As a result of decades of research on my own family history and on the 18th and 19th century Jewish communities of Breslau and numerous cities, towns and villages in Silesia, Posen Province, and West- and East Prussia, Family Memory Trust is in a position to offer assistance to people researching their own families from Jewish communities in these former German areas which have been part of Poland since 1945.

When I became interested in genealogy in the 1970s, I naturally assumed that there could not be any records available on Jewish families from Germany.  That just seemed impossible.  But it couldn’t be further from the truth.

As it turns out, there are a wide variety of records available to help research our families.  There are gaps, sometimes at inconvenient points, but there are often Jewish community birth, marriage and death records, cemetery lists, and family registers.  Starting in the 1870s, there can be civil birth, marriage and death records.