FAMILY REGISTRATION CARDS: AN OVERLOOKED GENEALOGICAL RESOURCE
Sunday, March 2, 2025
1:00pm ET on Zoom

Join us on Zoom with Genealogist Dr. Kamila Klauzinska from The International Institute for Jewish Genealogy in Jerusalem. Learn about Family Registration Cards (FRCs), an important genealogical resource often overlooked. An expert in the field, Dr. Klauzinska was born and still resides in a Polish town whose large Jewish population fell victim to the Holocaust. Although her ambitions have been criticized by many fellow Poles, she remains committed to devoting her life to the preservation of Jewish history and helping descendants discover where and who they are from. When working with 2Gs and 3Gs Dr. Klauzinska utilizes FRCs to build family trees and locate homes where ancestors lived before the war, as well as while forced to live in ghettos.

In 1928 each Polish town was obliged by law to register all domiciles. This was done using FRCs. These cards were later used by the Germans and then by the new administration in the first years after World War ll. Many cards survived in state archives and local museums. To study their value, Dr. Klauzinska extracted and analyzed more than 6,500 FRCs of Jews from her hometown of Zduńska Wola. She will share her analysis and findings such as the community’s pre-war size, range of professions, population structure and dynamics. Knowing the German occupation forces used these cards, she was also able to examine them for what they reveal about Jewish life during the war in the ghetto. Based on her research Dr. Klauzinska will provide recommendations for 3Gs wishing to study FRC data from ancestral towns throughout Poland.

Presented by 3GNY and the Holocaust Resource Center of Kean University.

About the presenter:

Dr. Kamila Klauzinska has a PhD from the Department of Jewish Studies at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland. Prior to working on her doctorate, she earned a M.A. in Ethnology from the Faculty of Philosophy and History at the University of Łódź, Poland. Dr. Klauzinska has been a Visiting Scholar in several prominent institutions, including the Russian, East European, and Eurasian Center at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and has been awarded multiple prestigious scholarships and awards. The scholarships include a Jagiellonian University Scholarship, a Rothschild Foundation Grant and a grant from the International Institute for Jewish Genealogy in Jerusalem. The International Institute for Jewish Genealogy and Paul Jacobi Center (IIJG) awarded a research prize to Dr. Klauzinska for her doctoral dissertation, “Modern Genealogy of Polish Jews”. In 2005 she earned the Prize of Ambassador of Israel in Poland for taking care of the Jewish cemetery in Zduńska Wola and for educational work related to the history of Jews in the town. In 2008 she was awarded the Golden Cross of Merit by the President of Poland for disseminating knowledge about Poland’s multicultural heritage and preserving Jewish heritage in Poland. In 2010 she was awarded the Bronze Medal For Merits to Culture “Gloria Artis” by the Polish Minister of Culture and National Heritage.

Dr. Klauzinska’s body of work also includes:

Co-leading the Photographic and Topographic Census Project in the Jewish Cemetery of Zduńska Wola.
Cooperating with the Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw – “Virtual Shtetl” project.
Authoring exhibitions in the Museum of the History of Zduńska Wola including “The Jews in Zduńska Wola. History and Memory”, “Special Features: none”, “The Main Thing is Not to be Afraid” and “Plucked from the Fire. Story of Aszer Aud Sieradzki”.
Initiating the First National Conference for the Volunteers Who Take Care of Jewish Heritage in Poland. This conference is currently one of the projects led and developed by the Forum for Dialogue in Warsaw.

In 2023 Dr. Klauzinska received a grant from the International Institute for Jewish Genealogy in Jerusalem for the research project she is currently working on called Satellite Cities of Łódź, the Polish Manchester – Jewish Demography Immigration 1868-1947.

To learn more about Dr. Klauzinska’s work please visit her website at jewishrootsinpoland.pl.

Family Registration Cards: An Overlooked Genealogical Resource

Join us on Zoom with Genealogist Dr. Kamila Klauzinska from The International Institute for Jewish Genealogy in Jerusalem to learn about these valuable family history research tools!