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What is JOWBR?

The JewishGen Online Worldwide Burial Registry (JOWBR) is a database of names and other identifying information from Jewish cemeteries and burial records worldwide, from the earliest records to the present.  It is a compilation of two linked databases: a database of burial records, and a database of information about each particular cemetery.  JOWBR's aim is to catalog extant data Jewish cemeteries and burial records worldwide.  Photographs of the gravestones (matzevot) are also included in this database.

JOWBR is a searchable database on JewishGen, and the data is also incorporated into the relevant JewishGen "All Country" Databases.

How does the JOWBR project work?

Indexing of burial records is the responsibility of the Research Division of JewishGen, under VP Joyce Field.  Nolan Altman is the Administrative Coordinator of JOWBR.  The technical aspects of the project are being guided by Warren Blatt, JewishGen's Editor-in-Chief; and Michael Tobias, Vice President for Programming and Development.

To help accumulate burial data, we are initiating an "adopt a cemetery" program to encourage Special Interest Groups (SIGs), local Jewish genealogy societies (JGSs), synagogue youth groups, Jewish Federations, and other interested parties to adopt a cemetery or a landsmanschaft plot and index its records for submission to the JOWBR project.  We hope to appoint coordinators for cities, states, and countries outside the United States who will organize efforts to collect data for their areas.  Those people who wish to become coordinators should contact Joyce Field at jfield@jewishgen.org.

We regret that we cannot accept individual family burial data.  JOWBR only accepts data from an entire cemetery or an entire landsmanschaft/organization plot within a larger cemetery.

Forms:

All forms and explanatory material are available online, using the links below: a Donor Agreement, a template for data entry (an Excel spreadsheet), and an explanation of the fields used for data entry.

The fields for data input for each burial are:

Plot Location Surname Given Name(s) Place of Birth Date of Birth

Place of Death Date of Death (English) Date of Death (Hebrew) Age at Death Date of Burial

Hebrew Name Spouse's Name Father's Name Mother's Name

Other Surnames Photo Filename Comments/Notes

For more information about these fields, please see the JOWBR data entry instructions.

If for some reason you are unable to enter the data yourself, please contact us and we will arrange to have this done by one of our volunteers.  Please also remember that we are not accepting information on individual burials, only information for complete cemeteries, landsmanschaft or synagogue plots.

All contributors of burial data are asked to submit a Donor Agreement giving permission for this material to be put online.

Contacts:

Completed datafile spreadsheets are to be sent to jowbrsubmissions@lyris.jewishgen.org as e-mail attachments, or sent via postal mail on a CD-ROM or DVD to:

Nolan Altman
3817 Oceanside Road East
Oceanside, NY 11572
USA

Completed Donor Agreements are to be returned to JewishGen at the address on the Donor Agreement.

For any questions, please contact Joyce Field.

Photographs and Translations:

For hints on photographing tombstones, please see this file.

If you need the Hebrew inscriptions of tombstones to be translated, place the JPEG images of the tombstones (of an entire cemetery or landsmanschaft plot) on a CD-ROM disk or disks and mail them to JewishGen at the address above.

Please indicate on the Donor Agreement that the photographs have been submitted on a CD-ROM disk.

If you would like to volunteer to be on the team of translators, please contact Joyce Field.

Last Update: 16 May 2006   WSB
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