tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-576813717291116657.post68478027470665799..comments2023-11-02T03:52:54.712-05:00Comments on Czech out your Ancestors!: It's not just me whining about accessKate Challishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12635514280917316353noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-576813717291116657.post-57015681735961189472016-07-27T09:24:16.278-05:002016-07-27T09:24:16.278-05:00Actually, until this past decade, almost zero Czec...Actually, until this past decade, almost zero Czech records, Catholic or Protestant or Jewish, were acquired into the granite vault archives of the LDS church. In 1948, right as the genealogical society of Utah began to microfilm records in the states and most of western Europe, the Czech lands fell under communism, and became isolated from the western world by the "iron curtain." Three digitization efforts have been recent, and the church has digital copies of only a small percentage of the records that exist. Most of the digitized records are more easily researched on the individual archives sites than on FamilySearch. The only Czech researcher I knew about who worked for FamilySearch has left and they have done a truly terrible job with labeling jurisdictions. It's really frustrating. <br /><br />It would be totally unfair to characterize the Catholic church as either having the kind of influence in the Czech Republic in the second half of the 20th century to curtail microfilm efforts, or to blame the previous dearth of records on bad feelings towards LDS temple ordinances. Most Catholics who are archivists welcome all efforts at preserving and disseminating valuable heritage material. While it's true that some in high leadership in the Catholic church (who are probably not archivists) have made record acquisition difficult for the LDS church, I think in this case the fault lies squarely with the communist regime. Catholics were persecuted under communism in Czechoslovakia; surely they have more in common with the LDS church and indeed any who are interested in cultural preservation than with a regime that claims to seek to equalize everybody by throwing away the culture.<br /><br />I can totally appreciate why Czechs who were anxious to preserve their precious records would be hesitant to let a foreign American church sweep in and take their records, especially so soon after they had literally been used to find and murder thousands of ethnic Jews or those of Jewish descent. "What right do they have to tell the story of our people, especially if there is no trust that this will not be a giant case of cultural appropriation, with no responsibility to continue to preserve and tell the story?"<br /><br />You and I trust the LDS church and its leadership, but that is not a universal attitude. It's understandable that it took such a long time for the records to be digitized, and it's not as simple as "Catholics hate Mormons" (which they don't.) Mormons also need to not think so myopically; while our church has the world's largest repository of genealogical records, it still has only a fraction of the records that exist globally. While some 90-something percent of British Isles records may be represented, assuming that it is the same percentage of representation for EVERY country is naïve.Kate Challishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12635514280917316353noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-576813717291116657.post-64099368554361717942016-07-27T08:42:17.540-05:002016-07-27T08:42:17.540-05:00Kate: You will find much and open doors to others....Kate: You will find much and open doors to others. I do not know how well known it is but a few years ago the Catholic records were closed to Mormons. When they fully realized why the church wanted copies of their records they decided there was no reason to make it easy to baptize people who died as Catholics. I suspect that most of the old records are already in our church archives. Yvonne Stephensonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14604335434167862809noreply@blogger.com