Tracing Your Jewish Roots: A Step-by-Step System to Find Your Shtetl, Navigate JewishGen and Yad Vashem, Solve the Name-Change Mystery, and Trace Your (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798181325517)

Millions of Americans know they have Jewish ancestry. Most of them face the same challenges: names that changed at immigration, family origins lost to "Russia" or "Poland" without a specific town, thousands of confusing DNA matches, and the shadow of the Holocaust over the European branches of the family. If you have hit any of these walls, this book is the guide you have been waiting for. In Tracing Your Jewish Roots, Walt Webber walks you through a practical, step-by-step research system that takes you from what you know in America all the way back to the shtetl in Eastern Europe -- using the modern tools that most researchers do not know exist. This book covers: - Why names did not change at Ellis Island -- and how to find the original family name using court records, Yiddish newspapers, and the Daitch-Mokotoff Soundex system built specifically for Jewish name variants - How to use naturalization papers, passenger manifests, and death certificates to build a complete research chain from your living family back to a specific European town - A plain-language guide to JewishGen -- the world's largest Jewish genealogy database -- including the Global Name Index, JRI-Poland, Holocaust databases, and Special Interest Group forums - How the Three Partitions of Poland determine which archives hold your family's vital records -- and how to find and request metrical books from Russian, Austrian, and Prussian partition archives - A complete guide to Holocaust research using Yad Vashem's Central Database, the USHMM online collections, and the Arolsen Archives - Why DNA testing for Ashkenazi Jews works differently -- and what to do with your confusing matches, including the 100 cM threshold rule and strategies that break through European brick walls - A 30-day research action plan that takes you from family interviews to European vital records in structured steps Whether your family came from Russia, Poland, Galicia, or anywhere in the former Austro-Hungarian or German empires, the records exist to trace them. Tracing Your Jewish Roots gives you a complete research system built for 2026. No prior genealogy experience required.

Author: Walt Webber
ISBN-13: 9798181325517
Publisher: Independently Published
Language: English
Published: 06/12/2026
Pages: 136
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.42lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.32d