Jewish family records,
free to search
I'm Leo Katz. I'm researching my family's history, and along the way I transcribe archival records that nobody has indexed yet. I put them here, free and searchable, with the archival source for every entry and a link to the original image wherever it is online.
Look for a person
By name, in the records I have transcribed: 289,164 names in the 7 searchable collections below.
“Sounds like” also finds other spellings: Katz, Kac, Caț.
Look for a town
Which registers of births, marriages and deaths survive for it, which archive holds them, and which can be seen online.
Any spelling: Lemberg, Lwów, Львів.
Still collecting 856,163 books for 28,460 places in 48 countries; what is in and what is not yet.
Collections I have transcribed
Czernowitz
1941–1944 · Declarations, lists, letters
Papers of the Romanian administration of Bukovina: every name on every frame, read in full.
144,363 names
Search these records →State Archive of Chernivtsi Oblast, via USHMM (RG-31.006M)
Searchable nowWiznitz & Waschkoutz
1918–1930 · Births, marriages, deaths
Registers of the two towns and their villages; each entry links to its frame on FamilySearch.
20,897 names
Search these records →State Archive of Chernivtsi Oblast, fond 1245
Searchable nowWaschkoutz
1941 · Police lists
The Jews of the town and villages, a camp, people deported by the Soviets, labour lists.
1,645 names
Search these records →State Archive of Chernivtsi Oblast, fond 831 · index from photographs by Julie Dawson
New · searchable nowCzernowitz
1864–1885 · School lists
Pupils of the Oberrealschule, year by year: class and place of birth, from Bukovina, Galicia and Moldavia.
3,565 names
Search these records →Annual reports of the school · scans: Austrian National Library
New · searchable nowMogilev, Transnistria
1943–1944 · Foundry workers and families
Jews deported from Bukovina at work in the Turnătoria foundry: trade, age, hometown, and their families.
2,486 names
Search these records →Yad Vashem Archives, P.9 (Siegfried Jägendorf archive)
New · searchable nowWiznitz district
1895 · Directory of officials and traders
Officials, clergy, teachers, credit societies and every trader and craftsman of 37 towns and villages.
1,312 names
Search these records →Ippen's Provinz-Adressbuch · scans: Austrian National Library
New · searchable nowCzernowitz
1869 · 1880 · 1890 · Austrian censuses
House-by-house books: every household, with birth year, birthplace, religion and occupation.
114,896 names
Search these records →State Archive of Chernivtsi Oblast, fond 39; microfilm on FamilySearch
Already have a family tree?
Upload it as a GEDCOM file from MyHeritage, Ancestry or Geni and get a free report in about a minute:
- Does it hold together. Dates that contradict each other, one town under two spellings, the point where each direct line stops.
- Where the records are. For every town in the tree: which registers survive, which archive holds them, what can be read online.
Check my tree Free · no sign-up · the file is not stored
The check runs on Alte Heym, a separate site of mine. It looks your towns up in the catalogue behind “Find your town”.
Why I'm doing this
The records I need sit on microfilm, unindexed, in handwriting few people can read. Each time I read a reel looking for my own relatives, I see thousands of other families on the same pages. It seemed wrong to keep that to myself.
So the rule is simple: whatever I transcribe for my own research, I publish here for everyone. The search is open without registration. There are no ads.
Zeydele (זיידעלע) is Yiddish for “grandpa”. It's what the family called my grandfather, Michael Katz.
Get new records by email
I'll write when a new collection goes up and when I finish a useful guide. That's all.
Guides
- How to find your Jewish ancestors: where to startFor people with family stories or an online tree and no documents: what to write down first, which records exist, where they are kept, and how to tell your ancestor from a namesake.
- A guide to Czernowitz Jewish genealogy sourcesWhich records survive for Czernowitz and nearby shtetls, where they are, what you can see free from home, and how to order the rest from the Chernivtsi archive.
- The 1942 family declarations of Czernowitz Jews, transcribedWhat is in USHMM RG-31.006M, how I transcribed all 36,863 frames, and how to read and cite an entry.
- How to see the original frame at USHMMEvery entry here links to a microfilm frame. How to open it, save it in full resolution, and request help from the museum.
- Czernowitz censuses of 1869, 1880 and 1890: name indexHouse-by-house census books of Czernowitz, searchable by name: what they contain and how they were read.