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
The website of the Latvia SIG, a special interest group of researchers of Jewish families of Latvian descent, includes several helpful features for locating vital records. The JewishGen Latvia Database incorporates data from various sources, including voter lists, family lists, and enlistment registers. Among those of special interest are: Riga Tax Administration List, with 12,000 entries from 1858-1917 referring to 23,000 individuals; Jewish Inhabitants of Riga 1885/1886, with 2,650 entries referring to 4,000 individuals; Dvinsk/Daugavpils Family List, with over 8,200 entries referring to 14,000 individuals. A search of this database can help you identify records to request from the Latvia State Historical Archives or other sources.
Courland Special Interest Group
JewishGen KehilaLinks, formerly “ShtetLinks,” features web pages which contain information, photos, lists of resources, and much more about places where Jews lived in. There are also various websites for individual towns in Latvia, found here.
Yizkor (memorial) books provide the history of Jewish communities destroyed or ravaged by the Holocaust. Most include photos and biographical articles, and many have name lists of those deported and killed. The JewishGen Yizkor Book Project website has a growing number of English translations of Yizkor books, a Bibliographic Database where you can find all the Yizkor books published on a particular place and which libraries possess each book, a Necrology Index where you can search for names within the lists of Holocaust martyrs of the translated books, and a Master Name Index where you can search for names within other portions of the translated books.*
* To locate Yizkor books available at the Center for Jewish History, see “Sources at the Center for Jewish History” below.
Genealogy Indexer has been digitizing historical directories and making them searchable and browsable on their website. Currently, the only Latvian directory available is the 1940 Latvia Telephone Directory.
The web-based Museum of Family History has a permanent online exhibition “The Synagogues of Europe: Past and Present” featuring pre- and post-World War II postcard photographs of hundreds of European synagogues, many of which are no longer standing or are in a state of disrepair. This exhibition is organized by country and, within each country, by town, listed according to their modern names.
The Latvia Holocaust Jewish Names Project is compiling a database of information on the identities and fates of Latvian Jews (as identified in the 1935 census).
The Jewish Religious Community “Shamir” (Riga, Latvia) is compiling the Jewish Encyclopedia of Latvia, the first encyclopedia specifically devoted to the history of Latvian Jewry and biographies of distinguished members of this community. Currently, an index and sample pages are available in English.