Confirmation of nationality - Jews
In our time, many are faced with a problemclarification and confirmation of one's nationality. Sometimes this question becomes very acute - if, for example, a person wants to obtain the citizenship of another country.
In Soviet times, as it is known, the nationality could be entered in the passport and by nationality of the father, and by the nationality of the mother, and in general "from words".
How to be, if you need to find out yourtrue nationality? Very often Jews encounter this, who have the following in their passports: "Ukrainian," "Russian," "Latvian," and that the most difficult thing is that parents do not have Jewish nationality in the documents.
In this case, it is inevitable to resort to archivaldocuments, and more precisely - to metric books. They recorded civil status records: birth, death, marriage, dissolution of marriage. Of course, to confirm the Jewish nationality, it is necessary to find a record of the birth, death or marriage of ancestors in the metric book of the synagogue or rabbinate.
What do you need to start with in this case? Where to send a request?
You need to start from the requests in the appropriate archive. For example, in Ukrainian archives, as a rule, in each archival fund of the rabbinate, metric books of settlements of a separate county, in which there were synagogues, are combined, and the name of the foundation is formed from the name of a county town or town with a relatively large Jewish population where there were one or several synagogues .
If your ancestors were born and lived inthe settlement where there was a synagogue, there are no problems with the execution of such a request (in case the metric books of the synagogue were preserved in full). It is more difficult to find information about a man who was born and lived in a settlement where there was no synagogue, and he could be registered at any nearby synagogue. In this case, with the help of the directory of settlements, several towns with synagogues closest to the locality are identified, and in their metric books the necessary information is searched.
In the metric books of Orthodox churches there are records of the baptism of Jews. The record "crossed" in the metric book of the Orthodox Church can be a confirmation of Jewish nationality.
Information about the Jews can also be found in the fundsadministrative institutions, local self-government bodies, courts, various organizations and enterprises. Until 1917, the nationality was indicated when filling in the formular lists on the service of teachers, doctors; in the documents of educational institutions. In the period 1917-2000, nationality was necessarily indicated in the documents on the personnel of institutions, organizations, enterprises (autobiographies, which were necessarily compiled upon admission to employment, as well as alphabetical lists of employees with complete personal data). Such documents are deposited in state archives only in extreme cases. Usually they are stored for 75 years at the place of work.
In the Russian Federation and Kazakhstan there are special regional archives of documents on personnel.
