Heritage Florida Jewish News - Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice

The Jewish Genealogy Society of Greater Orlando will host a zoom presentation of some memorable stories shared by Robinn Magid from the JRI-Poland.org case file that highlight what this database and website might do for your own research. The event will be held via Zoom on Jan. 12, at 7 p.m.

For 25 years, JRI-Poland has served as the preferred finding aid for the Jewish records that survive in the archives of Poland today. This vast collection of 6.2 million records includes information about towns and families from Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, Germany and the former territories of Galicia and Prussia. Through understanding the contents of the database and how to improve your search results to exploring preserved Holocaust-related records, this lecture will focus on the good things that can come out of a genealogical search. Come listen to stories of the people we've helped in the hope that you'll get a useful new idea from our more surprising experiences.

Magid is the assistant director of JRI-Poland.org and a recent recipient of the International Association of Jewish Genealogy Societies Lifetime Achievement Award. She recently became the project manager of the JRI-Poland "NextGen Project" to redesign the JRI-Poland website, search engine and database. She a frequent speaker and writer on Jewish genealogy topics.

Magid's genealogical work resulted in her being recognized by the City of Lublin, Poland, her grandmother's hometown, with a medal from the mayor for inspiring the future and cultural identity of that city of 340,000 people on Lublin's 700th birthday in 2017. 

Magid has spoken at many IAJGS conferences on behalf of JRI-Poland and has served as the chair of two groundbreaking conferences: IAJGS 2018 Warsaw, Poland conference, and the IAJGS 2020 Virtual Conference on Jewish Genealogy. She is a member of the San Francisco Bay-area JGS and has spoken to her group and to other societies. Magid is sheltering-at-home in Berkeley, California, with her husband, four children and new daughter-in-law.

Registration is required for this meeting. Go to Jgsgo.blogger@gmail.com to register. You will get an email message form addressed back to the organizers. You may send a message or just hit reply and send in order to register. A link to access the Zoom meeting will be sent to you a few days before the meeting.