Digital tools are making records housed all over the world far more accessible. That was a comment made by American filmmaker, Marcia Rock, during a virtual discussion hosted by the Cape Town Holocaust & Genocide Centre that brought in audiences at all three Holocaust Centres around the country (Cape Town, Johannesburg and Durban).
Following a screening of the fascinating documentary film, Family Treasures: Lost & Found, the discussion with Marcia and Karen Frenkel, an American woman who researched her family’s history in pre-War and wartime Poland and Germany, revealed that the research was made much easier because, today, so many of the records are available in digital format. This means that one does not have to travel to other countries to find documents such as birth and marriage certificates, lists of Nazi deportees from ghettoes, and so on.
While this is true of records housed by museums and archives in the United States, e.g. the Holocaust Museum in Washington and the Yale University Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, it’s less the case where records are located in Eastern Europe. So, travelling to countries like Poland and Lithuania may be crucial if you’re researching your family’s history, but you could certainly start by testing digital records first.
For more information about the fascinating documentary movie, Family Treasures: Lost & Found, see https://familytreasuresfilm.com/about-the-series/. See the trailer here: https://familytreasuresfilm.com/trailer/.
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