Genealogy research in Prussian Poland—the Polish parts of the 18th and 19th century German Empire—has special challenges. Town names have been changed, many records have been lost, and few staffers at the Polish Archives read German. But the Jewish families that lived in the areas that were east of the Oder River have a rich heritage that deserves to discovered. Roger Lustig’s lecture will review the basic geography and history of Prussian Poland, focus on online resources for genealogical research in the area, including several new ones, and feature vital tips and tricks to working with the Polish State Archives, both online and in person.

About the Speaker
Roger Lustig is a genealogical researcher based in Princeton, NJ. Since 2002 he has specialized in the Jewish families of Prussian Poland, especially Upper Silesia and West Prussia. He has done research in archives in the US, Germany and Poland.

As research coordinator for JewishGen’s Germany Research Division, he is developing databases, including NALDEX (Name-Adoption List index), Württemberg Family Registers and the Hessen-Gatermann database. He has also contributed over 40,000 Prussian records to the JRI-Poland database, for which he is the Prussian Poland Area Coordinator.

He has given presentations at fourteen IAJGS conferences, scholarly conferences in Germany and Poland, and various genealogical societies in the US and Canada.

He moderates the GerSIG group on Facebook, and is one of 3 admins of the Tracing the Tribe group—one of the largest Jewish genealogy groups on Facebook.

Presented by the Ackman & Ziff Family Genealogy Institute at the Center for Jewish History.