Presenter: Marion Werle
Format: Download MP3 Audio

Liepaja is a port city on the west coast of Latvia, a port of exit for many of our ancestors leaving the Russian Empire. Latgale is a region in southeast part of the country, which was part of Vitebsk gubernia (province) in the Pale of Settlement. In the past 20 years, the sheer number of resources available to the Jewish researcher with Latvian roots from various towns in Latvia has increased exponentially. This talk will introduce the materials available to the researcher, including vital records (birth, marriage and death), censuses and revision lists, internal passports, the Latvia SIG databases on JewishGen, newspaper articles, Holocaust resources (including the Latvia Names Project), Latvian towns on Kehilalinks, and how to contact the Latvian State Historical Archives for further information. This presentation will also be of interest to researchers with family from Lithuania, as there were close ties between the two areas.