Dutch Genealogy News for January 2021

Here is an overview of the new sources and projects that were announced last month.

Sources

• Transport lists of Camp Westerbork have become public and are being digitized. The records can be searched via War Lives. Westerbork was the main transit camp in World War II in the Netherlands from where Jewish people, Roma, Sinti, homosexuals, and other persecuted people were transported to the death camps in Eastern Europe.
• The Stichting voor Surinaamse Genealogie [Foundation for Suriname Genealogy] has made the past issues of their journal, Wi Rutu, available online for members.
• The website Concordans Paramaribo gives an overview of the wards, house numbers, and modern addresses in Paramaribo, Suriname.
• Several newspapers have been added to Delpher, including several agricultural papers. See Delpher for a complete list.
• The Historical Society Jan van Arkel has published indexes of records from Grafhorst, IJsselmuiden, Kampen, Kampereiland, Kamperveen, Mastenbroek, Wilsum, Zalk en Veecaten in Overijssel on their website. This includes the 1811 name taking registers.
• Indexes of civil registration records  of Sint Maarten in the Netherlands Antilles have been added to Archiefman.
• Building records of Haarlem 1901-2010 are now available via the Noord-Hollands Archief website. This includes requests, permits, and architectural drawings. The index is online and you can then order the scans via email for personal use. Because of copyrights, the scans are not available online directly.
• Several transcriptions of church records from the east of Noord-Brabant have been added to Genbronnen.
• Scans and indexes of church records, civil registration records, and population registers of Schiedam have been added to SchiedamGen.
• The National Archives published an index to the records of the War Graves Foundation (Oorlogsgravenstichting, OGS) that links to the scans of the records.
• The National Archives is using handwritten text recognition technology to automatically transcribe manuscripts. The results are made available via Zenodo as text-files. Gerhard de Kok has now created a search engine to search the transcribed records, with links to the original scans at the National Archives website. This allows youto search records of the Dutch East India Company (VOC), West India Company (WIC), Society of Suriname, and Society of Berbice.

Dutch East India Company Soldiers

Projects

• More issues of the Algemeen Politieblad [General Police Journal] are being digitized by the Central Bureau for Genealogy. They had already digitized the issues from 1852 to 1900. The new project will digitize the rest of the journals, from 1900 to 1946. The journal is available via the website of the CBG for members only or with a day pass.
• Amsterdam alien registration cards (“Vreemdelingenkaarten”) 1920-1971 are being indexed by volunteers at Vele Handen.
• The Amsterdam City Archives is digitizing nuisance permits, records about military affairs, housing, and general affairs. The scans will be available on the Amsterdam City Archives website. [Source: Amsterdam City Archives]

Administration

• Four villages in the municipality of Haaren in Noord-Brabant are being reassigned to neighboring municipalities. Haaren will be annexed to Oisterwijk, Esch to Boxtel, Helvoirt to Vught, and Biezenmortel to Tilburg. The records of these villages will be transferred to the archives of the new municipalities.
• In Groningen, the municipalities of Appingedam, Delfzijl, and Loppersum have been combined to form the new municipality Eemsdelta. The archives of the new municipality are kept in Appingedam.

Archives

• Many records of 25, 50, 75, or 100 years old became public on 1 January 2021. See records that became public in 2021 for an overview.
• The Netherlands is still in lockdown. Archives are closed. Several have stopped accepting scanning-on-demand requests, either because staff is not working on-site or because there is a large backlog.

Children in front of a closed door. Credits: Herbert Behrens, collection Nationaal Archief (CC-0).