Website traces lives of world's Jews

NEW YORK - A genealogy website is launching what it is billing as the world's largest online collection of Jewish family history records.

Ancestry.com has partnered with two organizations for the project - JewishGen, an affiliate of New York's Museum of Jewish Heritage, and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, an overseas humanitarian aid organization.

The online collection, which was announced yesterday, features millions of historic Jewish records including Schindler's List - the names of almost 2,000 Jews saved by a Nazi businessman who employed them in Poland. Their story was told in an Oscar-winning 1993 film.

Many of the 26 million documents are online for the first time - from photographs and immigration data to a list of people who died in Nazi concentration camps.

The Joint Distribution Committee says it has digitized records showing the amount of money paid by American Jews to support the emigration of friends and relatives from Europe during and after World War II; and records of displaced Jews who were provided with food, medical care, clothing, and emigration assistance by the committee.

ASSOCIATED PRESS