IAJGS2014: Day 6

Friday morning: the last sessions are always a bit quieter than earlier in the week at IAJGS conferences. Some people are already on their way home. I, for one, always make a point of attending Friday morning sessions. The presenters deserve it and, actually, some of the Friday morning sessions I have attended in the past have been excellent. No exceptions this time. Both sessions I attended were very worthwhile.

Pamela Weisberger: "Austria, Poland & Ukraine: 3 Countries, 5 Archives & 12 Wonderful Days of Discovery"

I had heard Pamela deliver this talk before, but I am always amazed at her world-wide ability to network and ferret out great information at archives. It was good to hear it her presentation again. 

Pamela took this trip with John Diener in 2013. In Austria they visited the Staatsarchiv and the Kriegsarchiv (military records) and the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde where many Jewish community records are housed. They'd requested records ahead of their visit. 

At the BEV (Bundesant fur Eich - und Vermessungswesen) - the cadastral map office, Pamela hoped to acquire more cadastral maps for towns in Galicia. Offcials reported,  however, that all maps for Galicia had been returned to the towns when they left Austrian rule. 

Pamela's personal genealogical interest was her family town of Grzymalow in the former province of Galicia. In her research she had found that her family had worked for the Polish magnate family Pininski who owned the town. She had read a book by a Pininski descendant and arranged to meet him. 

Pamela also reported that Fond 154 in the Warsaw archives contains town records (including some from the 20th Century) for Przemysel. I was pleased to learn the pronuciation of that town's name. It resembles "Shemshil."
 

Oleksiy and Nadia Lipes: "Ukrainian Pogroms 1917-1921: Using the Documentations as Jewish Genealogy Source"

Oleksiy Lipes presented this talk with help from his wife Nadia. They are young, knowledgeable Ukrainians of Jewish descent. They reported on their research in the Kiev Archives, Fond 3050, Opis 1, Delo 51 - a report about pogroms in Kiev Gubernia, 1919-1920. Much of the report is in Yiddish and has been traslated into Russian. The records include lists of people affected in many towns. Apparently, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washinton, D.C. has copies of these records. 

Conference Over!

I spent the afternoon in the Family History Library acquiring some U.S. records  and some records from Chernivtsy, Ukraine where, due to indexing by other Jewish Bukovina researchers, I knew there were vital records for people with some of my family names. My plans included one more day (Saturday) in the Library and then a flight home Saturday night. In all, a very successful visit to Salt Lake City.