A specialist talk from the Eastern European Special Interest Group (EE-SIG) on a Ukrainian theme by Zoom.
Alex Krakovsky, a Ukrainian with a Jewish grandfather, has scanned vital records found in Ukrainian archives, uploaded the scanned files on a wiki page where they can easily be accessed by anyone interested.
We will discuss the origin and method of data acquisition from Alex, his friends and the archives, and give an overview of its contents.
The Ukraine Research Division of JewishGen has a project to transcribe these documents and include in a searchable database. We will describe this project in detail.
After the talk, there will be an opportunity for Q&A on the talk. We will then take a 15 minute tea break, followed by an Eastern European workshop where you may share your successes and brick walls and ask any questions you might have.
If you have problems joining, please email chair@jgsgb.org.uk, preferably in the 15 minutes before the meeting proper starts.
JGSGB Members, please log in to the Members area of the website before booking and your £5 fee will be discounted.
About Gary Pokrassa
Gary is retired nine years from a 46-year career ending as CFO. He is the Data Acquisition Director for the Ukraine Research Division-JewishGen, Treasurer and Director of JRI – Poland, and a board member and VP Programming of JGS of Long Island. He is town leader for 5 shtetls. He has presented at the last five IAJGS conferences from 2020-2024 on Alex Krakovsky and was a panelist on the 2020 Ukraine Research Division Meeting. He has authored an article on the Alex Krakovsky project published in AVOTAYNU Summer 2020 and has given many presentations on Jewish genealogy both advanced and beginner.
About Joel Spector
Joel is currently on the Board of the Jewish Genealogical and Archival Society of Greater Philadelphia. He is a past president of the Society and has served as chairperson of its Russian Special Interest Group. Joel is a former Secretary of the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies (IAJGS), has been involved in planning several IAJGS Conferences and has served as IAJGS Archivist. Joel is currently a Policy Advisor on the Board of the JewishGen Ukraine Research Division.
Joel has been conducting research into his family since receiving a family tree in 1972. He has conducted extensive research in several historic Russian-language encyclopedias and has created an Index to the Russian-language Jewish Encyclopedia. He has recently excerpted all of the Jewish population data from the 1897 Russian Imperial Census and from several Russian-language encyclopedias.
Joel has given presentations and workshops on the Russian language, both contemporary and pre-Revolutionary.