LitvakSIG is the primary internet resource for Lithuanian-Jewish ("Litvak") genealogy research worldwide.

Our mission is to preserve Litvak heritage by discovering, collecting, documenting and disseminating information about the once vibrant Jewish community of Lithuania.

LitvakSIG has long-term relationships with the archives in Lithuania. In addition to translating records that are relevant to all parts of Lithuania, we also maintain a number of geographic-specific Research Groups (often referred to as "District Research Groups", or "DRGs").

The primary mission of a Research Group is to identify and collect data for that group’s territorial area of interest from available records for Lithuania from the  Russian Empire Period (1795 to First World War) and the period of Independent  Lithuania (1919-1940) including Vilna Guberniya. A contributor to a Research Group or Project gains advance access to the data collected by the group or project. The data is typically provided in Excel format.

The highlight of our work is the All Lithuania Database (ALD), which is a free, searchable database that currently has more than 2,500,000 records and is updated quarterly.

LitvakSIG thanks its volunteers who make it all possible

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Note to all members, donors, and contributors about accessing various areas of the website:  After you log in (using the green "login to your account" tab on the right), you will be taken to your login page.  On the left is a green tab saying "member’s dashboard".  Click on that link and you will then be taken to a page that displays links to all sections of the website to which you have access.  For example, if you’re a "member", you’ll see a link to the "members" area of the website.  If you’re a DRG donor, you’ll see a link to "Collective Data" as well as to each DRG to which you have access.

 

For step by step instructions on downloading the Excel spreadsheets to which you have access, click on " download instructions.pdf".  

IF you are accessing LitvakSIG.org and do not see or cannot find the "login to your account" button, you can go directly to it by entering "donors.litvaksig.org".

If you have any technical questions about the use of this website, please contact our webmaster at webmaster@litvaksig.org.

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                       Vilnius Household Registers Project ("VHR")                       

NEW! Nov. 2, 2021 - Batch 17 of the VHR is now available.  Download the free batch preview from the VHR home page. The batch preview is our initiative to make it easy for you to figure out if a batch includes your family. The preview includes the FULL NAME and YEAR of BIRTH (or age) of everyone in the batch, presented in the same order that they occur in the full spreadsheet, as well as arranged alphabetically by surname.

Also - Don’t miss our Vilnius interactive map, 1921 and today. This map makes it easy and fun to locate streets in Vilnius today according to their interwar period street names.

The Lithuanian Central State Archive (LCVA) collection includes over 13,000 Vilnius household registers containing millions of lines of detailed information about Vilnius residents and visitors to Vilnius during the interwar period. This incomparable genealogical resource was brought to our attention a few years ago. Since then, and especially over the last two years, we have begun to index these records and work out the many details necessary to create a practical project.

In August 2018, at the IAJGS meeting in Warsaw, Project Coordinator (and Coordinator of Records Acquisition & Translation) Russ Maurer made the official announcement of the project to a rapt audience at the LitvakSIG luncheon.

Read all about the registers and our project at our VHR home page. You might want to bookmark the page. Of particular note: even if you don’t think your family was in Vilnius, the project may have something for you. Many people came to Vilnius from other areas, including areas now in Lithuania, Belarus, and Poland, either to live, on business, or to visit friends or family. They could appear in these records.

Because of the enormous scale of this new project, it will take years to complete.  However, information will be made available in batches - and the information on our dedicated webpage will help you to determine whether a particular batch is of interest to you.  Each batch spreadsheet will contain about 5,000 lines, representing information from a handful of addresses.  A qualifying donation of at least $50 is normally required to access the spreadsheet for any one batch. Through March 2020 we have released ten batches, about 50,000 lines of data. We estimate this represents roughly 10% of the total project.

However, thanks to the generous Stern grant that was awarded to LitvakSIG during the IAJGS Warsaw Conference, we are pleased to make available the full Batch 1 to one and all!  For more information about all the batches, and to download Batch 1, please go to the VHR Home Page.

For more information, please click on the following links:

I’d like to donate to the VHR project.

I"m interested in learning more about various donation incentives for the VHR project.

I’d like to write to Russ Maurer, project coordinator at vhrproject@litvaksig.org.

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