Here's the latest article from the Genealogy site at BellaOnline.com.

Happy St. Patrick's Day to everyone..

I received a couple of news items I wanted to make you aware of:

News Item #1:

Dear colleagues,

The Conference Committee appreciates your help in letting prospective attendees know about the main Jewish genealogy event of 2007:

The Second Genealogy Film Festival will take place at the 27th IAJGS International Conference on Jewish Genealogy, July 15-20, 2007, in Salt Lake City, Utah.

For all event details, online registration, the complete program schedule including some 100 speakers and 200 sessions of all types, go to www.slc2007.org.

The 2007 Genealogy Film Festival line up, coordinated by Pamela Weisberger of Los Angeles, will screen from morning to evening - at no charge - educational, entertaining and illuminating films covering many geographical and genealogical subjects. In April, the complete schedule will be announced on the conference website.

Here are some highlights:

"Belzec: The Documentary" - A chilling account about horrifically efficient Nazi death camp. In less than a year, at least 600,000 Jews, mostly from Galicia, were murdered

"Sugihara: Conspiracy of Kindness" - Chiune and Yukiko Sugihara who, when confronted with evil, risked careers, livelihoods and future - in defiance of government orders - to save more than 6,000 Jews in Kaunus, Lithuania, the second largest number of rescued Jews.

"The Ritchie Boys" - Jewish teens who escaped the Nazis train in intelligence work and psychological warfare at Maryland's Camp Ritchie. As US soldiers, they return to Europe with the greatest motivation to fight the war.

"West Bank Story" - Academy Award-winning short film. Israeli soldier David and Palestinian cashier Fatima are an unlikely couple who fall in love amidst the animosity of their families' dueling West Bank falafel stands. A musical comedy about the hope for peace.

"Everything is Illuminated" - Jonathan Safran Foer visits his Jewish roots in Ukraine and find the family that saved his grandfather from the Nazis.

Klezmer musician and filmmaker Yale Strom's works include the "Hungarian Carpati: 50 miles, 50 years," and "The Man from Munkacs;" and Galician/Polish "Klezmer on Fish Street" and "The Last Klezmer: Leopold Kozlowski, His Life and Music."

"A Torah Returns to Poland" - A Torah written in 1876 Alsace, France, accompanies the community's deportation to Auschwitz, survives the war, is found in New York, and is returned to today's living Jewish community of Poland.

"From Kristallnacht to Crystal Day: A Synagogue in Wroclaw Glows Again" - Retrospective of life in Wroclaw, Poland (formerly Breslau, Germany) from 1829 until today through the eyes of a synagogue.

"Swiss Jewry: An Island in the Twentieth Century" - Dormant bank accounts, Nazi gold and refugees through the eyes of the Swiss Jewish community.

The line-up also includes "Watermarks," inspirational film about the Viennese women’s swimming team from the sports club, Hakoah; "Bernie," filmmaker Jay Heyman’s Grandpa Bernie grew up in New York City's Hebrew Orphan Asylum;
and "Hiding and Seeking: Faith and Tolerance After the Holocaust," Menachem Daum travels to Poland to find the Polish peasant family that hid his father-in-law.

Schelly Talalay Dardashti
Publicity Chair
27th IAJGS International Conference on Jewish Genealogy
www.slc2007,org
publicity@slc2007.org



News Item #2

Discontinued Access to Ancestry.com Databases

For many years, Ancestry.com has provided free access to patrons of family
history centers around the world. Ancestry has informed the Church that as of April 1, 2007, it will discontinue this free access to the full Ancestry.com service.

Free access through Ancestry.com to the following databases will continue:

1. Index and images for the 1880, 1900 and 1920 U.S. censuses
2. Full name indices for the British 1841-1891 censuses (England and
Wales)
3. World War I draft cards indices as created and miscellaneous other
databases

Free access is likely to be discontinued for the remainder of the
Ancestry.com databases
including:

1. Index and images for the 1930 U.S. census
2. Index and images for the 1901 British census (England, Scotland, and
Wales)

At this point, Ancestry.com is not offering an option for family history
centers to independently purchase commercial or library site licenses. Patrons, of course, may choose to subscribe directly to Ancestry.com.

Free access to online databases is important and we therefore intend to
add many new databases to FamilySearch.org (the website of the Mormon Family History Library). Much of the data preparation will be accomplished through the online indexing program available at FamilySearchIndexing.org. We encourage you to visit the website to learn more.

Volunteers have already begun indexing the 1900 U.S. census and other
projects. Other censuses and vital record collections will be indexed as soon as the 1900 U.S. census project is completed. The more volunteers that participate, the sooner access can be provided. Since access to databases on FamilySearch.org is free to all, we anticipate that this will be of great interest to individuals around the world. We are also exploring
opportunities to provide broader access to additional databases from other
online service providers.

Please inform patrons regarding our plans to provide access to records and
invite them to help by participating in the FamilySearch Indexing projects. We will communicate as more information becomes available. Thank you for all that you do on behalf of our patrons.


Most Genealogical Societies and local libraries will still offer Ancestry.com for FREE so check with them to see if they offer this service.

Also, articles for this week can be viewed at

http://www.bellaonline.com/site/genealogy

Hope everyone is finding luck in brreaking down those brick walls!

Tina Sansone
Genealogy@bellaonline.com