LDS Microfilming
in Eastern Europe
© copyright 1995, 1996 by FEEFHS; all rights
reserved
[FEEFHS Newsletter Editor John C. Alleman's note (October
1995): The
following is a revised and extended version of the keynote
address given by Mr. Edlund at
the 1995 FEEFHS convention banquet in Cleveland on August 4,
1995. For a number of
reasons, the countries mentioned do not coincide exactly with
FEEFHS' area. Several
FEEFHS countries are not discussed, but Armenia and Georgia are.
We thank the Family
History Library (FHL) in Salt Lake City, Utah where the author
works for permission to
publish this information.]
[Webmaster's note (February 1996): This copyrighted article
first appeared in the FEEFHS
Newsletter Volume 3 Number 3.) It has since been revised by
Thomas Edlund (now a senior
librarian) on February 5, 1996, mainly to make the cyrillic
references readable by an Intenet
web browser. This is still the most authoritative and current
presentation the LDS
microfilming status in Eastern Europe that we know of.
However the passage of time does cause some changes in
circumstances (such as the
addition of a few more camera ventures in 1996). To gain the
very latest insight, please
refer to Mr. Edlund's presentation at the 1996 FEEFHS
Convention in Minneapolis (June 9-11) for his latest
report on the status of
microfilming in Eastern Europe.
]
(Mr. Edlund was introduced by Charles M. Hall, Founding President
of FEEFHS).
Good evening. I thank Charles Hall for his introduction, and
likewise all attenders at this
conference for the
welcome that has been extended me. First off, I would like to
contextualize my subject by
discussing not the
recent developments of LDS microfilming in Eastern Europe, but
rather the general
background of a program
that has led, finally after half a century of extensive and
arduous work, to the acquisition and
preservation of
genealogical records from those countries that formerly
constituted the Warsaw Pact.
I feel obliged to point out that my remarks in no way are to be
construed as an official
statement on the policies
and positions of my employer, The Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints, nor am I to
be considered a
spokesperson for that organization.
The Genealogical Society of Utah (GSU) was officially
incorporated 21 November, 1894,
and celebrated its
centennial last year. From a one room beginning at the LDS Church
Historian's office in Salt
Lake City, the
Society has grown through these past five score years to include
over 2,200 Family History
(circulation) Centers
located worldwide. Of all activities the Society has been noted
for (and these endeavors range
from the early
compilation of family pedigrees on paper to the development of
digital electronic media)
undoubtedly the most
conspicuous is its extensive microfilming program.
This undertaking began in 1938 at the height of the Great
Depression. In October of that
year the Society
purchased its first microfilm camera, a Graflex Photorecord, for
$250.00. Ernst Koehler, a
German immigrant
and photographer who initially brought microfilming to the
attention of the Society, became
its first full-time
camera operator. By years end twelve reels of film had been
produced.
Several collateral developments had led the Society to consider
microfilming genealogical
materials. One of
these was the very real threat of war engulfing Europe and the
danger that devastation could
bring upon the
many government depositories of the continent. Two years earlier,
in 1936, John A.
Widstoe, a high official of
the LDS Church, had warned of this possibility. Cost
effectiveness and reliability of
documentation were other
important considerations that originally gravitated the efforts
of the Genealogical Society
towards
microfilming.
Before buying its first camera, the Society had raised money to
purchase genealogical records
filmed by other
agents in the United States and abroad. Projects in New York
involving the early Dutch
churches and also at the
Tennessee State Library produced impressive results. A deal cut
in 1939 with the then
fledgling University Microforms, Inc. (UMI) at Ann Arbor to film
parish registers from the
Isle of Man, however, came to naught.
Simultaneous attempts to acquire copies of the vast storehouse of
records filmed by the
Bureau for Racial
Research in Berlin (a department of Hitler's "new and improved"
Reichsippenamt) dissipated in the
destruction and holocaust which consumed our planet in the Second
World War. During
these years of global
chaos and insanity, microfilming outside the United States stood
at a standstill. Within the
U.S. work continued,
most notably in New York, Tennessee and North Carolina.
The end of World War II witnessed an expansion in LDS
microfilming of immense
proportions. Total output
for 1944 had been 24 reels. By 1948 production had risen to
10,012. Projects were begun at
the Newcastle
Library in Great Britain in 1945; at the Danish National Archives
in 1946; by 1949 Ireland,
the Netherlands,
Norway, Italy, Switzerland, Sweden and Finland all had active
filming projects; the latter
two undertaken by
contract with Rekolid Filming Company.
Microfilming began officially in East Germany in 1949,
interestingly a full three years before
similar work in
West Germany. This is the date we can set as the inception of the
Society's collection
development from
Eastern Europe. Many patrons of the Family History Library (FHL)
and genealogists in
general have
erroneously assumed that genealogical records from Eastern
sources were unavailable prior
to the dissolution of
Communist block Europe. Filming projects in East Germany belie
this conclusion.
Tens of thousands of parish registers pages were filmed in the
late 1940s from the countries
of Ukraine, Russia,
Romania, Poland, Moldova, and Belarus. An illustration of this
misunderstanding is a recent
publication
concerning a Catholic community of Bessarabia. The authors, in
order to publish a parish
register transcription,
both coordinated with and travelled to the Zentralstelle fuer
Genealogie in
Leipzig
to "fill a void
which has existed for many years." The village church books of
concern had in fact been
microfilmed earlier
and were available via loan from Salt Lake City.
I return now to the early success experienced in East Germany.
This was due in large part to
the unflagging
efforts of Paul Langheinrich, a colorful German. Herr
Langheinrich had worked as a
genealogical researcher
both for the German government and the LDS Church in the 1930s.
His presence in
Germany in the '40s
proved most fortuitous. For the National Socialists, as Germany's
Wehrmacht
retreated before the
advancing Allies, had secreted vast stores of government papers
and genealogical records in
places deemed as
unlikely military targets, such as castle ruins and abandoned
mines.
At the war's conclusion, Paul and several collaborators were
successful in locating literally
tons of documents
from the salt mines at Strassfurt and the castles of Rothenburg
and Rathsfeld. At the latter
Schloss was
discovered a huge store of Jewish records. All three of these
locations housed extensive
archives of church
books. Over the next few years Langheinrich, working with 16 LDS
missionaries, secured
these documents
from Russian control and transported them to first West and then
East Berlin, where many
were filmed. The
records were later returned to their countries of origin or
accessioned into special repositories
such as the
Evangelisches Zentralarchiv in Berlin and the
Zentralstelle fuer
Genealogie Leipzig.
Work in East Germany ended abruptly in 1952.
This East German experience, I believe, deflates another myth
popular among modern
genealogists: that
governments hostile to our Western ethos have systematically
destroyed materials of
genealogical value. In the
Langheinrich saga we have strong evidence to the contrary:
dreaded Nazi's safeguard records
so they would fall into the hands of Soviet communists, who in
turn bend over backwards to
accommodate a rather unorthodox German Mormon in their recovery
and preservation. I
mention as further evidence that Herr
Langheinrich
obtained direct encouragement and authorization in his search
from General Sokolovsky and
the great Field
Marshal Zhukov himself, commandant of Berlin.
Numerous genealogical materials, however, have been lost; and the
destruction continues.
Yet the culprit most
often is not the malice or intolerance of Man, but rather
neglect. For example in 1952 the
Society, in cooperation with the Mexican government and UNESCO,
began filming Mexican
census records at the National Archives. The documents had been
previously found stored in
an abandoned church subject to flooding and radical temperature
fluctuations.
To further compound the conservation problem, the records were
covered with thick dust and
guano dropped by pigeons living in the rafters overhead. Natural
disasters, the havoc
coincident with war, indifference or a genuine lack of resources
to provide legitimate care
account for the ongoing loss of materials documenting our
genealogical heritage. It is a rare
occasion that destruction is found to be deliberate.
Following the activities in Berlin, the Society undertook
numerous projects throughout
Western Europe and the Atlantic Commonwealth Nations. Not until
1961 was another
camera assigned to a communist country. In this year microfilming
began at Budapest.
Through the efforts of Dr. Borsa Ivan, former
Hungarian Deputy National
Archivist, the Society filmed over 7000 reels of Protestant,
Reformed, Roman Catholic,
Greek Catholic,
Orthodox and Jewish records by 1967. The Hungarian microfilming
project has continued
until the
present.
Filming began at the Kriegsarchiv, Vienna, in 1966.
Austria as a modern nation,
of course, is
geographically outside the scope of East European research.
Previous to the First World War
this was not the
case. The former Empire consisted of territories now in
Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Czech
Republic,
Hungary, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, and
Ukraine. Over this vast territory
was strewn the
Austrian Army.
I discovered during my own period of service, as did many here
I'm sure, that incredible
quantities of
paperwork are generated by military organizations. The Austrians
were no exception to this
rule. Three cameras
have been filming in Vienna for nearly thirty years. My
presentation tomorrow on Croatia
will outline the
specific details concerning these materials. Beginning in the
1950s, unfortunately, significant
portions of the
Kriegsarchiv collection were deaccessioned, and many
records generated after
1885 were given to the
Empire's relevant successor states. As a result the Family
History Library collection, even
when filming is
concluded, will be incomplete.
The next theater of engagement for the Society in Eastern Europe
was Poland. Microfilming
began there in
1967 at the request of the Director General of the Polish State
Archives, Heinrich Altman.
Operating with two
cameras in what would become the most productive program to date
in Eastern Europe,
10,675 first rate 35
mm. reels of civil registration records were filmed under
agreements with the Polish
government from '68-'75.
Major geographic areas included Bia ystok, Gdansk, Katowice,
Kielce, Koszalin, Krakow,
Lodz, Lublin,
Olsztyn, Opole, Poznan, Warsaw, and Zielona Gora. Large areas of
Polish Ukraine and
Lithuania were also
filmed at this time. These records, in my experience, are second
in quality only to those of
Croatia.
Contractual agreements were made with the Roman Catholic Church
in Poland in 1979.
Filming began at the
Archdioceses of Poznan in that year, followed by Breslau in 1985.
In total, twelve projects
involving Catholic
archives and sixteen at State archives, have been undertaken in
Poland.
Microfilming began anew in East Germany in 1981. The first
project was to film the
Ev.
Kirchenbuchduplikate from the Stadtarchiv Magdeburg.
This later evolved
into citizenship
records for Preussen, Sachsen; then local censuses, and city
council court records (2057
reels). Similar projects
were undertaken at the Staatsarchiv Potsdam, Weimar,
Rudelstadt,
Karl-Marx-Stadt, Schwerin,
Dresden, Aschersleben, Halle, Erfurt.
The former Yugoslavia followed as the next site for acquisition.
A collection of documents as
rich, diverse, and
beautiful as the Balkans themselves has resulted from
microfilming started in 1985.
Consisting largely of
bishops' transcripts, the church records of this nation form a
linguistic tapestry of Latin,
Italian, Hungarian,
German, Glagolitic, and Serbo-Croatian. Until the dissolution of
the South Slav Federation in
1991,
microfilming opportunities in Yugoslavia were restricted to the
Austro-Hungarian kingdoms
of Croatia,
Dalmatia, and Slavonia.
Yugoslavia proved to be the last point of expansion for LDS
microfilming in communist
Europe prior to the
Soviet bankruptcy of 1991. Following the collapse of the Union's
economic and political
structures, archives
throughout Eastern Europe negotiated with the Society for
microfilming contracts. In 1991
Slovakia, Bulgaria
and Estonia concluded negotiations; these were followed by Russia
and Slovenia in 1992;
Albania, Armenia,
Belarus and Ukraine in 1993; Lithuania, Moldova and Georgia in
1994.
To attempt a detailed discussion of active microfilming projects
for Eastern Europe would
require far more time
than we have been allowed, and still we would fail to address the
specific questions each of
you have about
your own area of interest. For this type of information I refer
you to mail drops such as Mr.
Movius's FEEFHS
Internet HomePage [http://feefhs.org].
A more appropriate source of information, if not as current, is
the microfiche Family History
Library Catalog
(FHLC). I urge all of you to learn the intricacies of how to use
this tool. It is essential to
successful research. I
am constantly amazed by how many genealogists, including those
professionally successful
and accredited, fail
to discover basic information because of an inability to use the
catalog or understand how
and why it is
constructed.
Now I would like to describe what the Genealogical Society of
Utah has recently
microfilmed, paying attention
to record types and geographical areas. Where cameras are
located, a perennial
preoccupation for many
researchers, I will shy away from discussing. I do this for
several reasons, not the least of
which is that the
information most often has no research value.
I offer an example: The Society placed seven cameras in Russia in
1992. From 1993 to 1994
two of these were
assigned to film the St. Petersburg Lutheran Consistorial
transcripts, span dates 1883-1885.
When this project
was completed, the same cameras at the same location began
filming Orthodox Church
records from Pskov.
Cameras sometimes go to the records, other times, records come to
the camera. The point I
need to make is
that two cameras stationed in a certain city or archive does not
necessarily translate to
material from that city or
institution being filmed. In fact, having a camera in place does
not necessarily mean that
anything is being
filmed, as has unfortunately been discovered.
Presently I am aware of 42 cameras in the East. Radical
differences in productivity exists
between them,
ranging from one reel to over thirty reels per month; that
productivity is increasing across
the board as crews
become more experienced. In 1991 eight cameras in Poland,
Hungary, and Croatia produced
724 reels of film.
In 1994 production from the East was 3,409. The count to date for
1995 already exceeds the
total of 1994. I
will now briefly address each country, proceeding alphabetically.
Time requires me to be
brief.
Albania
Operations began in Albania in the latter part of 1993. Attention
was directed at records from
the Central State
Archive, Tirana. The majority of material filmed has been
Catholic and Orthodox Church
registers. Text of the
records are Albanian, Greek, Italian, and Turkish. Span dates
cover two centuries:
1744-1944. Nineteen small
record groups [Fonds] are completely filmed. They represent the
areas of Shkroda, Durres,
Korca, Elgasani, Tirana, Kavaja, Pequin(i), Janina, Gjirokastra,
Saranda. Record groups for
those with an archival interest are Fonds 103, 104, 130-134, 139,
and 141-143. Civil
registration for 1930, consisting of one additional record group,
Fond 622, was being filmed
as of 1994. Total production as of October 1994 was 77 reels.
Armenia
Filming of materials under the custodianship of the Central
Historical Archive of the
Armenian Republic at
Yerevan began September 1993. Documents I have seen are for the
Armenian Apostolic
Church and the
Orthodox Churches of the Transcaucasus. So far, I have identified
four record groups: Fond
52: Armenian Eparchial Consistory of Astrakhan; Fond 53: Armenian
Churches in Georgia,
which additionally includes some villages in Azerbaijan and
Armenia; Fond 320: Armenian
Churches of Novonakhichevan and Bessarabia; and Fond 63: the
Transcaucasian Orthodox
Churches. All these materials appear to be bishops' transcripts.
Total production for the
project as of March 1995 was 192 reels.
Belarus
I noticed with some interest a recent FEEFHS electronic
newsletter describing Belarus as a
major, if not the
major, problem for East European genealogists. GSU microfilming
has not experienced these
difficulties.
Filming of documents from the State Historical Archives at Minsk
and at Grodno began in
January 1993 and
1994 respectively. An interesting spectrum of records has been
duplicated. Some of the more
high profile record groups include: the *rvizskaya skazka* from
the *kazennaya palata* of
Minsk, church books of the Minsk Orthodox Consistory, official
papers of the Lutheran
*pravleniye* Minsk (these are of little genealogical but of
immense historical value), crown
rabbinate records of the Minsk and Mogliev provinces, and church
books of the Roman
Catholic Consistory of Mogliev.
I mention as an aside that until 1847, Mogliev was the sole
Catholic consistory in Russia. In
that year, the
Kherson eparchy was established, and relevant records were
deaccessioned from Mogliev.
The headquarters of
the new administration was then moved to Tiraspol in 1852, and
finally to Saratov in 1855.
Some books were
missed in the moving process, however. I have noticed a few
registers from the Volga
Catholics in this record
group, as well as the surrounding areas of Voronezh, Tambov, and
Penza. Orthodox books
of the Grodno
province including the districts of Brest, Grodno, Velkavisk, and
Pruzhany are also of
interest.
Bulgaria
Not much can be said concerning Bulgaria. Work there has been
homogenous: civil
registration for 1892-ca.
1913. Geographic area of concentration is exclusively the county
of Sofia. [258 reels].
Croatia
As mentioned earlier, microfilming in Croatia began in 1985 as
result of a contract signed
the previous year.
Filming has been focused on Roman Catholic, Greek Catholic and
Orthodox church registers
from the early
eighteenth century through the end of the First World War. Small
quantities of Protestant,
Reformed, Jewish
and Moslem records have been filmed, especially those deriving
their provenance from the
Austrian Army
during WWI. Linguistic diversity is great, ranging from the
nationalistic use of Glagolitic to
Latin. Recent
acquisitions are the Orthodox records of Dalmatia, and the
Catholic records of western
Croatia around Rijeka.
Filmed previous to this were materials at the State Archives of
Croatia/Zagreb; Osijek,
Varasdin, Zadar, Split,
Dubrovnik and the Bluski diocese.
I have assisted several library patrons who have insisted that
church books of many localities
exist that are older
than what the GSU has filmed, e.g. have a starting date of 1650
instead of 1711. In fact,
some claim to have
seen the documents personally. I have taken all such claims
seriously, and made every effort
to verify these
reports with in-country professionals or residents, consultation
with archival inventories and
registers. I have
turned up nothing to substantiate these claims. All material is
being filmed.
Estonia
In Estonia filming started in March 1992. Target records were the
original Lutheran church
books for an
extended region around Tallinn. Dates for these books are early
1830s through 1940.
Language of text begins
with German, moves to Russian in 1892, and then Estonian
following the Russian Revolution
of 1917. Vital
records as well as Familienbuecher are represented. Five
hundred ninety-five
reels of these records
have been produced. Additional Lutheran records from the city
proper, beginning in the early
1600s, were
filmed in 1993.
Another Lutheran collection listed in the State Historical
Archive of Tartu is also filmed.
Span dates for original
books are early seventeenth century to 1833. From 1834 through
1907 the records are
duplicates. Text to 1721
is Swedish. Following the Treaty of Nystad and the region's
separation from the Church of
Sweden, the records
are in German. The transcripts comprise those church books, the
*kopiya metricheskikh
knig*, mandated by the Imperial Consistory of St. Petersburg in
1832.
Also acquired from Estonian repositories are the
Bruederschaftbuecker [Guild
records] for 1340-1939, and Einwohnenregisteren [household
censuses] for
1740-1917. These are written mostly in
German and Russian.
Georgia, Moldova
Georgia and Moldova both have active projects. The inevitable
time delay between
microfilming, processing,
transport to the US, and distribution to the Family History
Library for cataloging is such that
no one has seen
what is being filmed. Until I can physically inspect the
microfilms, I prefer not to suggest
what might be on
them.
Hungary
Extensive work in Hungary has made the FHL collection virtually
complete regarding church
books through
1895. Over the last few years filming of civil registration
(began in 1895) has extended the
cut off date to 1908,
primarily for areas surrounding Tolna, Fejer, Szeged and Szolnok.
These projects are filming
bishops'
transcripts before 1895 as well as civil registration.
Lithuania
GSU activities began in Lithuania in May of last year. The first
documents received from
this country were
metrical books, F. 662, for the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries. They were
followed by Orthodox
Church and Orthodox Confession (i.e. Penitent) records for the
latter 1840s through the First
World War.
Major Lithuanian regions represented are Vilnius, Kaunas,
Telshiai; and in Belarus, the
Molodechno. A half
dozen record groups for the Reformed churches of Birzai,
Shvobishky, Naujamiestis,
Vilnius, Zuprany, Belicy,
Koidanovo, Kopyl, and Nepokoichicy are also completed.
Poland
Right now, the GSU is filming records for several Roman Catholic
archives in Poland.
Recently completed
projects include the Archdiocese of Poznan, and the Archdiocese
of Wroclaw. Current
acquisitions include
Roman Catholic church books from the region of Gniezno, Plotsk,
and Tarnow; the latter
having both Roman
and Greek Catholic church books. Cut off date for records from
Poland is 1900.
Russia
Microfilming began in what once was the Russian FSR in August
1992. Negotiations had
begun after the World
Conference on Records of 1969. Little progress occurred until
1991, when the Russian
archival administration
expressed a renewed interest. The Society has identified two
primary sources for
pre-revolutionary genealogy in
Russia: parish register transcripts and revision lists. Orthodox
transcripts begin in the middle
eighteenth century
and consist of forms completed annually. Revision lists were kept
between 1719-1858 to
support a national poll
tax, and covered 95% of the population. The last revision was
used in the distribution of land
during the
emancipation.
The first Russian microfilms, received with some excitement, were
from the Volga delta city
of Astrakhan.
While Astrakhan is home to a large Moslem population and possibly
the oldest Protestant
community of the
interior excluding the environs of Moscow, to date only Orthodox
Church records have been
filmed. By and
large, the documents are transcripts compiled for civil
registration purposes in the
metropolitan area proper. I
expect regional records to follow the completion of the larger
urban churches.
Large segments of the Orthodox Consistories of Pskov, Tobolsk,
Tomsk, Tula and Tver are
also now in the
FHL collection. These records can pose serious research
difficulties. Those of Tobolsk
Consistory, for example,
cover the entire oblast, which is the Siberian equivalent of a
province or *guberniya*. On
one
segment of
microfilm, all localities of the area could be included: city
churches, provincial parish
villages, and yamu's. I
have seen up to one hundred sixty-nine localities in a single
volume.
This type of archival accessioning was a common practice in the
Empire. Researchers
familiar with the
Petersburg Lutheran records know this. The bishops' transcripts
for this consistory were
filmed 1993-1994 and
so far have proven to be the most frequently requested items
concerning Russian genealogy.
Additional filming
has been done involving the Central State Archives of the Kazan
Republic, and most recently
Karelia. Both
these projects are Orthodox consistorial records.
Slovakia
The Slovak Republic has seven regional state archive located at
Levoca, Presov, Kosice,
Bytca, Banska
Bystrica, Bratislava and Nitra. Microfilming was initiated in
this nation in September 1991.
Acquisition for the
area surrounding the Levoca produced Reformed, Lutheran, Greek
and Roman Catholic, as
well as many
synagogue records. Presov, the seat for a Greek Catholic diocese
and divinity school, is
predominately Greek
Catholic. Roman Catholic church records dominate in the area of
Kosice. Currently the
library is receiving
materials from the region around the Banska Bystrica
repository.
Slovenia
GSU work began in Slovenia in September of 1992 and continued
through January 1994.
Filming has now
stopped. Records that were obtained were civil registration for
the Hungarian counties of Vas
and Zala, and
represent around sixty civil registration offices currently
located in Croatia and Slovenia. The
split between the
two nations is about 50-50. Total production was 249 reels.
Ukraine
Ukrainian records are very similar to those in Russia. Currently
active projects involve the
church books of the
Orthodox Consistories of Kiev, Podolia, and Chernigov. Of more
interest to the researcher
of emigrants to the
United States and Canada is a large collection of Greek Catholic
church books of the L'viv
Consistory. Over
7,400 files of records are described in the listing to this
collection. As of this week I have
cataloged only one
percent of the project.
This is the recent history of GSU microfilming in Eastern Europe.
As a final topic I would
like to mention
several East European collections obtained under contract from
the Mikrofilm Center
Kossenblatt in Germany.
These materials have been high profile, and a brief description
of them will conclude my
presentation this
evening. Three specific series of note are the Seuberlich
Sammlung, the
Ahnenstammkartei, and the church books of Bessarabia and
Bukowina.
Seuberlich's work comprises extracts from church books throughout
the Baltic, especially
localities in Latvia
and Lithuania. The records fill several gaps in the FHL
collection, and for many areas,
provide the only source
of information available. Areas of concentration for these
records are Courland, Nord- and
Suedlivland;
Seuberlich also directed special attention towards Riga and Mitau
(Jelgava).
A far more important collection, in my opinion - one that
concentrates on central and eastern
Europe, is the
Ahnenstammkartei of the German Central Office for
Genealogy. The
Ahnenstammkartei
consists of over 11,000 family pedigrees from all over Europe,
and is indexed by a
soundex-like card file of
over 2,700,000 names. The Kartei have been used as a last
chance database for
many researchers
who have not succeeded with other more traditional materials such
as church registers or
civil registration. The
index provides many links to German ancestry that "disappeared"
through emigration to the
East. Dr. Ed
Brandt, a vice-president of FEEFHS, is currently arranging the
publication of a register to
this collection.
In conclusion, I address my introduction into East European
bibliography, which involved
documents received
from Kossenblatt. These records were the original church
registers for the communities of
southern Bessarabia
and Bukovina filmed in 1991. All major Protestant parishes,
including Radautz, Jakobeny,
Kloestitz, Sarata, and
Tarutino together with their Filialgemeinden, were at last
made available at the
Family History
Library.
As I struggled to catalog these materials, besieged by a host of
enthusiastic German-Russian
researchers, the
true irony of what was happening escaped me. Not until several
years later, while
attempting to establish the
provenance of this collection, did I discover that the Society,
as we this evening, had come
full circle back to its
beginning.
For these records, long touted as missing in war or destroyed in
rage, were in fact part of
the material retrieved
by 16 unnamed LDS missionaries and Herr Langheinrich so many
years ago from the salt
mines of Preussen,
Sachsen. Why they were not filmed then, one can only guess.
Nonetheless, they survived, to
surface again; as
have so many other genealogical resources once considered lost
forever. It is my hope that
those records, as yet
missing and of interest to you or your heritage, have so done
likewise.
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