08/11/2026
JewishGen is proud to announce its 2026 Summer update to the JOWBR (JewishGen’s Online Worldwide Burial Registry) database.
Please visit www.jewishgen.org/databases/Cemetery/ to access the JOWBR database. If you’re a new JOWBR user, we recommend that you visit our screencast page at www.jewishgen.org/databases/Cemetery/Screencasts/ and take a look at the first two explanatory screencasts.
This update, adds approximately 214,000 new records and 30,000 new photos. The database is adding and/or updating 251 cemeteries. This update brings JOWBR’s holdings close more than 7.2 million records and 2.6 million photos from approximately 12,500 cemeteries / cemetery sections representing 150 countries! (JOWBR has added more than 260,000 records since June 2025.)
Once again, donors for this update include a mix of individuals, Jewish genealogical societies, historical societies and other organizations. We appreciate all our donor’s submissions and the transliteration work done by a faithful group of JewishGen volunteers.
A special thank you to The Zikaron organization (https://zikaron.app/) which, through the efforts of Eric Feinstein, has submitted approximately 170,000 burial records from Russia and Estonia. Eric is also working on a project to add World War I Jewish burial records in cemeteries around the world. The first installment of that project is included in this update.
Significant additions to JOWBR by country include:
▪️Argentina – 4,100 records and 2,000 photos from various cemeteries.
▪️Australia / New Zealand – 800 new records from the Australian Jewish Historical Society.
▪️Canada – 1,200 records and 1,700 photos from many cemeteries in Ontario submitted primarily from the JGS of Toronto.
▪️ Czech Republic – 800 new records and 700 photos from 17 new and updated cemeteries.
▪️England – 550 new records and photos from the Southern Cemetery in Manchester and 500 new photos from the Florence Place Jewish Burial Ground in Brighton.
▪️Estonia – 1,700 records from Tallinn Jewish Cemetery.
▪️Germany – 7,500 records from 41 new and updated cemeteries including a large set from Leipzig.
▪️Hungary – 850 records from 19 cemeteries from across the country, predominantly from the World War I project.
▪️Poland – 1,100 new records and 2,000 new photos from various cemeteries around the country which include 1,400 new Kielce and 450 new Bialystok photos.
▪️Romania – an additional 1,900 records from the Suceava cemetery in Bucovina.
▪️ Russia – 168,000 records from 111 cemeteries thanks to The Zikaron organization mentioned above.
▪️Serbia – 3,200 new records from the Jewish Community of Novi Sad.
▪️Slovakia – 1,800 new records and photos from 15 new and updated cemeteries, the majority from Humenne and Topolcany.
▪️Switzerland – 1,400 new records, mostly of the Israelitische Friedhof in Basel.
▪️ Ukraine – 900 new records, the majority from Khmelnytskyy in the Podalia region
▪️United States - approximately 25,000 new records and 22,600 photos for 69 new and updated cemeteries. Significant additions include 14,500 records from the Buffalo, NY area (Buffalo & Cheektowaga), Har Hasetim Cemetery in Gladwyne, PA, and 4,900 records and photos from Michigan, and a number of dedicated individual volunteers and representatives of synagogues and historical societies.
Please see www.jewishgen.org/databases/Cemetery/tree/CemList.htm for a complete listing of all cemeteries in JOWBR.
I want to particularly thank Eric Feinstein who has been helping me to find and gain permission to add many US and non-US records, especially worldwide veteran burials. Eric’s group of volunteers includes Ann Meddin Hellman, Malka Chosnek, Marilyn Shalks, and Sandra Bennett. We’d also like to thank all of our data donors, too many to list, but greatly appreciated. Without their help, JOWBR would not grow. Finally, a big thank you to our volunteer transliterators, led by Gilberto Jugend, and Philippe Volvovic, without whom we would not be able to add the information from some very difficult to read photos.
We appreciate all the work our donors have done and encourage you to make additional submissions. Whether you work on a cemetery / cemetery section individually or consider a group project for your local Society, temple or other group, it’s your submissions that help grow the JOWBR database and make it possible for researchers and family members to find answers they otherwise might not. Please also consider other organizations you may be affiliated with that may already have done cemetery indexing that would consider having their records included in the JOWBR database.
Our next update will include submissions received by November 30th for an update schedule for year-end.
