Jewish cemeteries database: JOWBR

The first 2009 update to the JewishGen Online Worldwide Burial Registry (JOWBR) database includes more than 55,000 new records and some 25,000 new photos from 17 countries. The database now has more than 1.125 million records from more than 2,100 cemteries and cemetery sections in 45 countries.

Although the burial records are now "live,", additional files, maps and overview photos will be posted soon.

This update contains these major groups:

- Maryland: More than 31,000 records from Baltimore-area cemeteries courtesy of the Jewish Museum of Maryland.

- Colorado, Iowa, Nebraska: Terry Lasky submitted records and photographs personally created or coordinated with other volunteers. The update includes about 2,800 new records and more than 15,000 photographs.

- Indiana: Gloria Green and her team have provided some 2,700 records and 2,700 photos for the Kelly Street cemetery complex in Indianapolis.

- Bayside, NY: Maurice Kessler and his team have provided an additional 1,400 records from the Bayside/Ozone Queens cemetery complex. The original records were documented by Florence Marmor and David Gevertzman.

- Pennsylvania: Susan Melnick has arranged continuing submissions of various state cemeteries on behalf of the Rauh Jewish Archives, John Heinz Pittsburgh Regional History Center.

- Chernivtsi, Ukraine: Hymie Reichstein and Bruce Reisch of the JGS of Ottawa (Canada) for the second installment of some 3,800 records and photos.

- Vilnius, Lithuania: Howard Margol submitted some 6,300 post-World War II burials in the Saltonishkiu Cemetery in Vilnius.

- Iasi, Romania: Reuven Singer and his team submitted an additional 1,000 burial records translated from the 1887 Hebrew burial registers.

According to JOWBR coordinator Nolan Altman, the next update should be prior to the 29th IAJGS International Conference on Jewish Genealogy, August 2-7, in Philadelphia. For conference information, click here.

The project appreciates the work done by donors and encourages additional submissions.

Whether you work individually on a cemetery or cemetery section or consider it a group project for your local Jewish genealogical society, synagogue or other group, all submissions grow the database and assist others around the world to locate information.

Nolan encourages those who have already done cemetery indexing to consider having those records included in the JOWBR database.

Colorado: Tuberculosis victims' graves, records

International Jewish Graveyard Rabbit is happy to introduce new contributor Ellen Shindelman Kowitt. She is the webmaster for the Jewish Genealogical Society of Colorado. A former IAJGS board member and past president of JGS Greater Washington, she lectures and writes about Jewish genealogy.

Jews arrived in Colorado with the Gold Rush in 1859. The oldest Jewish burials in Denver were conducted by the pioneer organization, the Hebrew Burial and Prayer Society (later known as the Hebrew Cemetery Association) from 1860 to 1910 and were interred at the Denver Pioneer Cemetery “Old Jewish Section” located east of Cheesman Park on Capitol Hill.

Most Jewish remains and gravestones there were moved to the nonsectarian Riverside Cemetery and to the Jewish Fairmount, Golden Hill and Rose Hill Cemeteries in the early 1900s due to urban development.

At the time, common treatment of tuberculosis called for "freezing the disease out of them with access to fresh Rocky Mountain Air," and patients lived in these unheated buildings.

In Denver cemeteries, many Jewish burials circa 1899-1954 were of those who travelled to two Colorado Jewish sanitariums for the treatment of tuberculosis. National Jewish Hospital opened in 1899, and catered largely to Jews with a less severe case of tuberculosis who were of German background and more assimilated. The Jewish Consumptives Relief Society (JCRS) served those with advanced stages of the disease and who were recent Russian immigrants. JCRS was a kosher facility with an onsite synagogue, and the patients were often observant.

Here are two stones and a donation plaque for Ernest Gluck:

The English name reads Ernest Gluck, whose Hebrew name and father's name are Aharon Yeshai ben Menachem Mendl.

This stone above, with the same details, begins with a note about the Shoah (Holocaust). This second stone might have been erected by his family, particularly since it mentions erasing the Nazis - unrelated to a Colorado tubercular’s grave - but perhaps representative of stones in that generation commemorating others who died in the Shoah elsewhere.

This plaque was apparently constructed by his friends at JCRS.

Members of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Colorado assisted the University of Denver Judaic Studies Division with the creation of an online JCRS patient surname index. This project was awarded the IAJGS Malcolm Stern Grant in 2003. Copies of JCRS patient applications (click here to see a sample) can be requested and often include birthplace abroad, landsmanshaften affiliation, names and ages of children, nearest of kin and burial location at Denver cemeteries.

Rose Hill Cemetery in Commerce City, Golden Hill Cemetery in Lakewood and Mount Nebo Cemetery in Aurora specifically included tuberculosis patient burials. A significant number were buried by benevolent groups as indigent and in unmarked pauper graves.

Regardless of whether a gravestone ever existed or has survived, all Colorado Jewish burial data has been gathered from local sources, indexed, entered into the JewishGen Online Worldwide Burial Registry and can be searched by the name of the deceased, cemetery or location. Gravestone inscriptions have been translated into English from Hebrew, Yiddish and Russian.

Following are the four largest Jewish cemeteries in the Denver metro area:

Rose Hill Cemetery: Burials 1892-present; includes tuberculosis patients from JCRS.
Mount Nebo Cemetery: Burials 1904-present; includes tuberculosis patients from JCRS.
Golden Hill Cemetery: Burials 1908-present; includes tuberculosis patients from JCRS.
Emanuel at Fairmount Cemetery: Burials 1911-present.

Netherlands: 1639-48 Jewish burial register online

The Municipal Archives of Amsterdam has published the "Burial Register of the Portuguese-Israelite-Municipality Talmud Torah in Amsterdam, 1639-1648" (Comessado em Pesah do Anno 5399 em Amsterdam, in Portuguese). Introduction, text and index: Lydia Hagoort, with W.Chr. Pieterse.

This transcription is the first both printed and digital book by Amsterdam's Municipal Archives. The download is free.

The website is in Dutch, as is the information about the register. With a smattering of languages, I got through a quick overview, but I know missed many important details. However, as in most genealogical books, lists of names are not dependent on language. A name is a name, and this register is a goldmine if you are searching Sephardic names.

The homepage links to an article about the register, and in the article is the download link for the book, which text is mostly in Portuguese with some Hebrew. Other portions are in Dutch.

Entries offer data concerning each burial: name, family relation, burial date and a list of people attending the burial with indications of the amount they paid - I am not sure if these figures were as contributions to a particular burial or as general donations to the cemetery. Sometimes the family relationship is mentioned: son, grandson or uncle of the deceased. Data includes Jewish and/or secular dates.

There are also lists of people who paid for burials or for gravestones. Annual expense accountings are included.

An earlier burial register over the years 1615-1630, was published previously: Livro de Bet Haim do Kahal Kados de bet Yahacob (1970, original text), by Wilhelmina C. Pieterse. The next register, beginning in 1680, has not yet been published.

On page 8, find a note on names and variants, including changes in initial, middle or endings of certain names. I have added some others not in that note:

Barrasa, Baraza, Barazza, Barassa, Barraza, Barasa
Curiel, Corial
Paache, Palache, Pahache, Payache
Bivas, Bibas
Palasios, Palacios
Mendes, Mendez
Anar, Nar, Naar
Valerio, Valeirio
Barbanel, Abarbanel
Yessurun, Yezurun, Ysarun, Ysurun, Yisurun, Juzurun, Esarun

First names also offer variations. For example, Jacob may be listed as Yahacob, Yacob, Jacob, Jaquo, Yaquo and others.

There is a glossary of Hebrew terms, with explanations in Dutch. A bibliography of useful texts is on page 10, and the cross-referenced Name Register starts on page 198. The introduction reveals there are some 165 hand-written pages in the original.

For a very detailed article (in Dutch) about the 1614-1943 Jewish community archives, click here. The book is available free for download at the links above.

Ukraine: Czernowitz Cemetery's Ottawa Project

At the 2002 International Conference on Jewish Genealogy, Prof. Alti Rodal reported on a project to digitally photograph all tombstones in the Czernowitz Jewish Cemetery.

This project, sponsored by the Jewish Genealogical Society of Ottawa, Canada, was spearheaded by several members working with Dr. George Bolotenko of the Canadian National Archives (Ottawa). It goal is to produce a free, searchable, internet database of names linked to images of tombstones.

Obtain information about specific graves (photograph, approximate location according to the current cemetery map, burial register information), by writing to Bruce Reisch, the Czernowitz-L list moderator. He has been coordinating data transcription for the JGSO, which led the effort to photograph all the tombstones and to obtain copies of burial registers.

The exact location of individual graves is not known, as the current cemetery map does not correspond until 1946.

In August 2007, information on 4,293 burials were sent to JGS Ottawa, and subsequently posted on the JewishGen Online Worldwide Burial Registry (JOWBR) along with corresponding images. In May 2008, data on 3,992 additional burials were sent to JGS Ottawa but have not yet been forwarded to JOWBR. Altogether, information on 11,376 burials has been transcribed, including the two datasets above.

There are more than 28,000 tombstone photos in the collection (some are duplicates) so there's still quite a bit of work ahead before the project is complete. Prior to transcription of data from the tombstones, all burial registers prior to 1946 were transcribed into Excel spreadsheets.

Congratulations to the team of volunteers who have dedicated countless hours transcribing data and trying to read barely decipherable tombstones in multiple languages for this project!