TNA and Jewishgen

The Generations Network - Press Releases: "NEW YORK and PROVO, Utah, Oct. 29 /PRNewswire/ -- Today Ancestry.com, part of The Generations Network, Inc., announced it has introduced the world's largest online collection of Jewish family history records. Ancestry.com has partnered with two leading organizations committed to the preservation of Jewish heritage -- JewishGen, an affiliate of the Museum of Jewish Heritage -- A Living Memorial to the Holocaust in New York City that maintains the world's premier Jewish genealogy website, and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), an overseas humanitarian aid organization committed to providing relief for Jews in more than 70 countries. These partnerships will make millions of important Jewish historical documents available on Ancestry.com, many of which are online for the first time ever and searchable for free. These unique records, including photographs, immigration records, Holocaust records and memorials, can now be searched alongside other records already accessible on Ancestry.com, creating the largest collection of Jewish family history records on the Web with more than 26 million records documenting Jewish life. . . .

Many documents digitized as a part of this agreement have never before been available online, including two important JDC collections:

  -- Jewish Transmigration Bureau Deposit Cards, 1939-1954 (JDC), a
    collection of records showing the amount of money paid by American
    Jewish citizens to support the emigration of friends and relatives from
    European countries during and after WWII.
 -- Munich, Vienna and Barcelona Jewish Displaced Persons and Refugee
    Cards, 1943-1959 (JDC), a collection containing records of displaced
    Jews who were provided with food, medical care and clothing and
    emigration assistance by the JDC.

"Since 1914, JDC has helped revitalize Jewish communities throughout the world and has helped save the lives of hundreds of thousands of Jews," said Steve Schwager, Chief Executive Officer for JDC. "We are excited to partner with Ancestry.com, providing descendants access to rare new information about their families and themselves. JDC and Ancestry.com are opening up a wealth of previously inaccessible information through the digitization and dissemination of 125,000 records of those who were helped and of those who helped provide relief to others during and directly after WWII."

More than 300 databases from JewishGen will also now be available on Ancestry.com. These JewishGen databases represent 14 different countries and contain more than 5 million records, such as:

  -- The JewishGen Online Worldwide Burial Registry, an invaluable
    collection with more than 1 million names of Jews represented in nearly
    2,000 Jewish cemeteries around the world.
 -- Yizkor Book Necrologies, a list of the names of those murdered in the
    Holocaust which directs users back to the Yizkor Books themselves -
    memorials which offer vivid, first-hand accounts of the Holocaust and
    its aftermath.
 -- The Given Names Database, which enables one to learn possible European,
    Hebrew and Yiddish translations of an ancestor's given name.
 -- A Holocaust Database of 2 million names such as Schindler's List, which
    includes names of 1,980 inmates in Oscar Schindler's factories in
    Plaszow, Poland and Brunnlitz, Czechoslovakia.
 -- Jewish Records Indexing (JRI-PL) Poland and All Lithuania Database,
    representing more than 2 million indexed names from databases in
    Lithuania and Poland containing vital information on the regions.

"JewishGen began as a volunteer community devoted to gathering and sharing Jewish records," said David G. Marwell, Director of the Museum of Jewish Heritage. "