Online genealogy service MyHeritage has published more than four million Lithuanian Jewish records dating back to Catherine the Great’s Russian empire and up until the Holocaust. 

The reams of data, published on Monday and translated to English, cover 145 years between 1795 and 1940 in present-day Lithuania and areas in Poland, Belarus and other neighbouring countries. 

The searchable collection, which includes census data, Shoah databases, tax, voter and conscription lists, was compiled and indexed over several decades by the US non-profit LitvakSIG. 

LitvakSIG said it shared the resource in a bid to “promote widely” its research into Lithuanian-Jewish genealogy and that it expects additional records to be included in the future.

MyHeritage founder and CEO Gilad Japhet said the collection was a “valuable resource for anyone of Lithuanian-Jewish origin.” 

“On a personal level, some of my own ancestors appear in this collection, including my paternal grandmother and her siblings from the small Lithuanian town of Valkininkai (Olkieniki), making this addition especially meaningful for me and my family,” he added. 

Mr Japhet also said the website was amping up efforts to expand Jewish genealogy resources available on the platform.

The resource, “Lithuanian-Jewish Records from LitvakSIG, 1795-1940”, can be searched for free but requires a MyHeritage subscription for full access.  

To find out more, visit www.myheritage.com/research/collection-10951/