Lithuania Overseas Connections

Lithuania Overseas Connections

This database focuses on connections and support between people still in the old country and their emigrant relatives and friends. It consists of the following component databases.

Lithuanian Cases from RG 335.4: AJDC Search Department Records 1921 (Latvia), YIVO Archives

In 1921, the office of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (AJDC) in Latvia set up a system whereby Jewish residents could request assistance to find relatives in the United States with whom they had lost contact. In a number of these cases, the inquirer was searching for a relative in the US who was born in Lithuania (including adjoining areas of Belarus that were part of Wilno voivodeship during the interwar years). This record set contains 367 such cases, extracted from questionnaires filled out in Latvia.  The indexed information includes the name and location of the inquirer in Latvia, the name and location of the emigrant in the United States, and the town of birth of the emigrant. The questionnaires were filled out in English (occasionally with a Yiddish comment or message to be relayed to the emigrant) and may include other information such as the relationship between the relatives and details of the person's condition (often destitute). Some include a photograph of the emigrant. Each indexed record includes a link to view the original questionnaire.

We thank Gavin Beinart-Smollan for the discovery of these records and much of the indexing. Further additions to the Lithuania Overseas Connections database are expected at a later date.

Russ Maurer

December 2024

Searching the Database

This database can be searched via the JewishGen Lithuania Databaseor the JewishGen Unified Search