: "We are pleased to announce a partnership between JewishGen.org and Dr. Dan Hirschberg, resulting in the Dr. Dan Hirschberg - Kraków Collection.   As a result of this agreement, records that have been transcribed and compiled by Dr. Hirschberg will be made freely available to JewishGen researchers.   All of the records are from Kraków, Poland (in the Austrian province of Galicia before WWI), including Kazimierz and Podgórze (today, districts of Kraków). Thus far, more than 160,000 records have been uploaded, which include census records, vital records, marriage intentions/banns records, along with progressive and religious marriage records.   Images of most of the records are available online, although search results do not currently link to the images. Prof. Hirschberg's website ( https://www.ics.uci.edu/~dan/genealogy/Krakow ) contains many images and links to images on other websites. Vital records can also be viewed on the Polis...

"A synagogue, a tempel, a kloiz, a shtibl or bet ha-midrash - these words describe different places where Jewish communities used to pray. There were more than a hundred of them in pre-war Krakow, but were they all as grand as those at Szeroka Street? Were they as crowded? Were they all located within what we call “the Jewish Quarter”? We invite you for a walking tour to the places connected with Jewish religious life, during which you will hear the stories about the best known and the completely forgotten Jewish houses of prayer in Kraków." Online tour: Sunday, 19.07.2020, 10.00 Online walking tour live on Facebook. In order to participate you need to buy a ticket and have an active Facebook account. Tickets at 10 PLN are available on Museum’s website until 18.07.2020, 17.00: http://www.galiciajewishmuseum.org/pl/biletyonline More information: weronika.bilas@galiciajewishmuseum.org In Polish. Note to readers: If you're viewing this post via the daily summary email ...