How to Browse a Cemetery in JOWBR

JOWBR has millions of records of Jewish Burials. They can be searched by Surname, Given Name, Town, or Any Field (which includes Comments and Notes). You can search if for free, but you need to register with JewishGen.org (which is also free).

JOWBR records are divided into cemeteries, within cities, within regions, within countries. Starting from the JOWBR Cemetery Inventory, you can open a country like Ukraine (127 cemeteries, 84719 burials) to see over 10 regions. One region is Volhynia (18 cemeteries, 9099 burials), with some cities with a single cemetery, and some, like Zhytomyr, with 4 cemeteries. One cemetery in Zhytomyr has no name, and appears as "BLANK Cemetery Name (5488 burials) (data online 13 December 2013)". Clicking on the name shows the Cemetery Information page, which notes that there are 3227 photographs for the 5488 burials.

Searching by Town: JOWBR does not provide a way to search an individual cemetery, but it does let you search for a town. If the town is specific enough, and there is one cemetery in that town, then you can come close. Zhytomyr has just four cemeteries, and an exact search for the town Zhytomyr matches 5488 records. This matches the number in the BLANK Cemetery Name, but there should be over 1000 more matches. A "sounds like" search does not match any more records in Volhynia. No matter.

Finding Nearby Records: The first record in Zhytomyr is LEVITAN, Iosif (1897-1957) and it has a photograph (with two stones, unfortunately, with the same life span). The second record is SHPRITSMAN, Sura (1880-1957) Look at the links for Iosif (ends with VOLHYNIA_2_RECNUM1000) and Sura (ends with VOLHYNIA_2_RECNUM1001). By modifying the number, you can look at adjacent records! If the records are submitted in an order that corresponds to their physical layout, you can look for relatives "nearby".

Finding Nearby Pictures: The link to Iosif's picture ends with 100_2138.jpg. The link to Sura's picture ends with 100_2139.jpg, and you can easily see Iosif's stone on the left side in Sura's, if you look carefully, you can the base of Sura's stone on the right side of Iosif's picture. Adjacent burials are often adjacent in JOWBR records, and pictures of adjacent burials often have file names that are adjacent (although records might increase while pictures might decrease).

PicNear Tool: To look at adjacent pictures, there is a simple tool called PicNear, which shows nearby pictures by adding to and subtracting from the last number in a link. Here is PicNear for Iosif's photo, which shows two pictures before an after. It could show more, but JOWBR only shows full size images, not thumbnails. Iosif's photo is 616.5Kb, and Sura's is 596.7Kb, so to show many photos could put a strain on JOWBR's servers. You can click on a small image to view the full sized image. You can drag and drop an image, from JOWBR or any site, including PicNear, to the Location box on PicNear (it will turn grey to tell you that you can drop it).

PicNear and Hidden Pictures: JOWBR only allows a single picture to be associated with a burial record, but often there are two stones associated with a burial (e.g., a headstone and a footstone). For some cemeteries, there are more pictures than those associated with the records. While they can't be retrieved in JOWBR, they can be viewed with PicNear. Montreal actor's parents are buried in Beaconsfield. His father, Joseph (1898-1967) has a photo in JOWBR, and PicNear shows William's mother, Ann, and their shared headstone.

PicNear for Records: PicNear has been modified to browse nearby links, such as the links to JOWBR records. JOWBR records near Joseph (1898-1967). Instead of showing small images, only the record numbers are shown. Click on the record numbers to see the JOWBR record.