MAY 4 • 2023 | 15
THE FIGHT FOR PUBLIC ACCESS
These records come from two
primary sources: the Ukraine archives
themselves and the sprawling
Wikisource library that Ukraine
genealogist Alex Krakovsky has put
together in recent years and months.
This library includes nearly 3,000
metric books, indexes, name lists,
revision lists and censuses of the
Jewish population in Ukraine that
Krakovsky and his team have scanned
and uploaded.
The condition of the records vary.
Some, despite being nearly 200 years
old or more, are in pristine condition
and legible. Others have water damage,
fire damage, rips or have simply
yellowed and faded with time.
Where JewishGen Ukraine Research
Division steps in is to take the
information written in old Cyrllic on
the individually scanned pages and
transcribe them into typed Cyrllic, then
upload them to the JewishGen server in
English, for the public to search.
This is an invaluable step because
few genealogy enthusiasts can read
old Cyrllic (including many Russian-
speaking natives, because the style of
writing has changed dramatically over
time).
As for the records that come to
JewishGen from Ukraine archives
themselves, many state and regional
archives in the country have recently
begun uploading scans of the records
housed in their repositories. Still,
researchers encounter the same issue:
the records are written in old Cyrllic
and their condition can vary from
excellent to illegible.
There was a long legal battle to
make these records public in the first
place, a battle that was spearheaded
by Krakovsky. “He took the initiative
to try and get records,” Berenson
explains. “When he couldn’t get
them or get them in volume, or there
would be a high cost for them or
other various restrictions, he sued the
archives.”
One by one, Krakovsky took on
more than a dozen Ukraine archives
in court. He pushed for fair processing
fees, document copying and publishing
of inventories online. Denial to access,
he insisted, was a form of “censorship”
— and the courts agreed.
Winning these lawsuits, Krakovsky
helped eliminate barriers to genea-
logical research in Ukraine that has
granted millions of people the chance to
learn about their roots. It also brought
Ukraine archives to the same level of
access as other European archives.
“He opened the archives for
everyone’s benefit,” Berenson says.
Since these records aren’t
copyrighted and are free to download,
JewishGen Ukraine Research Division
is able to take these uploads — which
are typically uploaded as books with
several hundred pages each — and
digitize them.
There’s also no end of information
in sight: Krakovsky and his team
continue to scan new record books and
lists, despite the war, and JewishGen
Ukraine Research Division continues
to transcribe. A recent GoFundMe
effort also provided Krakovsky’s team
with state-of-the-art scanners that
have made the process of preserving
documents faster.
TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE
Still, the pace wasn’t always this
furious. Between the war and hacks
to Krakovsky’s Wikisource library,
Berenson — who serves in her role as
a volunteer in addition to her day job
as an attorney — and other JewishGen
leaders saw a need to speed up efforts.
“We had a problem because, over
the years, there would be individual
transcribers or translators,” she
explains of the former process to
digitize these records. “But then,
we suddenly had thousands of
documents, and we had to deal with
them. Otherwise, they would never
be available in volume for people [to
search].”
With a real danger of these records
being destroyed physically by the war
or wiped from the internet, JewishGen
Ukraine Research Division assembled
a team of roughly 100 transcribers
to take on the ever-growing load of
Ukraine records that have become
available. Together, they set a goal: to
upload 1 million records by summer
2023.
Each month, Berenson receives
some 150,000 transcribed records that
puts the division closer and closer to
reaching its goal. A record contains a
single line in a document, not a book,
Poltava Recruit
List 1859
continued on page 16