Search the collections at the Center for Jewish History
Center for Jewish History: General Information
Lillian Goldman Reading Room
Ackman and Ziff Family Genealogy Institute
Search CJH’s online catalog or in box at the right for general histories, yizkor books, memoirs, diaries, photographs, and other materials on the Jews of Belarus. Below is a selection of resources available at CJH.
Minsk Jewish Community Council 1825-1921. Records include registers of births, marriages and deaths, tax rolls, applications from individuals to avoid army service, and membership lists and contribution lists to major synagogues in Minsk. YIVO Archives RG 12 This entire collection can be viewed online by clicking on the Container List links.
Nadav, Mordekhai, Mark Mirsky, and Murray J. Rosman. The Jews of Pinsk, 1506 to 1880. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008. YIVO Library 000124495
Rosenstein, Neil, Dov Weber, and Samuel Z. Weltsman. Avne Zikaron = Stones of Remembrance. Elizabeth, NJ: The Computer Center for Jewish Genealogy, 1999. Genealogy Institute CS 873 .R67 1999
Sallis, Dorit, Marek Web, and Project Judaica. Jewish Documentary Sources in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus: A Preliminary List. New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1996. Genealogy Institute DS 135 .R9 J4 1996
Spector, Shmuel, and Bracha Freundlich. Lost Jewish Worlds: The Communities of Grodno, Lida, Olkieniki, Vishay. Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1996. YIVO Library 000089603
Landsmanshaftn Records: Landsmanshaftn are societies formed by Jewish immigrants from the same villages, towns, and cities in Central and Eastern Europe. Landsmanshaftn provided immigrants with formal and informal social networks, and members helped one another with financial needs such as medical care and burial plots. YIVO Archives has many collections of landsmanshaftn records, including some from towns in Belarus. Some, but not all, of these collections contain membership and burial records that may be relevant to your genealogical research. To locate all of YIVO’s collections for a particular town, click here and type Control + F, enter the town name, and click next until you have seen all matches.***
***You may need to try different spellings of town names. To find spelling variations for a given town, see the “Finding Your Ancestral Town” section above.
Yizkor Books: YIVO Library has a large collection of Yizkor books, including some from towns in Belarus.