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

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