Genealogy Help

Website of the Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the America Jewish Archives. The collection contains documents of Jewish heritage, cultural, personal, social, and family life of American Jewry.

Serves victims of Nazi persecutions and their families by documenting their fate through the archives it manages in Bad Arolsen, Germany. The collection has information on about 17.5 million people and belongs to the UNESCO’s Memory of the World.

Includes an interactive library featuring the Midwest Visual History Collection of the USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education, more than 13,000 selections of adult and juvenile fiction, non-fiction, and reference titles in over 12 languages, and hundreds of videos and multimedia resources.

The Center for Jewish History is the home of five preeminent Jewish institutions dedicated to history, culture, and art.

Established in 1939, they hold the archives of hundreds of Jewish communities, as well as of local, national and international Jewish organizations and private collections.

Main repository of items dedicated to Chicago Jewish history. The Archives collects historical material in all formats, including letters, diaries, photographs, memorabilia, audio and video tapes. Collections include the papers of families and individuals, Jewish organizations, synagogues, oral histories, and more.

Features databases, research tools, and other resources to help those with Jewish ancestry research and find family members.

From the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise

Leo Baeck Institute New York is a research, exhibition, and lecture center whose library and archives offer comprehensive documentation for the study of German Jewish history.

The Collections Division identifies, collects, and preserves the documentary, photographic, and artifactual record of the Holocaust and makes it available for researchers.

Yad Vashem Library is the world's most comprehensive collection of published material about the Holocaust. It contains over 115,000 titles in 54 languages and seeks to collect all material published about the Holocaust, making it available to the reading public.

YIVO is the world's preeminent resource center for East European Jewish Studies; Yiddish language, literature and folklore; and the American Jewish immigrant experience.

American Jewish Historical Society provides access to more than 20 million documents and 50,000 books, photographs, art and artifacts that reflect the history of the Jewish presence in the United States from 1654 to the present.

Chicago Jewish Historical Society was founded in 1977. The Society has as its purpose the discovery, preservation and dissemination of information concerning the Jewish experience in the Chicago area.

IAJGS is an organization of organizations formed in the late 1980's to advance genealogical avocation, and to coordinate items such as the annual Jewish Genealogy Conference.

Jewish Genealogical Society of Illinois (JGSI) is a non-profit organization dedicated to helping members collect, preserve, and perpetuate the records and history of their ancestors. They serve as a resource for the worldwide community to research their Chicago area Jewish roots.

Converts surnames into the Soundex Code.

An introduction to the U.S. Census index system.

Provides tips on where to look for family history research.