Presenter: Julius M?ller
Format: Download MP3 Audio

During the research we often face the term - nationality Austrian. Mostly it indicates one of provinces like Czech Lands (Bohemia/Moravia/Austrian part of Silesia). If this is the only information we have about location we can turn to specificity of Czech Jewish surnames. In terms of language the country-specific surnames can be toponyms, laboronyms, antroponyms, and diminonyms : German names (Aschermann, Brummel, Flusser, Friedjung, Fr?schel, Jolesch, Koblitz, Langweil, etc.) and Czech-sounding names (Benesch, Kulka, Klepetarz, Kriwaczek, Robik, Wohryzek, Ziak, etc.). New era of digitizing enables us to perform large scale screening for specific surnames. For Bohemia, one can use online indexes of 182 Familiant Books; in Moravia and Silesia it is a bit more tricky but doable. There were only 52 Jewish communities in Moravia and 14 ones in Silesia, respectively, to be checked one by one by the index books. A couple of case studies will be presented.