IAJGS 2011 - IAJGS 2011 : 31st Annual IAJGS Conference on Jewish Genealogy

Washington, D.C., offers the finest world-class resources and repositories to genealogists and family historians. We warmly encourage you to join the Jewish Genealogy Society of Greater Washington for the 31st IAJGS International Conference on Jewish Genealogy to be held in the U.S. capital city August 14 to 19, 2011. We guarantee you’ll want to explore all the city’s treasures ? archives, museums, memorials, the arts, restaurants, and so much more.

One of the most walkable cities in the world, Washington offers opportunities to satisfy every intellectual, cultural, and culinary taste.

The Grand Hyatt Washington, our conference headquarters, is so centrally located that the hub of the Washington Metro subway system is accessible from inside the hotel lobby.

Here you are just five blocks from National Archives I, six blocks from the White House, around the corner from the rich genealogy and history resources held at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, and minutes from the restored Sixth & I Historic Synagogue (named for its location at 6th and I Streets NW). And the renowned Chinatown is but a hop, skip, and jump down the street.

The conference officially opens on Sunday, August 14, with workshops for beginners, lectures for all, and a Special Interest Group/Birds of a Feather Fair to showcase specialty genealogy interests, followed by opening night festivities. (Of course, over the weekend prior to the conference, we offer conference attendees kosher dinners and Shabbat-friendly discussions, so feel free to come early.) Once the conference begins, we can attend orientation sessions in the hotel by staff of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, National Archives, and Library of Congress to help us prepare to navigate each of these repositories with maximum efficiency and success.
(See these places on a map.)

Virtually every Jewish genealogist has lost family in the Shoah?whether or not we know it. It all depends on how we define family. The precious records of the International Tracing Service of the International Red Cross are newly available at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, just one of a few places in the world where they can be accessed by researchers.

With excitement we anticipate release of the 1940 U.S. Census in early 2012. What treasures await us? How should we prepare to make the most of the documents’ riches? At the conference, we’ll preview the census and reveal strategies for reaping maximum benefits.

Even if we never step foot outside the doors of the luxurious Grand Hyatt Washington, conference programming offers us a mini graduate education in Jewish history, genetics, geography, sociology, anthropology, filmography?and so many other -ologies! And we haven’t even mentioned the invaluable networking and information sharing that transpires among our conference attendees!

Plan to be with us at the conference. All the best we have come to expect from these annual events awaits us at the 31st IAJGS International Conference in Washington, D.C., August 14 to 19, 2011.