Europe

If you do not know the town of origin for your ancestors, research the vast Ancestry collections. Try searching passenger lists and naturalization records in the Immigration Collection. These records often include information about town of recent residence and/or birth in the Old Country. You can also find clues to immigration in other records-such as census records, which often list when individuals immigrated and from which country, as well as the country of birth of their parents. If possible, enlist the knowledge of your family, who may know more about your family origins.

If you still cannot determine the town of ancestry, your search will be more difficult, but not impossible.

Once you have determined the town of ancestry, go to the Ancestry Jewish Family History Collections homepage and select the "Europe" tab. You can search all our Jewish European record collections from this page. You can use the "Jewish Name Variations" aid to discover alternative spellings of your ancestor’s name. The main search box also employs a Soundex system that will search for common name variations. The results will include the potential spelling variants of the same name.

A list of some of the European Jewish record collections available on our site is located below the main search box on the "Europe" tab. Click "More" to see a list of all the Jewish European record collections available. Besides using the main search box to search all of the European collections at once, you may search in an individual European record collection of interest to you.

If successful, you have found records of your ancestors in the Old Country.

About Gary Mokotoff

www.avotaynu.com/gmokotoff.html

Gary Mokotoff is an author, lecturer, and leader of Jewish genealogy. He has been recognized by three major genealogical groups for his achievements. He is the first person to receive the Lifetime Achievement Award of the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies (IAJGS); and is the recipient of the Grahame T. Smallwood Award of the Association of Professional Genealogists, and the Rabbi Malcolm H. Stern Humanitarian Award of the Federation of Genealogical Societies. Mokotoff is also known for his application of computers to genealogy. Among his accomplishments is co-authorship of the Daitch-Mokotoff soundex system; the JewishGen Family Finder, a database of ancestral towns and surnames being researched by some 50,000 Jewish genealogists throughout the world; and the Consolidated Jewish Surname Index.