CEJHG

Country: Ukraine / Germany

Affiliation: Activist and Professional Genealogist

Title: Jewish genealogy sources in Ukrainian Archives, 1795-1917

Abstract: 

Despite the popularity of Jewish genealogical research in the Ukraine, most researchers do not delve into them beyond well-known sources, primarily metrical books of the rabbinates, which have only survived in fragments. Sadly, there’s not many such documents left for most of Jewish settlements in Ukraine, and many researchers simply give up.

However, there are many other archival documents that can give you much more information about Jewish family history in Ukraine. When you receive an answer that there’s nothing left – that’s not the end of the road, but the beginning of a long journey. If you’re lucky and persistent – you might find a lot of information about the families of your interest.

In this article I’ll try to show examples of less-known Jewish genealogical sources in Ukrainian archives. It is based on the personal research that I've been doing for more than 15 years now. This relates to the lands of the former Russian Empire and documents dated from 1795 till 1917.

Country: Israel

Affiliation: Professional Genealogist

Title: Tabula and Other Urban Records in Lviv (18th-20th Centuries)

Abstract: 

This paper examines how addresses appearing in diverse municipal and legal sources can be used to advance genealogical research and to situate family histories within the broader urban and legal evolution of Lviv (Lemberg). Covering the period from the late eighteenth century to the eve of the Second World War, it presents a series of case studies demonstrating how an address can serve as the central thread connecting individuals, families, and institutions across changing political and administrative regimes.

Rather than focusing on archival discovery, the paper emphasizes interpretation—how to read and correlate heterogeneous materials such as vital records, address books, property-owner lists, building permits, censuses, maps, and the Tabula registers. Each source captures a different facet of how residence, ownership, and identity were defined within successive legal frameworks. The Tabula, in particular, records transactions, encumbrances, and inheritances according to Austrian and later Polish law; understanding its legal language—succession, hypothecation, servitude—is essential to decoding the familial and social relationships implicit in these entries.

By treating the address as both a genealogical clue and a legal-historical artifact, the paper bridges family research and scholarly historiography. It argues that tracing the life of an address over time transforms scattered references into coherent microhistories of place. This approach not only refines genealogical reconstruction but also contributes to understanding how property, mobility, and social continuity operated in East-Central European cities under evolving legal orders.

Country: Hungary

Affiliation: Professional Genealogist

Title: ‘Strange’ vital records in Hungary

Abstract: 

Teaching general research techniques is great but there are cases when even a professional genealogist raises eyebrows… 

In this talk, I will by trying to show you a couple of examples of such vital records (births, marriages and deaths) that, for some reason, differ from the ‘usual’ ones. Either because there are multiple entries of the same event, or because some of them are totally controversial. Or because you found a record at some totally strange place (any many more).

I would like to show you how to interpret these with out-of-the-box and creative thinking. Recommended for everyone who is looking for some thought-provoking and interactive presentation. Sometimes, there is an answer to these ‘riddles’ and sometimes you can create theories only.

Country: Hungary/Finland

Affiliation: Jewish Theological Seminary - University of Jewish Studies, Hungary

Title: Between Vienna and Budapest: The Sternbergs and the Schlesingers

Abstract: 

This paper analyses the intertwined histories of two Jewish families, the Sternbergs and the Schlesingers, whose commercial and familial networks linked Vienna and Budapest in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Drawing on genealogical sources, business registries, and archival correspondence, the study reconstructs how kinship ties and regional mobility shaped Jewish participation in Hungary’s emerging urban economy. The Sternbergs’ paternal line originated from Máramarossziget, while by the mid-nineteenth century, most family members had moved to Budapest in search of new professional opportunities.

Josef Sternberg’s (1856-1943) company dealt with Jewish ritual objects, books, and embroidered synagogue textiles. Through his Viennese in-laws, the Schlesinger–Hirschler family, Sternberg gained access to networks of artisans and suppliers that enabled his firm to expand from a modest Judaica shop into a recognized manufacturer. By 1896, his company exhibited at Hungary’s Millennial Exhibition. It supplied gold embroidery for the Hungarian Royal State Railways, an exceptional case of an Orthodox Jewish enterprise successfully operating in both Jewish and non-Jewish spheres.

Among Sternberg’s professional and familial connections, Josef Schlesinger (1872-1933) holds particular significance. Through Sternberg’s wife, Schlesinger was a relative of the Sternberg family and, a direct descendant of Chatam Sofer (1762–1839). Born almost two decades after Josef Sternberg, he represented a younger generation. His firm competed and occasionally collaborated with Sternberg in the preparation of ritual textiles. Schlesinger’s workshop eventually received one of the most prestigious commissions of its time, namely the production of the white inaugurational parochet for the New Synagogue of Szeged, one of the most significant synagogues in Hungary.

The paper combines genealogical reconstruction with social and economic history to demonstrate how family-based enterprise functioned as a vehicle of acculturation and mobility. It places the Sternberg workshop within broader patterns of Jewish entrepreneurship, gendered labor, and transnational cooperation in Central Europe.

Country: Israel

Affiliation: Bar-Ilan University

Title: Inheriting Authority: The Hatam Sofer in the Rabbinic Thought of R. Moshe Shmuel Glasner and R. Akiva Glasner

Abstract: 

This paper examines the complex and productive ways in which R. Moshe Shmuel Glasner (1856–1924) and his son R. Akiva Glasner (1864–1956) mobilized the towering image of their great grandfather, the Hatam Sofer, in order to articulate their own halakhic, exegetical, and ideological vision. Their citations reveal a nuanced dynamic that combines reverence, interpretive independence, and strategic self-positioning.

R. Moshe Shmuel Glasner repeatedly frames the Hatam Sofer as an almost infallible authority whose “error is distant in reality,” yet he allows himself to revisit difficult passages, resolve contradictions, and offer alternative readings. His formulations show a double movement. On the one hand he insists on the sanctity and binding force of the Hatam Sofer’s rulings. On the other hand he positions himself as the legitimate heir who can clarify, harmonize, or even correct apparent tensions in the earlier writings. This mode of engagement constructs a worldview in which fidelity to the ancestral authority coexists with intellectual autonomy.

R. Akiva Glasner intensifies this model. In his introductions and later writings he explicitly traces his entire halakhic and ideological project to the “well of living waters” of the Hatam Sofer. At the same time he employs the ancestral figure as a protective mantle in moments of conflict, portraying the spiritual capital of the lineage as a shield and as a legitimating force for his own innovative positions, including his striking views on the religious value of agricultural labor in the Land of Israel.

By analyzing these patterns of citation, rhetoric, and self-narration, the paper offers a case study of how modern rabbinic authorities construct lineage as an intellectual resource and deploy inherited memory to shape evolving halakhic worldviews.

Country: France

Affiliation: University Lumière Lyon 2, France

Title: Josef Schlesinger and Moritz Burian, pioneers of plurilingual editions between Vienna and Budapest

Abstract: 

Among the amount of documents found in the Phalsbourg Genizah in Moselle (east of France) were discovered a few documents published in Central Europe, especially in Vienna and Budapest. These books: a bilingual Haggadah shel Pessah (Hebrew-German) published by the Josef Schlesinger Publishing House in Vienna in 1888, and two booklets in German in Hebrew types (gathering a newspaper’s series and the history of antisemitism in Prague) edited by Moritz Burian in Budapest at the end of the 19th Century.

Their paths followed the area’s history: the Schlesinger were originally from Bratislava, the Publishing House was founded by Joseph Schlesinger in Vienna in 1858, the office was in the Seitenstettergasse near the Stadttempel before opening a branch in Budapest in Király utca. The catalog contained a large sample of languages. In parallel, Moritz Burian opened his own Publishing House in Budapest where he published books (in Hebrew, Yiddish and German in Hebrew and Latin types) and newspapers (German in Hebrew letters), in collaboration especially with Moritz Ehrentheil (whose address indicated in some publication is also in Király utca), in Váci utca, close to the Dohány Synagogue. Burian’s period of activity is between 1877 to 1892, but some of his publications were on sale in Western Europe, as in Frankfurt am Main, in 1929.

These personal itineraries resonated with the global history of Central Europe during the 19th and the 20th Century. In 1938, after the Anschluss, the heiress, Rosa Schlesinger, stayed in Vienna. She was later deported to Theresienstadt and died in 1943. The Budapest’s side managed to escape the city after the Nazis invasion of Hungary to establish themselves and their business in Tel Aviv which is still existing pursuing their legacy.

Country: Hungary

Affiliation: Eötvös Loránd University Research Center for the Humanities, Institute of History

Title: Kinship, Business, and Adaptability: Jewish Wholesalers in the Early Nineteenth-Century Habsburg Monarchy

Abstract: 

This paper explores how Jewish family businesses in the early nineteenth-century Habsburg Monarchy navigated the shifting boundaries between war and peace through adaptive business and kinship strategies. Focusing on Moses Lackenbacher & Co. (1810–1814) and M. Lackenbacher & Co. (1814–1837), it examines how army provisioning during the wars of 1792–1815 and the subsequent diversification of the company’s portfolio in peacetime were sustained through kinship relations. Moses Lackenbacher & Co. conducted wholesaling with its headquarters in Kanizsa—a town in southwest Hungary—without formal incorporation, but to register before the Niederösterreichisches Merkantil- und Wechselgericht a partnership agreement was required, which Moses Lackenbacher, his sons, and another local Jewish merchant concluded in 1810, establishing a company with headquarters in Kanizsa and a branch in Wien.

Moses Lackenbacher received the wholesale privilege and became a member of the Viennese Privilegiertes Großhandlungsgremium. After his death in 1814, his sons Heinrich and Bernhard founded M. Lackenbacher & Co., obtaining the same privilege and status, and their partnership agreement was repeatedly prolonged until 1837.

After the wars, provisioning continued on a smaller scale, but cooperation with the state took new forms such as the lottery business. Meanwhile, capital accumulated from provisioning began to move into the private sector, especially banking. The business entailed not only spatial mobility but also the reconfiguration of kinship networks and processes of social, cultural, and legal transformation. The paper compares the transgenerational business strategies within the kinship and presents how their social, cultural, and legal positions changed. Based on Austrian and Hungarian archival material, it argues that the business success of Jewish wholesalers depended not only on adaptability but also on kinship as a crucial human resource.

Country: United States
Affiliation: Author and Financial Entrepreneur

Title:  Jewish banking, merchant, and rabbinic networks in the Habsburg Empire and Tsarist Russia

Abstract: 

This paper examines how Jewish banking, merchant, and rabbinic families in the Habsburg Empire and Tsarist Russia used genealogical strategies to construct resilient transimperial networks of trade, credit, and religious authority in the former Polish-Lithuanian territories between 1770 and 1850. Drawing on extensive archival and genealogical sources the study traces families such as Gunzburg, Rafalovich, Zbytkower, Halberstam, Meisel, and Katzenellenbogen, showing how intermarriage served as a deliberate mechanism for preserving capital flows, sustaining credit relationships, and linking mercantile enterprise with rabbinic legitimacy.

Marriage alliances enabled families to maintain commercial corridors across political boundaries, connecting Vienna, Kraków, Warsaw, Berdichev, Odessa, and Lemberg. These kinship structures proved crucial during periods of economic instability, including the Partitions of Poland, Napoleonic Wars, and financial panics such as that of 1837, when families pooled resources through interrelated networks to stabilize operations in trade and monopolies, particularly in grain, salt, and timber.

Beyond commerce, these networks facilitated ideological exchange between Hasidism and the Haskalah, revealing how familial strategies simultaneously functioned as social, economic, and intellectual infrastructure. By foregrounding genealogical linkages as analytical tools rather than anecdotal context, the study demonstrates that marriage and kinship patterns were central to Jewish social mobility, resilience, and transregional influence.

This research highlights the methodological and interpretive value of genealogical data in early modern Jewish history, offering new insights into how family networks operated as enduring channels of economic power, social capital, and cultural exchange in Central Europe.

Country: Poland

Title: One Family - Many Stories: The Gartenbergs and the Diversity of Galician Jewish Life

Abstract: 

The history of the Jewish community in the Habsburg Empire is a multifaceted subject that requires further exploration.

Galicia, which was governed by the Habsburg dynasty, was a highly heterogeneous territory in terms of its resources, development, and the nationalities of its inhabitants. Nevertheless, Galicia is considered to have been the most backward area of the Empire, both civilizationally and ideologically.

Using the example of the Jewish Gartenberg family from Drohobych in Eastern Galicia, who in the first generation became oil entrepreneurs with tremendous financial success, I aim to trace various aspects of Jewish life in Galicia, encompassing several aspects that, among other things, highlight differences between the Gartenberg family and their environment and, in a broader context, perceptions of Galicia, though their story touches upon networks and business development, migration, relations with other religious groups, etc. 

Moses Gartenberg was called the King of Galician Oil, one of the wealthiest in the country, so powerful that his company in Drohobych was visited by an Austrian archduke, and he himself aspired to a noble title. From their profits, they established a foundation that funded shelters and care homes, thereby modernizing the system of care for children and the elderly in Drohobych. They became an important pillar for the Jewish community, as the community, though numerous, was unable to meet social needs. They originated from Drohobych but also resided in Vienna, Kraków, Bucharest, and the United States. 

Through the example of the Gartenberg family network, I would like to illustrate the fate of an atypical Jewish family from impoverished Eastern Galicia that entered European high society in the context of the cultural, economic, and intellectual transformations of that era. Such an approach to the subject enables a multifaceted analysis of personal histories against the backdrop of the general history of at least two historical periods and states, while incorporating research on minorities in the region and sketching a different picture of the Jewish community in Galicia from the general narrative. 

In my research, I utilize diverse sources: archival materials, press, memoirs, and testimonies, which present the subject from various methodological perspectives.

Country: Hungary

Affiliation: University of Szeged

Title: Socio-economic mobility of the Munk family

Abstract: 

The focus of my presentation is on the socio-economic mobility of the Munk family over several generations. Through this study, the extended family's case study is used to examine the constant models present in the family's life, or indeed the changes to these models, and to place them in a historical context, covering a period of around 200 years from the modern era to 1945.

The Munk family can trace its roots back to Moravia; they settled in the western part of Hungary, in the town of Parutza, in the 18th century. Migratory movements remained prevalent among the family members until the second half of the 19th century, resulting in their presence in all regions of the country. Their settlement locations, participation in education, marriage patterns, and the legal and economic opportunities available to Jews in Hungary all influenced the social status and economic opportunities of successive generations. The lecture seeks to answer the question of how the challenges to religion, the expectations of the Jewish community and the Hungarian state, affected the decisions of the family members. Did the family members' economic roles follow the patterns observed in the Jewish community during this period, and to what extent did they differ from them? How similar and different are the economic and social models of family members living in different regions of Hungary?

The Munk family's social and economic mobility is examined using the family's genealogical database. The family tree data, which covers around 2,600 individuals, is based partly on the 19th and 20th century research of family members (Bernát Munkácsi's genealogical database, Elemér Pápai's family trees), Meir Avraham Munk's autobiographical writings, and my own research based on archival sources.

Country: Netherlands

Affiliation: Author

Title:  What’s in a name: the evolution of a family in Bohemia, Vienna, and Budapest

Abstract: 

The paper traces the history of the magyarized name Tánczos (1902). Vital records in Budapest lead to the Pilsen Region in Bohemia. A confusing Familiant Book entry from Praschno Augezd states that an ancestor was called 'Dezerles oder Tenzerles Wolf', that he was a second born son and that his father was called 'Benjamin Jakob, schon geboren Josef'. After long research, in vital records and censuses, it turned out that the word ‘schon’ wasn’t connected to Benjamin Jakob, but to Wolf himself. Because of the Familiant Laws, he had changed his name. In 1801, aged 51, he finally received his marriage permit and married a 19 year old bride. After examining a gravestone on chewra.com, it is highly likely that Wolf’s father also had a different name. A chewra kadisha book from Praschno Augezd named Wolf Tenzerles 'mohreh' (teacher, rabbi). Vital records showed that his sons were local rabbis in Bohemia.

In the second half of the 19th century, their families migrated to Prague, Budapest, and Vienna. One of the migrants was Friedrich Tenzerles. In antisemitic Vienna, newspapers were printing jokes about his surname. He changed the name to Tezner and converted to catholicism in order to become Hofrat at the Verwaltungsgerichtshof. In his autobiography 'Jugend in Wien', Arthur Schnitzler asserts that his former house tutor Friedrich wouldn’t have been appointed Hofrat had he kept his surname Tenzerles. The paper describes how several name changes within one family, in Bohemia, in Vienna and in Budapest, all occured under socio-political influences.

Country: Sweden

Affiliation: JGS of Sweden

Title: ‌Jewish migration within the Austrian Empire – A Micro History

Abstract: 

Based on a study of seven Grossman siblings, all born early 19th century in a small town in Moravia, I traced them to different places in Hungary, where they came to form families and live the rest of their lives.

The sources in Moravia have a rather different character from the sources in Hungary. The Moravian sources start earlier and are many times richer in content than the corresponding Hungarian sources. In some cases, DNA tests have also contributed to finding members of the group of siblings after they left Moravia for Hungary. I will also show how information about witnesses at weddings and births/circumcisions helps to

identify the group of siblings as the siblings' first names and last name Grossman was in no way unique. Contributing to success in my research has also been collaborating with other genealogists, not least on the site geni.com.

Country: Austria

Affiliation: CEJHG

Title: Summer places and spas in old Austria

Country: Austria

Affiliation: Department of History, University of Graz

Title: Parallel paths, but shared data. The Nationale as a Digital Resource (not only) for Jewish Genealogy and history

Abstract: 

The Nationale is a mass source of singular value.

Originally designed as a simple enrollment form, it holds extraordinary potential for researching the history of universities in the 19th and early 20th centuries, as well as for genealogical research.

Completed anew by students each semester, it contains not only information on their place of birth, language, religion, gender, age, address, and social background, but also lists the courses for which they registered. Its clear tabular format was developed to manage the rising flood of data, for by around 1900 more than 6,000 students were enrolled at the University of Vienna, and even at the smaller universities of the Habsburg Monarchy—such as Graz, Lviv, Kraków, or Innsbruck—between 1,000 and 2,000 people were studying. The sheer mass of enrollment forms generated each semester meant that the Nationale, as a source, could previously only be evaluated selectively using analog means. Its great potential still lies largely untapped.

A project of mine is dedicated to its full-text digital processing using the University of Graz in the period from 1885 to 1925 as a case study. I have already completed a prototype, the evaluation of the year 1900.

Through full-text processing and the digital linking of more than 1,000 student forms, it becomes possible to trace for each individual student the environment in which he or she spent this particular period of life—where he or she lived, with whom he or she frequently sat in seminars, and what social circles may have emerged as a result.

On a meta-level, these data are highly relevant to questions of multilingualism at universities, women’s history, social conditions, and the religious composition of the student body. At the level of the individual form, they illuminate the life-world of each student and thus serve as a rich source for genealogists.

I would be pleased to present at the conference the prototypical digital processing of the Nationale at the University of Graz and the advantages of this model for genealogical research—specifically, in this case, using the example of Jewish students. At the same time, the digital processing of the entire collection enables meta-level insights into migration, social and regional origins, and the living conditions of Jewish students in Graz. The source collection can thus be used in both directions at the intersection of Jewish genealogy and Jewish history—very much in the spirit of the conference motto: Parallel Paths, Shared Past.

Country: Czech Republic

Affiliation: Department of History and Archival Studies, Faculty of Arts, Charles University

Title: Doctors of the Czech and German Charles-Ferdinand University (1882–1939)

Abstract: 

In the second half of the 18th century, the reforms of Maria Theresa brought significant changes to the lives of the Jewish population in the Habsburg Monarchy. However, it was not until the reign of Joseph II that a fundamental shift occurred in the inclusion of Jews in the state-organized educational system. From January 12, 1782, Jews were allowed to enroll in philosophy, medicine, and law at universities within the Habsburg Monarchy, including the University of Prague.

In 1882, the Charles-Ferdinand University was divided into a Czech and a German section based on the language of instruction. The German university, in particular, became a major center of study for Jewish students, with a high proportion of them enrolled in the faculties of law and medicine, and to a lesser extent, in the Faculty of Arts. At the same time, the university had a significant number of Jewish professors, many Jewish or originally Jewish professors that converted to Christianity became (till the end of Austrian Monarchy) their faculties’ deans and three of them were even elected rectors.

With a few exceptions, existing historiography lacks comprehensive analyses of university students and graduates of Jewish origin. This gap is evident not only in domestic but also in international research. The Archive of Charles University stores a comprehensive fund of catalogs of individual faculties that include all university students and the registry books of doctors of both Universities. These catalogs were supposed to provide a detailed record of all students and doctors. For the period from 1882 to the closure of the Czech universities, the space opens up for mapping the fates of Jewish graduates (mostly very turbulent during the Second World War).

Country: Hungary

Affiliation: Eötvös Loránd Univerity, Department of Assyriology and Hebrew

Title: Family Burial Plots in the Old Váci Road Cemetery – Early Monuments of the Emerging Jewish Middle Class in Pest

Abstract: 

The first Jewish cemetery owned by the Jewish community of Pest itself was established in 1810 at the intersection of today’s Váci and Dózsa György Streets, which at the time laid outside the boundaries of the quickly growing city. Used for more than six decades, the cemetery was expanded several times, but as Pest grew and the burial ground became overcrowded, it was finally closed in 1874. Exhumations began a few years after that, and the remains were reburied first in the Salgótarjáni Street Cemetery, and later in the Kozma Street Cemetery, where the process was completed by 1910.

The burial register, started in 1853, allows the reconstruction of the internal layout of the cemetery and reflects the transformation of burial customs over time. In its early decades, burials followed the chronological order of deaths, with reserved spaces for rabbis, community leaders, and members of the Chevra Kadisha. From the 1840s onward, however, a new practice emerged: the creation of family burial plots (Familien Plätze / פאמיליען פלאטצע).

These plots were purchased in advance by prominent families, who were buried in separate, but adjoining graves, mirroring the self-image and social structure of an increasingly affluent urban Jewish middle class. Like the rows reserved for rabbis or the Chevra Kadisha, family plots were exempt from overburial, symbolizing both status and permanence.

Those buried here represent the elite of early Jewish Pest – prominent merchants, physicians, and public figures. Since many of their tombstones were later relocated to newer cemeteries, the combination of epigraphic evidence, burial registers, and contemporary press sources enables a nuanced understanding of this formative stratum of Jewish urban society. My presentation re-examines this layer of society through the lens of family burial plots, complemented by a wide range of contemporary sources, offering fresh and previously overlooked perspectives on the social and cultural dynamics of early Jewish Pest.

Country: Czech Republic

Affiliation: TAMUS - Tachov Archives & Museum Society

Title: Rural Jewish cemeteries in Czech Republic

Abstract: 

After a long-term research of European Jewish gravestones and Hebrew gravestone inscriptions, a database containing 32,000 Jewish gravestone records has been provided by TAMUS, connected to the international database of the JEWISHGEN and accessible for further genealogical research. With such collection of the epigraphical data, we are able to provide statistics and chronological analysis of old rural Jewish cemeteries, preserved in the area of former Austria-Hungary.

Based on a recent analysis of the large database of the Jewish cemeteries, this presentation gives a comparison of rural Jewish cemeteries concerning the exploitation progress of the cemetery area. This research was applied on many of old rural Jewish cemeteries in the Czech Republic, using a color scale to determine the age of gravestones. By comparison of the chronological maps, many interesting historical facts appeared, which are not mentioned in archival sources, e. g. extension phases of the cemetery area, special Kohanim's sections, woman sections in different centuries etc. This research follows on from the "Inserted Row Theory", presented in IAJGS conferences and published in Avotaynu. In 2025, a completely new method has been created, based on geodetic survey and potent to provide a much more exact and complete overview of various exploitation structures of old Jewish cemeteries.

Country: Slovakia

Affiliation: JewishGen's JOWBR volunteers

Title: Documentation of Jewish cemeteries in western Slovakia

Abstract: 

Mapping of Jewish cemeteries, their occurrence and location throughout Slovakia was the first stage of their exhaustive documentation in the past. The next part of the work is the process of creating preserved tombstones detailed documents, the so-called passports. Due to geographic proximity, we have decided to start systematic documentation of cemeteries in western Slovakia. Tombstones suffered from varying levels of devastation and robbery. The number of preserved tombstones in individual cemeteries ranges from few pieces to hundreds of tombstones depending on the size of the Jewish community.

This paper presents the results of documentation work carried out at several cemeteries; we selected Gbely, Borsky Mikulás, Kuklov, and Trstín. The documentation covers the initial cleaning of the tombstone sites, the cleaning of the tombstones themselves, and their subsequent photographing. The result of the work is always the drafting of a map showing the location of the tombstones in the cemetery, the collection of information about the buried persons listed on their tombstones (names and dates of death, often also names of parents and spouses, possibly also dates of birth and other personal data) and following verification and addition of information by studying registry records, taking them down documentation, and where language skills allow, translating the texts into Slovak and English.

Documentation of Jewish cemeteries in western Slovakia is a contribution to the discovery of local history, a part of the study of the history of Jews in Slovakia, and a source for genealogical research and learning family history.

Country: Austria

Affiliation: University of Vienna

Title: Motivations of Holocaust Survivors and Descendants to Seek Austrian Citizenship

Abstract: 

This paper employs interpretive sociology to examine why Holocaust survivors and their descendants seek Austrian citizenship under the 2019 and 2022 Amendments to the Austrian Citizenship Act.To examine this phenomenon, I conducted four semi-structured guided interviews based on Helfferich’s methodological framework, supplemented by three additional interviews sourced from the book Wir und Österreich – Austria and Us. Mayring’s qualitative content analysis was employed to derive insights.

For some, citizenship serves pragmatic purposes – offering legal and economic advantages. For others, it carries symbolic meaning: reclaiming identity, honoring family history or seeking reconciliation. These motivations are further shaped by generational differences and personal histories. 

Furthermore, the study highlights how the act of acquiring citizenship is a reciprocal process that may reshapes one’s relationship with Austria. It can reinforce or challenge existing notions of belonging, influence self-perception, and, in some cases, prompt engagement with Austrian culture, language, and politics. As the first study of its kind, it offers new insight into Austria’s collective memory and identity.

Country: Romania

Affiliation: "Alexandru Ioan Cuza" University of Iasi

Title: Aryanisation and Legal Precarity in Post-Anschluss Vienna: The Case of Friedrich Bleier

Abstract: 

In 2019-2020, in anticipation of the proposed (and subsequently adopted) changes to the Austrian Citizenship Law which would allow the re-naturalization of descendants of Austrian victims of persecution by the NSDAP, I undertook genealogical research in archives in Austria, Czechia, and Canada regarding the emigration of my family from Vienna to Shanghai. During the course of this research, I uncovered a large collection of legal and economic documents regarding my great-great-grandfather, Friedrich Bleier (1879–1962), and his Vienna-based wool company, Friedrich Bleier & Co. What arose from these documents was that Friedrich, a Bohemian-born, German-speaking Jew, who had relocated to Vienna in 1896 and was naturalized Austrian after 1918, had been the subject of several lengthy legal processes following the annexation of Austria (“Anschluss”) by Nazi Germany in March 1938, relating to his status as a “foreign”-born Jew, his remaining familial connections in Czechoslovakia, and a complicated and disputed Aryanization process of Friedrich’s company and personal assets. Having initially been arrested for attempting to pass his son across the now-German border with Czechoslovakia, released, and then subsequently re-arrested after the scrutinization of his Aryanization forms, Friedrich was prevented from emigrating with his children to England, and was kept in custody for nearly a year due to the repeated postponement of his trial, in part due to the fact that each of his lawyers was dismissed due to their racial status as Jews.

Based on the aforementioned documents, as well as a variety of supporting materials (newspaper articles, post-war pension applications, Meldezettel, etc.), this paper would serve as a case study at the intersection of social, legal, and economic history, focusing primarily on legal issues faced by Jewish business owners in post-Anschluss Vienna. This paper also seeks to address problems of the legacy of migration within the Austro-Hungarian empire, specifically with regards to Bohemian Jews, and its impact on the lives of naturalized Jews under National Socialist rule. This paper would provide a chronological account of the effects of antisemitic legislation in National Socialist Vienna, contributing further to studies in Jewish social history and the legal-economic history of Austria under the Third Reich.

Country: Netherlands

Affiliation: Jewish Heritage Network

Title: From Archives to Ecosystems - A New Vision for Genealogical Data: How a new vision of the European Commission can help us imagine a new world of data for genealogy

Abstract: 

Genealogists today work with massive amounts of data: records scattered across countries, archives, platforms, and legal regimes. Sources come in different formats, follow different rules, and are often hard to access, incomplete, or plain unknown. Research of family histories means navigating fragmentation as much as interpreting sources.

Digital technologies promise to change this. With the rapid advance of AI, many long-standing challenges in genealogical research are likely to be solved soon by machines. But access is a different problem. Data silos, legal restrictions, and institutional realities are not technical obstacles; they are human-made ones.

A response might be emerging from an unexpected direction. The European Commission is launching a new generation of data ecosystems called data spaces: decentralized, collectively governed, standards-based environments designed to enable secure data access and trusted exchange across institutions, communities and borders. The European Memory Data Space (EMDS) project has chosen an ambitious challenge: designing such an ecosystem using digital collections about the Holocaust as the testing groundת which later could be further developed to Jewish history and Jewish genealogy in general.

In this session, we will introduce EMDS and its core ideas, and explore what this approach could mean for genealogists and historians working with digital materials from different periods and locations. Together with the audience, we will brainstorm how a shared, interoperable data ecosystem—if realized—could transform genealogical and historical research.