Forward awarded Stern Grant at IAJGS Jewish Genealogy Conference

The grant will support translation and online access to genealogical records in the Forward’s archive

The Forverts’ “Seeking Relatives” ads are a valuable resource for Jewish genealogists, offering insight into the journeys taken by Jewish immigrants and their families.

By Forward Staff August 24, 2022

This post is a news release from the Forward’s communications department

The Forward has been awarded the Rabbi Malcolm H. Stern Grant at the 42nd Annual IAJGS (International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies) International Conference on Jewish Genealogy, held virtually Aug. 21-25.

With grant funding from IAJGS, the Forward will partner with JewishGen to find, translate and publish genealogical records from the Forward’s “Seeking Relatives” advertisements, published between 1920 and 1960. These listings helped Eastern European Jews get in touch with family members in the United States, and assisted Holocaust survivors in their efforts to reconnect with missing relatives.

The project’s goal will be to publish the names of individuals mentioned in those advertisements, along with the sparse but valuable data that accompanied their names, in a free, searchable database on JewishGen.org.

Forward archivist Chana Pollack will lead the project.

The Stern Grant honors the late Rabbi Malcolm H. Stern, widely considered to be the dean of American Jewish genealogy, and his efforts to increase the availability of resources for Jewish genealogical research.

The IAJGS is an umbrella organization of more than 90 Jewish genealogical societies worldwide. The IAJGS’s vision is of a worldwide network of Jewish genealogical research organizations and partners working together as one coherent, effective and respected community, enabling people to succeed in researching Jewish ancestry and heritage. Find the IAJGS at: www.iajgs.org and on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/iajgsjewishgenealogy.

The Forward’s staff contributors are listed in our masthead.

News releases are written by the Forward’s communications staff on behalf of The Forward Association, its nonprofit publisher.

About the Forward

The Forward delivers incisive coverage of the issues, ideas and institutions that matter to American Jews. Its rigorous reporting and balanced commentary on politics, arts and culture have won numerous awards year after year and made it the most influential nationwide Jewish media outlet.

Founded in 1897 as a Yiddish-language daily, the Forward soon became a national paper, the most widely read Jewish newspaper anywhere. The English Forward was launched as a weekly in 1990 and moved to fully digital publication in 2019. (Read more)

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