IAJGS 2023 Conference
Sep. 2nd, 2023 08:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fauxkloreThe annual conference of the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies (IAJGS) was held in London, England from July 30th through August 3rd, 2023. I’ve gone to the virtual conference the past couple of years, so I was very excited to be able to attend in person. In addition to going to several talks, I volunteered as a mentor, session host, and on the hospitality desk.
The conference was at the Park Plaza Westminster Bridge Hotel. It was easy enough to take the tube to Waterloo Station, but my map application managed to mislead me from there to the hotel, leading me around St Thomas Hospital. Well, yes, I could use the steps, but my luggage got heavier and heavier. I did get to the hotel, eventually, where I settled into my room and went down to the hospitality desk for my volunteer shift there. Mostly that involved giving out conference bags and maps of the hotel facilities, but some people wanted travel advice. Having just been to Ireland proved helpful when one person asked about going there as a post-conference trip!
The opening session started with a brief talk by Robert Voss, the Lord Lieutenant of Hertfordshire, who brought greetings from King Charles and talked a little about his genealogy story. There is a lord lieutenant for each county (essentially a personal representative of the monarch) and he is the only Jewish one. He’s a child of Holocaust refugees and is a patron of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Great Britain. He was a fairly entertaining speaker
The main keynote speaker was Dr. Blaine Betting who talked about The Adventures and Lessons of 20 Years of Genetic Genealogy. His DNA experiences were a lot more dramatic than mine have been, including discovering an unknown half-brother and half-sister. His talk was interesting, but I can’t say I learned anything. However, as I was leaving the room, a guy came over to me and asked if I was researching Schwartzbard from Ostrow Mazowiecka, Poland. See, the conference had a family finder feature and the smart way to use it is to search the towns you’re interesting in, instead of focusing on names. Then you can see if you have any names in common. We were able to sit down later on and found that we do have connections. And he just sent me some information files that I need to find time to go through.
I started Monday with a talk by by Alan Shuchat on History of Jewish Migration, the Diaspora, and Changing Natonal Borders. The most interesting part of this involved showing the growth (and decline) of the Jewish population in several cities over the years. I can’t say that I learned a lot that I didn’t know, but it’s always good to refresh your knowledge.
After that I went to Aleksandrs Feigmanis’s talk on Sources for Jewish Genealogical Rsearch in Lithuania and Latvia (archives, web, books). I knew about some of the archives, but he talked about a number of other types of records and how to use them. For example, for residence books (mostly in Latvia) you need to start with finding the address and working from there. He also talked about school and university files, directories, the balticgen.com cemetery database (which includes all Jewish cemeteries in Latvia), and several other resources. One interesting thing that may be relevant to my Briskin family is that there was regular transport of lumber from Polotsk (now in Belarus) to Daugavpils, Latvia. A lot of his material looks useful to me, but he wasn’t a particularly dynamic speaker.
Next up was the JRI-Poland luncheon. They’re reworking their website and everyone needs new user accounts on the new system. The speaker was Professort Antony Polonsky who talked about The Jews in Poland and Russia. This was another long list of what sorts of records are available and, while it is probably useful, it was rather dull to listen to.
The final talk I went to that day was Digital Traces: Creating a Personal Digital Archive While Insuring Your Privacy by Elana Brach and Ron Arons. This was lively and interactive. They talked about various options for things like backups and cloud storage and managing your on-line and off-line identity. One thing that had never occurred to me is the need for a digital asset clause in your will. I also liked the reminder on Keeping Found Things Found, i.e. documenting and following your own rules on file naming. As someone who struggles with organizing my research, this was a very useful session.
After that, I had some mentoring time set up. The mentoring area had not been well[-publicized so few people showed up. I was able to help one person by explaining to her what a journeyman is. (It’s a status for a skilled worker, in between an apprentice and a master.) At least, I wasn’t entirely useless. I also spent some time comparing family trees with the guy I’d met the previous night. We discovered some connections and exchanged contact info for further research.
Tuesday was LitvakSIG day. However, the first presentation I went to that day was by Aviva “Sherlock” Cohn about Clued In: More Case Studies. She is an expert on photo analysis and went through 6 examples of her work, giving tips on how to identify people in photographs.
Then I went to a presentation on The Jews of Canada by Bill Gladstone. One potentially useful thing I learned is that the 1931 census is now available on Ancestry and Family Search. Ancestry also has Ontario Vital Records. (The reason these may be of use is that I know my grandfather’s younger brother came to the U.S. via Canada later in the 1930’s. But I don’t know when he went to Canada and how long he was there. I also don’t know if he married in Canada or Cuba, though I do know he was married when he crossed the border into Buffalo.) He discussed various other records that may be available. Unfortunately, with the exception of Montreal, naturalization records are available only to Canadian citizens. I also learned that there’s a museum at Pier 21 in Halifax, which was, essentially, the Canadian equivalent to Ellis Island. That sounds like it would be worth a visit.
There was a LitvakSig meeting, which was interesting for finding out what new records are coming up. That was followed by the LitvakSig luncheon. The speaker at that was Egle Bendikaite, who spoke on Inhabitant but not a Citizen; Citizen, but a Foreigner. This had to do with the various situations that people found themselves in during the interwar period in independent Lithuania. This was very relevant to my research because of the difficulties my great-great-grandfather, Simkha Fainstein, had getting his internal passport. A couple of other notes of interest: 1) permission to resume citizenship was more easily given to women and 2) “everything is possible until it turns out to be impossible.”
After that, Rhoda Miller gave a talk on Litvaks - Here, There, and Everywhere. Most of what she talked about was familiar to me, though I hadn’t really though about the impact of the 1848 cholera epidemic. Also, she mentioned transmigration from Lithuania to Latvia in the context of Courland, but left out the large number of Jews from the Zarasai region who went to Vitebsk Guberniya, particularly Daugavpils, Latvia.
The last presentation I went to was on Emigration from German Ports in the 19th and 20th Century - Causes, Conditions, and Certificates by Andrea Bentschneider. Some of the things that I learned were that: 1) Hamburg was considered friendlier to Jews than Bremen was, so was a more popular port, 2) Ancestry has departure lists from Hamburg for 1850-1934, except for World War I. Bremen passenger lists from 1920-1938 are available on their own website, 3) Hapag (a major shipping company) was Jewish owned, and 4) children born on a ship often had the name of the ship as part of their name.
I spent a couple of hours in the resource room with one of my mentees from my local JGS, helping her with some records from Jonava. I ended the day with Genealogy Death Match. This is a contest between two people to see who can do a better job of documenting their family going back several generations. It’s always interesting and fun to see what records people can find. I will note that younger people have an advantage, since they’re more likely to have at least two or three more generations who are well-documented. I also met somebody from Los Angeles with whom I have a mutual friend.
I started Wednesday with the BialyGen Sig meeting. This is a group for people with an interest in the Bialystok (Poland) region. Interestingly, there were several other people there with roots in Tykocin, which is where my Chlebiocky family is from. My main takeaway was that the group hasn’t really been active in several years and that there hasn’t been any attempt at translating records. However, there are notary records on genealogy indexer, so that would be worth a look.
The next presentation I went to was Standing Where They Stood by Caitlin Hollander Waas. She talked about her travels to ancestral places and emphasized the power of place and the value of google. The coolest story she had was finding a document related to her family that had been used as a bookmark in an archive.
After that I went to Alex Calzareth’s talk on Enhance Your Data Analysis Skills. He talked about several tools, e.g. Gigahex, Google Tables, and AirTable. Frankly, I didn’t really follow what he actually uses these tools for.
I had my final volunteer stint as a session manager for Judith Silver’s talk on Emigration and Identity: combining records from Brzeziny, Poland and Cardiff, Wales to track the emigration and dissemination of a family group. This mostly involved keeping track of timing while she talked. The talk itself had to do with things she learned from comparing Brzeziny lists of residents with UK census records. While the particular places are not relevant to my research, the basic concept is useful.
While there were a few presentations in the afternoon that I was interested in, I decided a nap was a better use of my time. I did make it to the banquet. Helen Fry gave a talk about German Jews who volunteered in the British military in WWII. This was based on her book, The King’s Most Loyal Enemy Aliens. It was reasonably interesting though not especially relevant to my research.
The conference ended Thursday morning. The last talk I went to (or, at least, the last one I took notes at) was Introduction to the Jacobi Papers by Emanuel (Ami) Elyasaf of the International Institute for Jewish Genealogy. Paul Jacobi devised a method for an “absolute generations scale” which counts backwards, rather than forwards so, for example if generation 1 is 1965-2050, generation 2 might be 1935-2020. Anyway, he documented 100 elite families from central and eastern Europe. These monographs (and other information) are available on the IIJG website. Since the papers focus on rich people and rabbinical families, they’re not likely to be very useful to someone like me whose ancestors were cucumber farmers, tailors, and so on, with the odd brewer or coffee merchant thrown in.
All in all, the conference was reasonably useful. And, of course, I came home with a long long list of things to do, including watching several other presentations once they’re available on-line. Next year’s conference is in Philadelphia, which is much less of a travel commitment. And 2025 will be in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
I still had about another week in England, so I’ll get back to writing travel posts next.
The conference was at the Park Plaza Westminster Bridge Hotel. It was easy enough to take the tube to Waterloo Station, but my map application managed to mislead me from there to the hotel, leading me around St Thomas Hospital. Well, yes, I could use the steps, but my luggage got heavier and heavier. I did get to the hotel, eventually, where I settled into my room and went down to the hospitality desk for my volunteer shift there. Mostly that involved giving out conference bags and maps of the hotel facilities, but some people wanted travel advice. Having just been to Ireland proved helpful when one person asked about going there as a post-conference trip!
The opening session started with a brief talk by Robert Voss, the Lord Lieutenant of Hertfordshire, who brought greetings from King Charles and talked a little about his genealogy story. There is a lord lieutenant for each county (essentially a personal representative of the monarch) and he is the only Jewish one. He’s a child of Holocaust refugees and is a patron of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Great Britain. He was a fairly entertaining speaker
The main keynote speaker was Dr. Blaine Betting who talked about The Adventures and Lessons of 20 Years of Genetic Genealogy. His DNA experiences were a lot more dramatic than mine have been, including discovering an unknown half-brother and half-sister. His talk was interesting, but I can’t say I learned anything. However, as I was leaving the room, a guy came over to me and asked if I was researching Schwartzbard from Ostrow Mazowiecka, Poland. See, the conference had a family finder feature and the smart way to use it is to search the towns you’re interesting in, instead of focusing on names. Then you can see if you have any names in common. We were able to sit down later on and found that we do have connections. And he just sent me some information files that I need to find time to go through.
I started Monday with a talk by by Alan Shuchat on History of Jewish Migration, the Diaspora, and Changing Natonal Borders. The most interesting part of this involved showing the growth (and decline) of the Jewish population in several cities over the years. I can’t say that I learned a lot that I didn’t know, but it’s always good to refresh your knowledge.
After that I went to Aleksandrs Feigmanis’s talk on Sources for Jewish Genealogical Rsearch in Lithuania and Latvia (archives, web, books). I knew about some of the archives, but he talked about a number of other types of records and how to use them. For example, for residence books (mostly in Latvia) you need to start with finding the address and working from there. He also talked about school and university files, directories, the balticgen.com cemetery database (which includes all Jewish cemeteries in Latvia), and several other resources. One interesting thing that may be relevant to my Briskin family is that there was regular transport of lumber from Polotsk (now in Belarus) to Daugavpils, Latvia. A lot of his material looks useful to me, but he wasn’t a particularly dynamic speaker.
Next up was the JRI-Poland luncheon. They’re reworking their website and everyone needs new user accounts on the new system. The speaker was Professort Antony Polonsky who talked about The Jews in Poland and Russia. This was another long list of what sorts of records are available and, while it is probably useful, it was rather dull to listen to.
The final talk I went to that day was Digital Traces: Creating a Personal Digital Archive While Insuring Your Privacy by Elana Brach and Ron Arons. This was lively and interactive. They talked about various options for things like backups and cloud storage and managing your on-line and off-line identity. One thing that had never occurred to me is the need for a digital asset clause in your will. I also liked the reminder on Keeping Found Things Found, i.e. documenting and following your own rules on file naming. As someone who struggles with organizing my research, this was a very useful session.
After that, I had some mentoring time set up. The mentoring area had not been well[-publicized so few people showed up. I was able to help one person by explaining to her what a journeyman is. (It’s a status for a skilled worker, in between an apprentice and a master.) At least, I wasn’t entirely useless. I also spent some time comparing family trees with the guy I’d met the previous night. We discovered some connections and exchanged contact info for further research.
Tuesday was LitvakSIG day. However, the first presentation I went to that day was by Aviva “Sherlock” Cohn about Clued In: More Case Studies. She is an expert on photo analysis and went through 6 examples of her work, giving tips on how to identify people in photographs.
Then I went to a presentation on The Jews of Canada by Bill Gladstone. One potentially useful thing I learned is that the 1931 census is now available on Ancestry and Family Search. Ancestry also has Ontario Vital Records. (The reason these may be of use is that I know my grandfather’s younger brother came to the U.S. via Canada later in the 1930’s. But I don’t know when he went to Canada and how long he was there. I also don’t know if he married in Canada or Cuba, though I do know he was married when he crossed the border into Buffalo.) He discussed various other records that may be available. Unfortunately, with the exception of Montreal, naturalization records are available only to Canadian citizens. I also learned that there’s a museum at Pier 21 in Halifax, which was, essentially, the Canadian equivalent to Ellis Island. That sounds like it would be worth a visit.
There was a LitvakSig meeting, which was interesting for finding out what new records are coming up. That was followed by the LitvakSig luncheon. The speaker at that was Egle Bendikaite, who spoke on Inhabitant but not a Citizen; Citizen, but a Foreigner. This had to do with the various situations that people found themselves in during the interwar period in independent Lithuania. This was very relevant to my research because of the difficulties my great-great-grandfather, Simkha Fainstein, had getting his internal passport. A couple of other notes of interest: 1) permission to resume citizenship was more easily given to women and 2) “everything is possible until it turns out to be impossible.”
After that, Rhoda Miller gave a talk on Litvaks - Here, There, and Everywhere. Most of what she talked about was familiar to me, though I hadn’t really though about the impact of the 1848 cholera epidemic. Also, she mentioned transmigration from Lithuania to Latvia in the context of Courland, but left out the large number of Jews from the Zarasai region who went to Vitebsk Guberniya, particularly Daugavpils, Latvia.
The last presentation I went to was on Emigration from German Ports in the 19th and 20th Century - Causes, Conditions, and Certificates by Andrea Bentschneider. Some of the things that I learned were that: 1) Hamburg was considered friendlier to Jews than Bremen was, so was a more popular port, 2) Ancestry has departure lists from Hamburg for 1850-1934, except for World War I. Bremen passenger lists from 1920-1938 are available on their own website, 3) Hapag (a major shipping company) was Jewish owned, and 4) children born on a ship often had the name of the ship as part of their name.
I spent a couple of hours in the resource room with one of my mentees from my local JGS, helping her with some records from Jonava. I ended the day with Genealogy Death Match. This is a contest between two people to see who can do a better job of documenting their family going back several generations. It’s always interesting and fun to see what records people can find. I will note that younger people have an advantage, since they’re more likely to have at least two or three more generations who are well-documented. I also met somebody from Los Angeles with whom I have a mutual friend.
I started Wednesday with the BialyGen Sig meeting. This is a group for people with an interest in the Bialystok (Poland) region. Interestingly, there were several other people there with roots in Tykocin, which is where my Chlebiocky family is from. My main takeaway was that the group hasn’t really been active in several years and that there hasn’t been any attempt at translating records. However, there are notary records on genealogy indexer, so that would be worth a look.
The next presentation I went to was Standing Where They Stood by Caitlin Hollander Waas. She talked about her travels to ancestral places and emphasized the power of place and the value of google. The coolest story she had was finding a document related to her family that had been used as a bookmark in an archive.
After that I went to Alex Calzareth’s talk on Enhance Your Data Analysis Skills. He talked about several tools, e.g. Gigahex, Google Tables, and AirTable. Frankly, I didn’t really follow what he actually uses these tools for.
I had my final volunteer stint as a session manager for Judith Silver’s talk on Emigration and Identity: combining records from Brzeziny, Poland and Cardiff, Wales to track the emigration and dissemination of a family group. This mostly involved keeping track of timing while she talked. The talk itself had to do with things she learned from comparing Brzeziny lists of residents with UK census records. While the particular places are not relevant to my research, the basic concept is useful.
While there were a few presentations in the afternoon that I was interested in, I decided a nap was a better use of my time. I did make it to the banquet. Helen Fry gave a talk about German Jews who volunteered in the British military in WWII. This was based on her book, The King’s Most Loyal Enemy Aliens. It was reasonably interesting though not especially relevant to my research.
The conference ended Thursday morning. The last talk I went to (or, at least, the last one I took notes at) was Introduction to the Jacobi Papers by Emanuel (Ami) Elyasaf of the International Institute for Jewish Genealogy. Paul Jacobi devised a method for an “absolute generations scale” which counts backwards, rather than forwards so, for example if generation 1 is 1965-2050, generation 2 might be 1935-2020. Anyway, he documented 100 elite families from central and eastern Europe. These monographs (and other information) are available on the IIJG website. Since the papers focus on rich people and rabbinical families, they’re not likely to be very useful to someone like me whose ancestors were cucumber farmers, tailors, and so on, with the odd brewer or coffee merchant thrown in.
All in all, the conference was reasonably useful. And, of course, I came home with a long long list of things to do, including watching several other presentations once they’re available on-line. Next year’s conference is in Philadelphia, which is much less of a travel commitment. And 2025 will be in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
I still had about another week in England, so I’ll get back to writing travel posts next.
