Getting Started with Jewish Bessarabian Genealogy

If you are new to the Jewish Genealogy we would suggest you to start exploring the JewishGen website at www.jewishgen.org. Go to the First Timer section – click on Get Started / First Timer. Consider registering for JewishGen and include all the family names/towns you are researching or plan to research in the future (Step 3). This registration greatly helps many genealogists find relatives they never knew.

Join the Discussion Groups which might interest you (Step 4). Accessing old discussion archives often provides useful information, especially to beginners. You are now at the Bessarabia SIG website and you may want to register for the Bessarabia Discussion/Mailing List. It will allow you to ask specific questions about Bessarabian towns, families, etc. to people who also researching their Bessarabian roots.

Take a look also at About US/Help Center. That information can help you with your Registration, passwords, mailing lists, asking questions and more.

Explore JewishGen Get Started/Frequently Asked Questions. It contains much useful information about Jewish genealogy publications, books, conferences, National Archives, Vital Records, and other resources.

After you are familiar with some basics you may want to go to the Databases section and begin your detective work and find information of interest to you. By clicking on Databases you can access all databases available at JewishGen, including those organized by countries, regions. Each database has a description about the information included, along with the source of that information.

We welcome you to the JewishGen Bessarabia SIG. At our website you can learn the geography and history of Bessarabia and find available information for many of its cities, towns, and shtetlakh. You can also explore many detailed and informative articles and books on the history of Jews, and the Holocaust. Please enjoy reading Family Memoirs, Stories, viewing numerous historic photographs (we hope you will consider sharing your own). We also invite you to participate in and/or support the various projects of the Bessarabia SIG. We especially need translators and transcribers from Russian, Hebrew, and Romanian into English; project coordinators; and of course donors.

All existing Bessarabian databases are part of the Romania-Bessarabia Database and can be accessed from the JewishGen or Bessarabia SIG website.

Please contact us if you have any questions:

Yefim Kogan – Coordinator (yefimk@verizon.net);

Alan Levitt – Moderator for Discussion / Mailing List (alanmlevitt@gmail.com).