In the German-speaking area of general family research and also in other countries, more and more so-called local family books are being compiled. The sources of these vary. Mostly, however, censuses and the respective birth, marriage and death records are consulted. Other sources are not excluded.
To the best of our knowledge, the first local family register was compiled in 2014 that exclusively recorded Jewish residents, even if they only lived in the town for a short time. The town in question is Bühl in Germany. It is located in the west of Baden -Württemberg, around ten kilometers southwest of Baden-Baden. It is the third largest town in the district of Rastatt. After a few Jews had already lived in the town in the 16th century until 1622, but were then expelled, a group of Jews
formed again from 1698, comprising eleven households with ninety people. The town reached its highest number of Jewish inhabitants in 1864 with three hundred and one people. In 1933, there were still seventy-two Jewish people Living in the town, at least twenty-four of whom died during the Nazi era.
There are at least three places in Switzerland where Jews lived in the majority from the 17th century at the latest. Separate Jewish civil registers still exist for the towns of Endingen and Lengnau in the canton of Aargau. For this reason, the Swiss Association for Jewish Genealogy began years ago to attempt to compile specific Jewish local family books for these two places.
Copies of the existing Jewish civil registers were transcribed in voluntary unpaid work over many years and then these transcriptions were checked and corrected. After completing this work, it became apparent that none of the existing software programs were able to meet the requirements from a Jewish perspective. It was therefore necessary to have an appropriate program created. This was particularly difficult for financial reasons. In the end, such a program was created, and you can now find it here. The version shown here is a test version in which all possibilities can be tested, but the maximum quantitative input possibilities are limited.
If you are interested in this program, please contact info@svjg.ch
