ADVICE ON RESEARCHING YOUR FAMILY

TALK to relatives about their past and experiences. These memories can be a mine of information, while relatives may also have a treasure trove of photographs, letters, certificates and more.

Consider joining the JGSGB. For £35 a year for individual membership (and £5 extra to add a family member), you will have access to regular meetings and workshops, a wellstocked library and one-to-one mentoring.

Build a family tree online. Some sites, like MyHeritage.com, will then enable you to connect with others whose trees are found to inter-connect with your own. This could save you a huge amount of time and open many doors you may not have been aware of.

There is a huge number of free resources online

— you just need to know where to look. Start by exploring the National Archives, the British Library and the National Army Museum’s online records. Many libraries can provide free access to sites like Ancestry. co.uk and Find My Past.co.uk. Numerous Jewish organisations, and indeed the JC, have searchable archives which can prove most valuable.

Don’t get too hung up on the spellings of names and places, especially when it comes to Jewish families and their origins in Eastern Europe. Record keepers would have often had to guess or just spell names out as they heard them. Anglicisation would have also been an issue, so it may be a case of trial and error when it comes to spellings.

Be patient — research can be slow and laborious and may not yield results as quickly as you might like. If you face a brick wall, consider moving sideways instead of backwards. A change in direction may yield completely different results.