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

There are vital records from the intra-war era, applications for Polish citizenship, lists of those who were emigrating from the area, drivers' license applications, real estate documents, and more.  Some files are on individual people; others are lists or other information about community members.  And some even have photos!

The identity card (with photo!) of Boruch-Mojsue Zemel, son of Chaim and Dwojra from 1931

So how do you find and navigate this incredible repository?  The main page can be found here.  Once there, scroll down to see the English inventory (a blue button), which was painstakingly put together by Jude Richter, who tipped me off to this collection.  Search that extensive list for your family's towns and surnames, using Polish-era spellings.  Once you find an entry that might be of use, make note of the column beginning with "F" and the following column, recording the numbers from those two columns.

Once you have those three numbers, look at the window to the right of the document images.  Find the correct Fond (the number after the "F" in the inventory) and click to open all possible sub-entries.  Then find the Opis below the fond that corresponds to the number aftter "op" in the inventory.  And then finally find the correct Delo, which is the number in the fourth column of the inventory.  You can then scroll through all pages of that file and hopefully find something of interest to your research.

Happy hunting--and let me know if you find anything!

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