NEW DIRECTOR GENERAL OF POLISH STATE ARCHIVES TERMINATES JRI-POLAND AGREEMENTS

Dear Fellow Polish Researchers:

On September 26, 2006, Dr. Sławomir Radoń, the former Director of the Polish State Archives in Krakow, was appointed as General Director of the entire Polish State Archive (PSA) system. On November 9, 2006, Jewish Records Indexing-Poland was notified of the unilateral termination of two Agreements that had previously been concluded between the PSA and JRI-Poland and signed by Dr. Radoń's predecessor.

Effective November 30, 2006, after more than nine years of cooperation, and the indexing of several million records, Director Radon has chosen to terminate the "Indexing Project" that covered the indexing of all Jewish records not previously microfilmed by the LDS Church that are in the possession of the PSA and are more than 100 Years old.

Effective November 17, 2006, after more than three years of operation, the JRI-Poland online ordering system has also been terminated. The online ordering system handled orders for more than 16,000 records indexed under the Indexing Project.

It is with great disappointment that we must report these decisions concerning this aspect of JRI-Poland's widespread activity. The JRI-Poland Board is taking every step possible to address this situation. We will continue to provide service to the Polish Jewish Genealogical community. The online database will continue to operate providing a finding aid and tool for researchers to identify records of interest.

If you have a question on the status of any Archive indexing project, please send your messages to questions@jri-poland.org.

Other JRI-Poland projects to index records from other sources, including the LDS Microfilms of Polish Jewish records, will continue.

If you have a question on the order processing system, please contact Mark Halpern, Order Processing Coordinator, at willie46@comcast.net.

Along with our existing backlog of new data, researchers will continue to see additions to the JRI-Poland database. JRI-Poland, in our normal course of business, continues to explore and acquire new sources of genealogical data to help you in your research.

On behalf of the Board of JRI-Poland

Stanley Diamond
Executive Director