The show was started in order to share information with others who are interested in doing genealogy. We try to bring experts in various specialities to share their knowledge. Since most of us came from various parts of the world, a large number at the start of the last century, we share different difficulties in finding our ancestors. We discuss how to gather information from many of the countries of origin.

       We started to place both audio and video of some of the shows on the internet. Look for symbols for listening to audio only in the listing of shows below. Shows that can be seen in their entirely are marked with "VIEW NOW " symbols. Contact us if you want us to email you when we add another show to the internet or if you would like to get a show in DVD format.

IAJGS Salutes this show

       Prof. Sachs is retired from teaching Computer Information Systems at Northern Virginia Community College. She held many positions in JGSGW including President, Vice President, Recording Secretary and computer consultant. She was the Secretary of the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies (IAJGS) and started and headed its International Cemetery Project for seven years. She is the author of "The Dairies of Bernhard Cahn, ...".

       Dr. Sack, past president of the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies, was the founder and first president of JGSGW and is currently editor and co-owner of Avotaynu, The International Review of Jewish Genealogy. She co-directed several international genealogical seminars, including two in Israel and has served on the advisory committee of the Dorot Genealogy Center at Beth Hatefutsoth in Tel Aviv. Dr. Sack has co-authored several books, including Where We Once Walked: A Guide to the Jewish Communities Destroyed in the Holocaust and Guide to Jewish Genealogical Research in Israel. She edited Avotaynu Guide to Jewish Genealogy.

• Charles "Chuck" Mason, Jr., CG talked about finding different types of death records such as cemetery record. burial plots and funeral home records.
  On Channel 10 at 8 p.m. Wednesday, October 8, 7:30 a.m. Saturday, October 11, 1 p.m. Sunday, October 12, and on the internet by October 10.

• Chuck Mason, President of the Fairfax Genealogy Society talked about probate records and estate inventories and what could be found in such records.
  On Channel 10 at 8 p.m. Wednesday, October 22, 7:30 a.m. Saturday, October 25, 1 p.m. Sunday, October 27, and on the internet by October 24.

• Fred Blum, President of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Greater Philadephia, would talk about their August 2 to 7, 2009 International Conference on Jewish Genealogy.

• Colleen Fitzpatrick, author of Forensic Genealogy, DNA & Genealogy and The Dead Horse Investigation would talk about Forensic Genealogy.

• Ave M. Sloane and Marian Smith, both from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service, will talked about their new fee-for-service genealogy program.

Jacob Thiessen and Andrea Meyerhoff joined Arline Sachs to talked about the 2008 Conference on Jewish Genealogy that was in Chicago.	VIEW NOW
Margo Williams talked about doing Native American Research. Interesting web sites for doing this type of research are Native American Indian Genealogy, Native American Genealogy and Online Native American Indian Genealogy Records & Databases.	VIEW NOW
Margo Williams talked about doing Afro-American Research. Sites mentioned on the show were: Ancestry.com, LDS, Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society, Afro-American Historical Association of Fauquier County, International Society of Sons and Daughters of Slave Ancestry, National Archives, Virginia State Library, Virginia Genealogy at the State Library.	VIEW NOW
"Using DNA to find family" with Arline Sachs and Richard DiBuono.	VIEW NOW
Prof. Sachs and Dr. Sacks discuss the emotional aspects of their recent visit to three small towns in Germany, where Jews used to live. The towns were Bad Arolson where ITS is located), Vöhl, and Vokmassen. In each town a few local people are maintaining the Jewish cemetery, or restoring a synagogue or building a Jewish museum.	VIEW NOW
Dr. Sacks and Prof. Sachs discuss their recent trip along with 38 others researchers to be the first group to do research at the International Tracing Service (ITS) in Bad Arolson, Germany. This is the location of all Nazi records captured by the Allied Nations. All records are cross referenced and can be searched by name. The data include DP records. One can also read about the trip in the ITS Press Release and in a AP story.	VIEW NOW
Rita Souther talked about doing American Indian research.	VIEW NOW
Rita Souther talked about the Family History Centers.	VIEW NOW
Faith Klein and Arline Sachs talked about what they do with their information.	VIEW NOW
Ruth Ellen Gruber, author of National Geographic Jewish Heritage Travel: A Guide to Eastern Europe will talked about what research she did in order to wrote the book. Visit her web site at ruthellengruber.com.	VIEW NOW
Sacks and Sachs discussed the many research facilities that are invaluable for research but that need to be visited in person. Many places have only a small portion of their data on-line, or have only an index of their holdings. It is necessary to understand what can be found and how to access that data.	VIEW NOW
Ruth Ellen Gruber, author of National Geographic Jewish Heritage Travel: A Guide to Eastern Europe talked about her background for writing the book.	VIEW NOW
Sallyann Sack, who just returned from ITS (International Tracing Service) in Arolson, Germany explained the advantages of a person doing research there. She and Gary Mokotoff will lead the first tour there, from May 5 to 9, to do Holocaust research. The overall index which includes everyone who even asked about anyone is available only there. To register for the trip contact Gary Mokotoff.	VIEW NOW
Jeffery S. Malka will go online to show his "Sephardic Genealogy" web site "http://Sephardicgen.com".	VIEW NOW
Documentation: After interviewing family, one must follow-up by finding documentation for the people or events mentioned. The most common types of documents were discussed and sources for many were given.	VIEW NOW
Interviewing: Sallyann Sack and Arline Sachs discussed the very important activity of interviewing when beginning doing genealogy. Different techniques and methods were explained and the types of questions to be asked were mentioned.	VIEW NOW
Micheal Matsas, author of "The Illusion of Safety, the Story of Greek Jews during the Second World War" talked about his book and where he found the information. One place was the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum in Hyde Park, New York.	VIEW NOW
Paul Shapiro, director of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum's Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, talked about the 50 million pages of information of the International Tracing Service. Some of the data have been received with additional data arriving over the next few years. Shapiro also suggested how to access the information. Slides of Incarceration, Forced Laborer, Post-War, Auxiliary Indexes and Non-Personal Documents.	VIEW NOW
The 10th anniversary show reviewed some of the highlights of past shows and previewed upcoming topics. One new web site mentioned was Famillion.com, which is a world wide family record project that will try to connect people all over the world.	VIEW NOW
"The Source, A Guidebook to American Genealogy" is the definitive reference for genealogical research in the US. New in this edition are materials on doing research on the internet, something genealogists now need to learn. Also mentioned was a new web site call Footnote.com where 2 millions National Archives' images are being added each month.	VIEW NOW
Sallyann Sack talked about her 30 years of researching her maternal Amdur line from her home. Before the internet was available, she used only the telephone and wrote letters. Just recently she and a relative in Australia prepared a web page for Almdur family tree. While doing this she realized again how important it was to review all gathered information periodly. She finally realized how someone she had corresponded with 20 years ago was related.	VIEW NOW
Elias Savada tells us about the various resources he uses to trace his family in New York City. His guide was the book "Genealogical Resources in New York" published by the Jewish Genealogical Society of New York. His uses the microfilms of vital records at the New Your City Municipal Archives. Before going there, he assembles a chronological list of records he wants to examine/photocopy by using databases from the German and Italian Genealogical Groups. Steven Morse’s website makes searching these databases much easier. Savada places all the retrieved certificate numbers into a computer spreadsheet and sorts it by date to make finding the information at the Municipal Archives easier. He also mentions that pictures of many tombstones from upstate New York are found at JewishData.Com and the New York Times which can be found at some local county libraries that subscribe to ProQuest.	VIEW NOW
Our hosts talked about different phonetic algorithm "Soundex" for indexing names by sound, not by spelling, in different databases with names.	VIEW NOW
Logan Kleinwaks has a venture to link persons interested in specific Pages of Testimony (PoT). It is called ShoahConnect. A user who go to the Pages of Testimony site and flags all PoT of interest. If two of more people flag the same PoT, they all receive notice of the match. The mechanism is external to the Yad Vashem site; the potential matches are stored by ShoahConnect. It uses the Google Toolbar, which must be installed, to flag the PoT of interest. The fact that you are looking for people associated with a particular PoT is not noted at the Yad Vashem site (it would require the cooperation of Yad Vashem itself). It only creates a match if another person using the ShoahConnect system expresses interest in the same PoT.	VIEW NOW
Herbert Huebscher talked about WIRTH surname DNA group with Family Tree DNA of which he is the administrator. He began testing others with his surname. None of them matched him. However, he matched another person with an different surname. Over time more men were tested;, now there are 43 families for this subset from Eastern Europe and Spain. The common ancester could be any where between 1200 and 1700. Since some of the group are Levites, this indicated that they all should be also, but in several families this knowledge was lost. Future plans include making a group tree to show where each family fits. He also told about some interesting facts of the some of the participants in his group.	VIEW NOW
Bennett Greenspan, President and CEO of Family Tree DNA, talked about how to determine whether two males are relative by the testing of the DNA's Y chromosome. His company has such a large data base that everyone should find some match. Having additional markers tested will reduce the number of generations back of the common ancestor. The DNA can show where you come from and could identify a Semetic or other ancester group. Mr. Greenspan explained how the sample are taken and the steps his company take to eliminate the possiblity of laboratory error.	VIEW NOW
Genealogists are very good at doing research and collecting many facts about our families. For a number of reasons, however, most of us delay publishing the results of this research. Mike Karsen, a professional genealogist, explained how to write your family history in books that vary from a simple 30 pages to one that contains detailed biographies and places your family in historical context. Your goal should be to organize your findings and share them with your family NOW!.	VIEW NOW
From the Chicago Jewish community's origins in the 1840s, the city has been home to a great number of Jews. Mike Karsen, author of Guide to Jewish Genealogy in Chicagoland, highlights the major sources for tracing your Jewish roots in Chicago.	VIEW NOW
Iris Posner, president of "One Thousand Children" spoke of her role in finding the identifying about 1400 unaccompanied children who were rescued from the Holocaust during the years 1934 through the end of the war in 1945. These children whose ages varied from a few months to sixteen years old usually came to the United States in small groups of about 10 and were then sent to various homes throughout the country. Few ever saw both parents again.	VIEW NOW
Benjamin B. Terner explained how he encouraged and helped people to write their family memoirs as short stories. By giving people one topic, such as 'your mother' to write about, successive meetings end with a creative description of the family one knew.	VIEW NOW
Sirak Sabahat, an Ethiopian Jew, who is the lead actor of the award winning film "Live and Become" talked about his pre-Taludic roots.	VIEW NOW
Suzanne Levy, librarian of the Virginia Room at the Fairfax County library in Fairfax City, Virginia explained how the library has become a major resource for Jewish genealogy. She showed some of the reference materials that are available there and explained how individuals can make use of these resources, some of which are online. She also mentioned how local libraries are a useful source for doing genealogical research.	VIEW NOW
Library of Congress Online Catalogs with Dr. Peggy Perlstein. Included were Print and Photographs, Sound Online Inventory & Catalog, Basic Search and Guided Search, and Other Libraries'Catalogs. [LOC modified their web site since this show was taped.]	VIEW NOW
Edward David Luft explained how he located where a missing ancestor not originally find in the 1860 census was by using tax records at the National Archives and land maps at the Library of Congress. Books mentioned were A Checklist of the Nineteenth Century County Maps in the Library of Congress and United States Department of Commerce's "Twenty Censuses: Population and Housing Questions, 1790-1980"	VIEW NOW
Sallyann Sack talked about the International Institue for Jewish Genealogy. It is located at the Jewish National and Hebrew University Library in Jerusalem. She head the founding committee for this professionsl reseach organization.	VIEW NOW
Our hosts goes online to demonstrate the following free websites that they found to be useful in their own genealogy: Family Search, Steven Morse, Hamburg Records, Yad Vashem, JewishGen and Avotaynu.	VIEW NOW
Leon B. Taranto spoke about offline resources for Turkey and Greece that he used researching his family. Web sites mentioned were Sephardi Genealogical and Historical Review and Society, American Sephardi Federation, The Rhodes Jewish Museum, Foundation for the Advancement of Sephardic Studies and Culture and Sefard SIG.	VIEW NOW
"Why Jewish Genealogical Societies?" The Jews, like the Poles or Italians, have special needs in tracing their roots based on their customs and where they were living.	VIEW NOW
Avotaynu Guide to Jewish Genealogy. A book edited by host Sally Amdur Sack. It is the definitive guide to Jewish genealogical research. Written by more than 60 authors, all experts in their own field. The list of authors is a veritable "Who's Who in Jewish Genealogy." Its more than 100 chapters cover all important aspects of the rich body of information available to do Jewish genealogical research. Also shown was co-hosts Arline Sachs' book The Dairies of Bernhard Cahn. Both books can be ordered from Avotaynu.	VIEW NOW
Thomas W. Jones, Ph.D., CG, CGL, editor of National Genealogical Society Quarterly talked about the skill set and knowledge base for effective genealogical research. Web sites mentioned were Samford University's Institute on Genealogical and Historical Research National Institute on Genealogical Research Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy National Genealogical Society NGS online learning center BYU free Web courses National Institute for Genealogical Studies	VIEW NOW
Sonia Rosa-Velez and Eliud Bonilla both with long family histories of living in Puerto Rico talked about what happened when their families had their DNA tested. Both were surprised that they have the J2 haplotype that is very common among Jews, leading them to suspect that their ancestors were ‘hidden Jews'. [ Sonia Rosa-Velez web site].	VIEW NOW
Our hosts talked about methodology for beginning genealogical research. The discussion was based on the first chapter, Methodology: How to be a Genealogist by Eileen Polakoff, from the book Avotaynu - Guide to Jewish Genealogy.	VIEW NOW
Carol Whitton talked about reading old handwriting and German Script and gave the following helpful English sources: Kip Sperry's Reading Early American Handwriting Kent P Bailey and Ransom B. True's A Guide to Seventeenth- Century Virginia Court Handwriting and helpful German sources: Roger P. Minert's Deciphering Handwriting in German Documents, analyzing German, Latin, and French in vital records witten in Germany Edna Bentz's If I Can, You Can Decipher German Records. English Web Sites: Roots Web's Old Alpha Letters Ancestry.com's Tips for Reading Early American Handwriting USGS Geographic Names Information System German Web Sites: genealogy.net's Old German handwritten Scripts National Geospatial Intelligence Agency's GEOnet Names Server genealogy.net's German Town Locator by Arthur Teschler	VIEW NOW
Our hosts talked about Yizkor (Memorial) Books written to remember villages destroyed during the Holocaust. Most of these books were written by survivors and include a history of the town, testimonials, lists of survivors, and lists of those who perished.	VIEW NOW
Stephen H. Snell talked about the initial steps that have been taken in planning the Snell family reunion for October 2009. First he had to find others people who are descened from the Thomas Snell who came over from England in the 1639. Some interested respondents became planning committee for the reunion. The committee created into four subgroups - arrangement, history, DNA and publicity. The book used for planning the meeting was Great Meeting, Great Results by Dee Kelsey and Pam Plumb.	VIEW NOW
Richard DiBuono talked about doing research on the web and in Italy. The following sites were mentioned on the show. All encompassing and best is Cyndi's List-Italy/Italia Mormon Church (LDS) Genealogy Website Ellis Island Immigration Records (from 1892) Family Immigration History Center Castle Garden, N.Y. Immigration Records (from 1830 - 1892) POINT organization (Pursuing Our Italian Names Together) Italy World Club Italian Genealogical Society of America Regalis: Guide to Italian Genealogy Research Italian Genealogical Group Roots Web (including USGen Web and WorldGen Web projects) Italiamerica (partly commercial) Ancestry.com (fully commercial): www.ancestry.com	VIEW NOW
Downsizing and preserving your valuable documents.	VIEW NOW
Olga Zabludoff talked about how she help restored an old cemetery in Butrimonys, Lithuania.	VIEW NOW

• Naomi Baumslag, MD, MPH talked about her book Murderous Medicine Nazi Doctors, Human Experimentation, and Typhus. More than 1.5 million concentration camp prisoners plus others in ghettos died of typhus, a preventable disease because Nazi Germany deliberately sought to create environments that would engender typhus.

• Sallyann Sack spoke about a future project of the International Institue for Jewish Genealogy which is to reconstruct Holocaust destroyed communities. In one town already use as a test, family trees in the form of 25 GEDCOM files were combined using GenMerge. The results discovered over 30 additional names of unknown persons missing.

• Peter Lande talked about the possible access to the International Tracing Service data now that the Germany government has change their position on making them available to other governments.

• Resources an author of an article in Avotaynu used to trace some of distance cousins.

• Warren L. Miller, Commission Chairman of the US Commission for the Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad talked about the Commission which was created by Congress in 1985 in response to concerns about the deterioration and destruction of cultural sites in Eastern and Central Europe of significance to U.S. citizens.

Click here for shows taped in earlier years

Web Sites Mentioned on Most Shows Avotaynu JewishGen Jewish Genealogy Society of Greater Washington (JGSGW)     Steven Morse