The Center for Jewish History actually houses the archives of five different organizations – the American Jewish Historical Society, the American Sephardi Federation, the Leo Baeck Institute, the Yeshiva University Museum, and the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research.

You can visit the center in New York City to access their collections, and you can search through some of their collection online. Some of the more interesting record collections that can be searched online include the Industrial Removal Office, the American Jewish Committee’s WWI questionnaires, Hebrew Orphan Asylum records, and Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society records from Boston.

The CJH also houses the Ackman & Ziff Family Genealogy Institute which offers assistance in doing genealogy, houses thousands of microfilms on permanent loan from the Family History Library, and even offers assistance online through live chat.

The Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People was established in 1939 and holds the archives of thousands of Jewish communities, organizations and individuals from around the globe. This includes 60,000,000 pages of documentation and 11,000,000 frames of microfilmed documents. They also have over 2000 lists and inventories of documents related to Jews in other archives. See Jewish Galicia and Bukovina below for an index to records in the CAHJP connected to Galicia.

The archive is located on the Giv’at Ram campus of Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

We are currently looking to copy and index several documents held by CAHJP related to Kańczuga. See our CAHJP Research Project.

The Central Zionist Archives – the official archives of the institutions of the Zionist Movement (the World Zionist Organization, the Jewish Agency, the Jewish National Fund, and the United Israel Appeal) and the numerous institutions that were established by, or alongside, these bodies – permanently preserves the files that were created during the activity of these institutions.

In addition, the CZA holds the files of the institutions of the Jewish population in Palestine before the establishment of the State (the Archives of the National Council, the Archives of the Palestine Jewish Colonization Association (PICA), the Archives of the Hadassah Medical Organization, etc.), of the offices of the World Jewish Congress in various countries, the remainder of the Archives of the Hovevei Zion and of some of the Zionist Federations around the world.

There were Zionist organizations in Kańczuga, and although we haven’t found records yet, it is possible the CZA holds information related to the Kańczuga Jewish community.

Gesher Galicia is an organization that promotes Jewish genealogical and historical research in Galicia, a province of the former Austrian Empire. Its goals are to promote a forum for researchers to share information and to promote individual and group research of Galicia.

Some of the more important resources on Gesher Galicia include the All Galicia Database with almost 200,000 records from over 70 different sources, and their Map Room, which provides a large number of maps of the region and of specific towns (Kańczuga coming soon!)

JewishGen ,a non-profit organization affiliated with the Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust, was founded in 1987 as a bulletin board with only 150 users who were interested in Jewish genealogy. Primarily driven by volunteers, there are over 700 active volunteers throughout the world who actively contribute to their ever growing collection of databases, resources and search tools. Currently, JewishGen hosts more than 20 million records, and provides a myriad of resources and search tools designed to assist those researching their Jewish ancestry.

some of the most important databases for anyone doing Jewish genealogy are found on the JewishGen website. Of primary importance is the JewishGen Family Finder (JGFF) which allows researchers to connect to other people searching for the same family name from the same towns across the globe. If you haven’t added your family names from Kańczuga to the JGFF yet, go do it now!

JewishGen also hosts the web sites and mailing lists of some other very important Jewish genealogy organizations, like Gesher Galicia and JRI-Poland.

The Jewish History in Galicia and Bukovina project was started by the Leonid Nevzlin Research Center for Russian and East European Jewry at Hebrew University. The project was administered by the Nevzlin from 2008 into 2011, and in 2011 it was spun off into an independent organization. It now works with the University of Haifa. The main operation of this organization is their database, which includes references to source materials in the CAHJP as well as original information gleaned from field trips to Poland.

The The Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish History Institute is sponsored by the Polish government and dedicated to studying the history and culture of Polish Jews. There is a page on Kańczuga.

JRI-Poland has made it is mission to index all Jewish civil records in Poland, including those microfilmed by the Mormon Church (over two million records) and those not microfilmed that reside in the various branches of the Polish State Archives, Registry Offices (USC), and the Central Archives of Historical Records (AGAD). AGAD records, although they are in Warsaw, are from towns in Eastern Galicia, which is now part of Ukraine. Most of JRI-Poland’s more than 4.5 Million records can be searched for free online.

JRI-Poland has a complete listing of the towns they have records for, which includes Kańczuga. While the town listing shows which records will show up in their search engine (which is free), note that there are some indexing projects that won’t necessarily show up in their town pages, and to be sure what records exist for a given town, you should contact the town coordinator for your town to see what exists.

The Kolbuszowa Region Research Group is a group set up to research towns within an approximate 30 mile radius of Kolbuszowa, including all towns in the administrative districts of Kolbuszowa, Łancut, Mielec, Nisko, Pilzno, Ropczyce, Rzeszów, Strzyzów and Tarnobrzeg. You can view the full list of towns. KRRG manages all the KehillaLink (formerly ShtetlLink) pages for the towns in their region. Of course, this list includes Kańczuga.

POLIN is a web portal built to provide information on Polish Jewish heritage to Polish schools and students, ho otherwise have little resources in Polish on the long history of Jewish life in Poland. The site contains profiles of different towns in Poland that include information on the Jewish communities that existed there, what happened there during the Holocaust, etc. Users can contribute photos and documents related to specific towns to the site. The page of Kanczuga includes photos of the Kańczuga-Siedleczka cemetery and photos of the town itself.

The Virtual Shtetl (usable in 7 languages) is a major online project of the Museum of the History of Polish Jews (which only has a Polish web site). The site is organized around specific towns, and content exists in many languages, although primarily in Polish. There is a page about Kanczuga. They also have a Facebook Page (facebook.com/VirtualShtetl).

Yad Vashem is the State of Israel’s Holocaust memorial museum. It is dedicated to four pillars of remembrance – Commemoration, Documentation, Research and Education. The most important online resource of Yad Vashem is their Central Database of Shoah Victims’ Names which is an attempt to record information on all six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust. The database includes Pages of Testimony submitted by relatives of victims of the Holocaust, as well as other documents that list those murdered, such as deportation lists, etc.

Currently, simply searching for the location ‘Kanczuga‘ returns 773 records. Searching other nearby villages also return results, such as Lopuszka Mala, Zuklin, Krzeczowice, Sietsz, Siedleczka, Pantalowice, Manasterz, etc. For some strategies on searching the names database, see this article.

Another very useful online resource of Yad Vashem is their Photo Archive. The search interface for the photo archive was built in conjunction with Google. Unfortunately there are no Kanczuga photos in the database, but try searching other towns or family names.