And they said it couldn’t be done! In less than six years the IGRA database team, headed by Rose Feldman and assisted by Daniel Horowitz, Carol Hoffman and a league of volunteers have made available to the public over 1,000,000 records relating to Eretz Israel from the Ottoman Empire through the British Mandate to the State of Israel.
The preview of the database release will give you an overview of what has been released this month. We encourage you to view it for additional insights for this release.
Here are the details of what you may expect to find on the fourteen databases represented in this release:
Tombstones of the Jewish Cemetery of Salonica, Greece – (images) The basis of this database is from a book written by Michael Molho found in the National Library of Israel. The images are of the index of tombstones found in this book.
Palestine Marriage/Divorce Certificates – (images) We are adding 430 additional certificates to this database. It is possible to have the following information: name, name of parent, occupation of parent, witness name and occupation, date, locality, address, age, religion, occupation. These are part of a project in cooperation with the Israel State Archives.
1928-1931 Petah Tikva Marriages & Divorces – (images) This set of records is in Hebrew and comes from the Petach Tikva History Archives and Museum. There is the date, locality and status of each individual.
1931-1940 Jerusalem Marriages – (no images) – These records represent an update to the existing database of Marriages in the ledgers of the Sephardi and Oriental Communities, Jerusalem found in the Jerusalem Municipal Archives. It contains names of brides and grooms with names of their fathers and the date of their marriage. The ledger belongs to the Council of the Sephardi and Oriental Communities, Jerusalem, who have given permission to publish this database.
1939-1945: The Dublin Committee for the Relief of the Russian, Polish & Palestine Jews – (images) This database is in English and contains the names and amounts of those who contributed. The information comes from the British Library.
1940 Prohibited Immigrants – (images) This list of over 1600 people who were not granted permission to come in to Palestine in 1940. The information included has name, gender, age and nationality. IGRA received this information from the Israel State Archives.
1941 Members of Histadrut HaMorim (Teachers’ Union) – (images) This list of over 2,700 teachers, all members of the Teachers’ Union is from the Tel Aviv University. Besides the names of the teacher there may also be the locality, neighborhood and name of the educational institution.
1942 Enlistment to the British Army from Petah Tikva – (images) In addition to the names you may find the address, locality, date and unit/squadron. This file is an update to one published earlier. The data comes from the Petach Tikva History Archives and Museum.
1946-1947 HaShomer HaTzair Youth – (images) This group of close to 800 people were organized in Poland and ready to come to Palestine under the auspices of the HaShomer HaTzair Youth. The information may include name, date, birth year, locality, country, gender and comments. The file was located at Yad Ya’ari Archives, Givat Haviva.
1948 Municipal Employees in Petah Tikva – (images) This database is also built from material at the Petach Tikva History Archives and Museum. For the workers included in this database you may find the locality, birth year, occupation and place of employment.
September, 1949 Operation On Eagles Wings – (no images) More than 8,600 names are added now to this growing database done in cooperation with the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC). These immigrants came from Yemen in an amazing effort to save this important population.
1954 Name Changes – (images) The official government publication – Yalkut HaPirsumim – regularly published the name changes. The former name, the new name (in both cases first and last names), the locality and the date are mentioned. This is an update to our database of name changes.
1963 Telephone Directory – Vol. 2 – (images) Using the CSI (Crowd Sourced Indexing) program our volunteers have made available the people listed in this volume of the 1963 telephone directory. The phone book is in English. At this time the letters A, E and F have been completed. In the future we will be adding to this database regularly.
2016 Engagements – (no images) The Engagements database is being updated with close to 900 couples engaged in 2016. This information was listed on the internet and can include the name, date, locality, gender, education and status.
We thank all of our volunteers for their hard work and invite you to join those using CSI to transcribe documents in order to make the databases available on the IGRA website. If you are interested in working on this project – please click on this link and be sure to choose The Israel Genealogy Research Association (IGRA) when you are asked to “Select a Group” in the registration process.
