JRI-Poland, also known as Jewish Records Indexing-Poland, is an online resource for Jewish genealogists searching for Jewish vital records for the current and former territories of

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It extends from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Sudetes and Carpathian Mountains in the south, bordered by Lithuania and Russia to the northeast, Belarus and Ukrai ...

History

JRI-Poland was founded in 1995 by genealogists Stanley M. Diamond, and Michael Tobias, and Steven Zedeck. Diamond was researching the Beta

Thalassemia Thalassemias are a group of Genetic disorder, inherited blood disorders that manifest as the production of reduced hemoglobin. Symptoms depend on the type of thalassemia and can vary from none to severe, including death. Often there is mild to ...

genetic trait, which he suspected was present in

Ashkenazi Jewish Ashkenazi Jews ( ; also known as Ashkenazic Jews or Ashkenazim) form a distinct subgroup of the Jewish diaspora, that Ethnogenesis, emerged in the Holy Roman Empire around the end of the first millennium Common era, CE. They traditionally spe ...

families in his family tree. In February 2013, a historic agreement was negotiated between JRI-Poland and the Polish State Archives to make more records available in digitized form. In 2014, JRI-Poland was instrumental in the ''

Finding Your Roots ''Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'' is an American documentary television series hosted by Henry Louis Gates Jr. that premiered on March 25, 2012, on PBS. In each episode, celebrities are presented with a "book of life" that is com ...

'' episode featuring the family history of

Alan Dershowitz Alan Morton Dershowitz ( ; born September 1, 1938) is an American lawyer and law professor known for his work in U.S. constitutional law, U.S. constitutional and American criminal law, criminal law. From 1964 to 2013, he taught at Harvard Law Sc ...

Carole King Carole King Klein (born Carol Joan Klein; February 9, 1942) is an American singer-songwriter and musician renowned for her extensive contributions to popular music. She wrote or co-wrote 118 songs that charted on the Billboard Hot 100, ''Billbo ...

, and

Tony Kushner Anthony Robert Kushner (born July 16, 1956) is an American author, playwright, and screenwriter. Among his stage work, he is most known for ''Angels in America'', which earned a Pulitzer Prize and a Tony Award, as well as its subsequent acclaime ...

according to Josh Gleason, producer, who said that the program was able to provide information about the subject's 3rd and 4th ancestors that would otherwise have been unavailable except for the work of JRI-Poland. In 2016, records found in the JRI-Poland databases provided confirmation of Holocaust survivor Yisrael Kristal being the oldest living man.

Awards

* 1999: IAJGS Award for Outstanding Contribution via the Internet Award * 2014: IAJGS Award for Outstanding Contribution to Jewish Genealogy via the Internet

References

External links

JRI-Poland
Jewish genealogy Genealogy databases Jewish organisations based in Poland Internet properties established in 1995 {{Nonprofit-org-stub