Finding Jewish Ancestors in Belarus

Find the Town
In order to research your family in Belarus, it is essential that you have identified the place where they came from. It is not enough to know only ‘Belarus;' you must know the town name and the district/province name. The name of a nearby larger town can also be very helpful.

One of the best ways to determine information about your ancestor's pre-immigration origins is to investigate records in the country of immigration. Records that might give clues about your ancestor's birthplace include vital records like marriage or death, vital records of children or spouses, census, synagogue records, obituaries, naturalization/immigration and so on. Find a Wiki page for the country, state, or county that your ancestor immigrated to in order to discover what types of records might be available for the area they lived in. See this page on Miriam Weiner's Routes to Routes page for additional tips on finding your ancestor's hometown.

See the Administrative Districts and Divisions article on Routes to Roots Administrative to learn more about jurisdictions in the Russian Empire and their modern-day equivalents.

Miriam Weiner's Surname Database
Over her 30+ years of working in Eastern European archives, Miriam Weiner collected vast amounts of material and can be searched using the Surname Database. You may also be able to use the database to help narrow down a more specific location for where individuals lived who shared your ancestor's surname.
 * Use the Standard Surname Database if you know your ancestor's given name, surname, or town name. This database is comprised of name lists from local historians and heads of Jewish communities, name lists from books, and name lists from various archives.
 * Use the OCR Surname Database (optical character recognition) to search for your ancestor's surname. The search of the database is done using Cyrillic spellings, but the search form allows you to enter the name in Latin letters and automatically transliterates it into Cyrillic for you. This database is comprised of information from business directories, address calendars, telephone books, typed name lists, and name lists from books and from archives.

Maps of your Ancestor's Town
Miriam Weiner's website offers select historical maps of Belarus, as well as a variety of historical images from towns in Belarus that may prove useful in your family history. Maps will help you locate places where your ancestors lived and give you context for the records you are using. Maps can identify political boundaries, place names, geographical features, cemeteries, synagogues, etc. Historical maps are especially useful for understanding boundary changes or finding communities that no longer exist.

Miriam Weiner's Archive Database
Use the Archive Database to locate what records exist for your ancestor's town, and where to find them. Search for the name of your ancestor's locality, and the database will provide results for known surviving records from that location, and where the records are held. Remember to adjust the search criteria for Soundex options or spelling variations.

This database contains documents such as army/recruit lists, family lists and census records, Jewish vital records (birth, marriage, death, divorce), immigration documents, voter and tax lists, property and notary records, Holocaust documents, police files, and pogrom documents, school records, occupation lists, local government, and hospital records.

Accessing the Records
For information about the repositories referred to on Miriam Weiner's Archive Database, see the Archives in Eastern Europe page which includes archival contact information. Contact/visit the respective repository for details on their holdings. For instructions on contacting archives and accessing records, see Q11 on this Routes to Roots page. For help writing in inquiry in Russian, see the Russia Archives and Libraries page. document of Archival Codes.

Belarus Jewish Records
See the Belarus Jewish Records page for more information and resources for accessing genealogical records in Belarus.

Belarus Holocaust Records
Use the new Holocaust Lists Database at Miriam Weiner's Routes to Roots to determine the location of Holocaust documents such as victim and survivor lists, survival testimonials and more. Holocaust Collections included in this database are from select towns in Belarus, Lithuania, Moldova, Poland, and Ukraine.

Database entries include information about archive the records are stored in and the archival file number. This information will help you locate the original record in the archive.

To determine what holocaust lists may survive, simply search the database by town. Click on an entry to view additional information about the record and its location. After you have determined that Holocaust documents for your town are available, consider searching your surname in the Surname Database. Miriam Weiner has digitized many Holocaust lists and they are accessible through the Surname Database. Keep in mind that this is an ongoing project, so check back often for new information and updates.

Historical Photos
The Image Database on Miriam Weiner's website contains photographs and postcard views of many towns and cities throughout Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Lithuania, Poland, and other select countries dating back to the early 1900s. These include pre-WWI and current town views, photos of synagogues, Jewish cemeteries, and Holocaust memorials.