[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] EWZ/BDC Research

Sat Nov 10 10:54:41 PST 2001

For more on the EWZ, with film numbers for some Volhynians etc., go to my
page at

    http://members.home.net/daveobee/index.html

and click on Volhynia.

dave obee

----- Original Message -----
From: Jerry Frank <jkfrank at home.com>
To: <ger-poland-volhynia at eclipse.sggee.org>
Sent: Saturday, November 10, 2001 7:47 AM
Subject: [Ger-Poland-Volhynia] EWZ/BDC Research

> For those of you researching family that was forced out of eastern regions
> back to Germany during WW II, these microfilms can be a major source of
> information.  I know personally of one woman whose father died during this
> resettlement.  She had no photo of her father until she found one on the
> card file from the EWZ/BDC records.  Many of these cards include pedigrees
> that go back 4 or 5 generations.
>
> A general description of the content of this material can be found
> at   http://pixel.cs.vt.edu/library/berlin.html
>
> It is significant that the report on that page fails to include the fact
> that many Volhynian and Russian Poland Germans are also included in these
> files.
>
> Tom Stangl, who has done a great deal of research on these microfilms,
> recently updated and clarified some of that information in a recent
posting
> to another mail service.  He has kindly agreed to allow me to repost that
> message.
>
> ----------------Start Tom Stangl
message--------------------------------------
>
> There are over 8,400 rolls of 16mm microfilm in the EWZ collection, which
> is part of a 70,000 roll collection from the former Berlin Document Center
> [BDC], which housed the German government documents captured in WW II.  Of
> these, 3,210 rolls are Antraege files--applications for naturalization
> 1939-1945, which are organized by Region [e.g., "Russia", "Poland",
> "Rumania", etc.], and alphabetized by surname within Region. There are 843
> rolls which cover the Antraege of the German ethnics who came from
"Russia"
> [including Ukrainian Volhynia]--these films are the EWZ50 series. Another
> 701 rolls cover "Rumania" [Bessarabia, Dubrodscha, Bukovina]--these are
the
> EWZ51 series. In addition to these series of films, there are groups of
> Antraege films for "Poland" [EWZ52--701 rolls, including Polish Volhynia],
> the "Baltics" [EWZ53--587 rolls], as well as several other regions
> [Yugoslavia, France, Bulgaria--379 rolls].
>
> Besides the Antraege files, there were card files kept on each applicant
> for naturalization. These were the "E" cards [EWZ card--for everyone over
> age 15, and unaccompanied children younger than 15], and the "G" card
> ["Gesundheitskarte"--Health card--for everyone over age 6; photos are
often
> attached], which were combined into one alphabetical file covering all of
> the regions [Russia, Rumania, Poland, etc.], and were filmed as the EWZ57
> series. There are 1,964 rolls of film in the E/G Kartei [EWZ57] series.  A
> separate set of files called the Stammblaetter [EWZ58] contains copies of
> the Personalblatt from the Antraege file, plus a photograph of the
> applicant. There are 740 rolls of EWZ58 films. These files are arranged in
> EWZ number order [2 to 1,046,998].
>
> Any of these films can be purchased from our Archives for $34 per roll
> postpaid to US addresses, or $39 US per roll postpaid to international
> addresses. They can be ordered by telephone by calling toll free in the US
> at 1-800-234-8861, or toll at 301-713-6800 during working hours at the
> Archives [Monday-Friday 8:30 am to 4:30 pm EST]. However, you must know
the
> film number of the film you wish to purchase, and there is no catalog
> available from which to order. The films cannot be rented or loaned from
> our Archives. The Archives has rudimentary indexes of these films [first
> and last name only on each roll of film], but has not made the indexes
> available outside the Microfilm Reading Room at Archives II. I am telling
> you these details so that you may fully understand the difficulties you
> would have to obtain these
> films from our Archives.
>
> The Mormon Church [LDS] has purchased a full set of the EWZ57 and EWZ58
> series of films. The LDS renumbered their copies of the films, so that it
> is not possible to use the LDS numbers to ask our Archives for assistance
> in obtaining an individual applicant's records on other series of films. A
> cross reference between the Archives film numbers for the EWZ58 series and
> the LDS numbers for this series has been posted on the Internet by Dave
> Obee <daveobee at home.com>. I am not aware of any cross reference being
> available for the EWZ57 series. The LDS has these films available for
> rental in North America at their local Family History Centers. I do not
> know whether or not
> these films would be available in any of the LDS libraries in Europe.  A
> few years ago, the American government returned the hardcopy EWZ documents
> to the Bundesarchiv in Germany. A full set of the microfilms are in both
> our National Archives and the Bundesarchiv. I do not know the policies of
> the Bundesarchiv in regards to anyone in Germany accessing or purchasing
> these microfilms.
>
> Researchers in the US and Canada, who are members of GRHS and AHSGR, have
> been purchasing rolls of EWZ film to do research on their families. Upon
> completion of their research, they have been donating the films to GRHS or
> AHSGR. The donated films are stored in the headquarters of each
> organization. Volunteers from GRHS have been indexing these donated films
> and posting the extractions on the Internet [Odessa Digital Library]. If
> your surname is among those posted on the Internet, much of your research
> has already been done; and it can provide you information about which
> records you might wish to obtain from either the Archives [by ordering
your
> own copy of the film] or by requesting hard copies from the GR
headquarters
> which has custody of the donated film.
> ---------------End Tom Stangl message------------------------------
>
>
> Websites for the 2 organizations mentioned in the last paragraph
> are:   http://www.grhs.org    and   http://www.ahsgr.org
>
> Please do not contact me personally for any further information about this
> resource as I do not have anything more.  Please use the links included
> throughout the above message along with those at the Pixel webpage to
> access more information.
>
>
>
> Jerry Frank - Calgary, Alberta
> jkfrank at home.com
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