Western Volhynia (Ukraine) Ancestors? Check This Out?

The United States Holocaust Museum Memorial (USHMM) has a great new research resource for those with ancestors from the part of Volynia that was intra-war Poland, particularly the area around Lutsk, Volhynia, Ukraine (then Łuck, Wołyń, Poland).  There are records for both Jews and non-Jews, and many of the records are pre-WWII.  And because this area was Poland at the time, names are written in Polish, so it is relatively easy for English speakers to navigate.

List of owners of private houses in the city of Łuck, 1930--Including my great-great Uncle Chaim Leib Diamant

Yom HaShoah 2026

Yom Hashoah (Holocaust Memorial Day) starts tomorrow evening.  For the past nine years, I have listed the names of the family members I've found who were murdered in the Holocaust.  In 2020, I listed 454 relatives.  In 2021, I listed 515.  In 2022, I listed 642.  In 2023, I listed 916.  In 2024, I listed 990.  In 2025, I listed 1023. And this year I list 1132.

Every year, this list grows as I find new branches of my family--and then find that multiple members of those branches were killed between 1941 & 1945.  This year I found 109 more people--and many other relatives whose fates are as yet unclear.

Publishing this yearly list is my one small way to make sure they are all remembered--all 1132 of those currently on this list.

Front Row L-R: Yosef Wollich, Mendel Chechman, Devorah Chechman; Back Row L-R: Sara Fine Wollich, Moshe Wollich, Chaike Chechman.  All were murdered in the Holocaust

Ancestral Towns' Facebook Groups

You may belong to a Facebook group that covers your neighborhood or town.  Most of what's discussed probably isn't of interest to people not currently living there--you'll see items for local sale, complaints about traffic or roads, and similar things.  There are usually similar groups for your towns of origin, and I encourage you to join them, because amongst those posts that won't be of interest to you, you might find genealogical gems that you might not have found otherwise.  These aren't those genealogy-specific groups (which are great resources as well) but rather the groups that cover people's day-to-day lives.

Document mentioning my great-great uncle, Hirsh (son of Shimon) Tolchinsky, obtained via a local Facebook group

Felix Archive's Foreigner Files--Including Photos for People From Across Europe

A blog reader (John Durkan) reached out to me to see if I'd ever used Felix Archive's site with Foreigner Files.  I had not, and since this site is out of Antwerp, I never would have thought to look at it given my family's roots being much further east.  But he pointed out how many entries there were for Polish people (40,000, mostly Jewish), so I started looking what it might have for my non-Polish family.  And based on what I've found, this is a site that all of you should look at, no matter where your family lived in Europe.  I found documents, many including photos, some of people who were later killed in the Holocaust.  The documents are rich with genealogical information.

Antwerp Alien File for Mechel Feig

FamilySearch's Full-Text Search

This is a reminder to myself to always check back on resources periodically to see if there's more that has been added--either feature-wise or the underlying data.  I'd played around with FamilySearch's Full Text Search when it first came out, but for someone who didn't have ancestors in the United States before the twentieth century, it wasn't very helpful.  But Amy Cohen recently posted on her blog about a success she'd have.  I was still skeptical given that Amy's family had come to America much earlier than mine, but I was pleasantly surprised that it found records that were not indexed and which I hadn't found before.

Adoption Record for Jacob Soupcoff, 1904.  Via FamilySearch's Full Text Search

Ukrainan Online Records - Use the Duck!

More and more records from Ukrainian archives are being scanned and made accessible online, but they are not all consolidated in one place.  This means that if you have a particular citation within a branch of an archive in Ukraine, you may not realize it's already been scanned and is easily accessible for you from home.  But there's a portal that has made finding online records much more straightforward.

Record found via DuckArchive

New Resource to Find Holocaust Survivors--Often With Family Information

Ancestry recently added two new data sets (with data from the Arolsen Archives but much more nicely indexed and user-friendly to search) that document Holocaust survivors--and sometimes their relatives who didn't survive (including mothers' maiden names).  (As that these are part of the Holocaust collection, they do not require a subscription--but do require a free Ancestry account.)  But there are also some peculiarities with the search functionality when searching for towns of origin.  So what can you potentially find--and how would you search?  And how do you make sure you're not missing critical records because the searches you're using aren't catching what you think they would?

List of "Returning Deportees from Subcarpathian Ukraine."  This list includes mother's full maiden name as well as survivors' birth years.  Searching by mother's maiden name returns this document as well.