Weiner has been described as the Indiana Jones of prewar Polish Jewish genealogy . Weiner has discovered previously unknown archival holdings and then had this information translated and made available to the public via her books and website ; in so doing , she has been described as “ The genealogist who lifted the archival iron curtain . ” Weiner was responsible for changing the perception that there were no Jewish ancestral documents available after The Holocaust . Because of her early travels to Eastern Europe , beginning in Poland in 1989 and Ukraine in 1990 , and the time she spent in working in the archives there , Weiner was able to debunk the myth that existed at that time , an assumption that all Jewish documents were destroyed during the Holocaust . With her column “ Roots and Branches ” and along with her lecture schedule , she made this discovery available and accessible to Jews throughout the world . In addition to finding that documents had survived , Weiner organized the information , pre-internet , so that it was easier for genealogists researching their families to find information about archives , museums , and libraries with family documents . The original data in the archives needed to be translated , coded by document type and manually entered into an organized format . The result was the Archive Database created by Weiner , which then became available to the public in her two books and via the Routes to Roots Foundation website
The Holocaust
The Holocaust
Miriam Weiner (genealogist)