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Netherlands Family Cards 1919-1939 Are Available Online

10 May 2021 12:00 PM | Anonymous

The following is copied from the IAJGS Public Records Access Monitoring Committee mailing list and is republished here with permission:

Friesland is a province of the Netherlands knowns a Fresia, located in the northern part of the country.  The West-Fries Archief has made the family cards 1919-1939 available on online—again.  They had been removed in 2018 due advice of  the Society of Municipalities in the Netherlands- to remove the family cards of 1921-1940 to limit availability of the records for 110 years  as they contain information on religious denominations and some persons in the cards were still living.  This was a reaction to  the then new privacy regulations  (General Data Protection Regulation-GDPR) disallowed publication of cards containing living people. Volunteers have entered the birth dates of the people on the cards so the website can automatically detect which cards contain people who were born less than 100 years ago.

To visit the WestFries Archives for the list of names go to: https://www.westfriesarchief.nl/onderzoek/zoeken/personen  It is in Dutch and English.  You can click on the person’s name and it will provide a link to records for that person.

Having information of where people lived at the beginning of World War ll, 1939, is important when tracing back. They were part of the registration process. In 1920, the address-based registration was converted into a family-based registration. For each family, their information was collected on a family card. If the family moved, the card went with them. The system was changed into a personal registration in 1938 with the introduction of the personal index card.

Personal record cards were introduced in 1938 to replace the old family-based registration. The municipalities kept personal record cards for every inhabitant. If a person moved to another municipality, his index card was forwarded there. It can be thought of as an ‘administrative twin’ that follows you around your entire life.

The personal record cards from 1938 onward are not public to protect the privacy of living people. After a person dies, his or her card or record from the municipal basic administration is sent for processing to the Central Bureau of Statistics. When they are done with it, it is sent on to the Central Bureau for Genealogy (CBG)  https://cbg.nl/ . Usually, it takes around two years for the cards to become available at the CBG.  Photocopies can be ordered from the CBG for a fee by filling in the application form and sending it to pkpl@cbg.nl. See the CBG webpage (in Dutch and English) https://cbg.nl/diensten/uittreksels-pkpl/  about the current fees in Euros.

Photocopies can be ordered from the CBG for a fee by filling in the application form and sending it to pkpl@cbg.nl. See the CBG webpage (in Dutch) about the current fees. Also see: https://www.dutchgenealogy.nl/personal-record-card/

Thank you to Yvette Hoitink’s Dutch Genealogy News- April 2021 for sharing this information.  https://www.dutchgenealogy.nl/dutch-genealogy-news-for-april-2021/ 

Jan Meisels Allen

Chairperson, IAJGS Public Records Access Monitoring Committee

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