Miriam Weiner
"You are Invited to a Meeting with the KGB"
Sunday, November 10, 2024 2:00 PM Eastern Time
In Person at the Weston Public Library and via Zoom
The presentation is FREE, but registration is required. Click here to register.
Miriam Weiner has been described as "The Genealogist Who Lifted the Archival Iron Curtain." In her presentation, she will highlight some of the memorable experiences during her 30-year journey through the archives of Eastern Europe. This tour de force will be followed by a presentation of her work focusing on her creative methods of accessing archives along the way. There will be a live interactive tour of the website “Routes to Roots Foundation.”
After her presentation, Miriam will receive the 2024 MGC Shirley M. Barnes Records Access Award in recognition of her dedication to keeping records open and the significant impact her work has had on genealogists everywhere.
About the Presenter
Our speaker, Miriam Weiner, is an internationally known author, lecturer, syndicated columnist, tour guide and journalist and currently serves as the president of the Routes to Roots Foundation. With the fall of the Iron Curtain, Miriam was the first to connect with archivists and chief archivists in the formerly closed-off countries, helping to establish access to their records. She continues this work even today.
Through her pioneering efforts in Poland and the former Soviet Union, she created a town-by-town inventory of archive documents in official cooperation with the archives in Poland, Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus and Lithuania. The searchable database can be found on the website of the Routes to Roots Foundation (https://www.rtrfoundation.org), along with an image database, surname database, map database & numerous articles by archivists and local historians in Eastern European towns. In 1991, The Jewish Week in New York referred to Miriam as “The genealogist who lifted the archival iron curtain” and in 1998, The Forward referred to her as “The Indiana Jones of pre-war Polish Jewry.”
Miriam is the author Jewish Roots in Poland and Jewish Roots in Ukraine and Moldova, both of which received major awards from the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies (IAJGS) in 1999 and 2000. She is the former Executive Director of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors, and her syndicated column “Roots and Branches” appeared in more than 100 Jewish newspapers worldwide.
Prior to her genealogical pursuits, she was a licensed private investigator in California, a background that has increased her ability to develop sources of information not widely known in the genealogy world. In 1985, Miriam became the first Jewish genealogist to be certified by the Board for Certification of Genealogists in Washington, DC and was awarded Emeritus Status in 2015.
This presentation is FREE, but registration is required.
Comments