7gens reads fourteen scripts and helps you identify and request records from Russia, the Baltics, Poland, the Balkans, the Levant, and the Maghreb. The book comes back in your language.
Even partial — half-remembered first names and a town that may not exist by that name anymore is enough to start.
7gens reads the original script and helps you find and request the right records from the old country — so they arrive in their original language.
Direct quotes preserved in original. Everything around them rendered into your reading language. With sources.
If your family's country isn't here, write to us anyway — we can work with another nine languages on a case-by-case basis.
Ask about another language| · Language | · What we handle | |
|---|---|---|
| Russian | Cyrillic · pre/post-1918 orthography | ✓ |
| Yiddish | Hebrew script · Lithuanian, Polish, Ukrainian dialects | ✓ |
| Polish | Latin · pre-WWII county records | ✓ |
| Ladino | Hebrew, Latin and Rashi scripts | ✓ |
| Greek | Polytonic and modern monotonic | ✓ |
| Armenian | Eastern + Western | ✓ |
| Romanian | Cyrillic (pre-1862) + Latin | ✓ |
| Lithuanian | Žemaitija + Aukštaitija dialects | ✓ |
| Latvian | Old gothic-cyrillic mixed | ✓ |
| Estonian | Including Russian-period records | ✓ |
| Hungarian | County registers + church books | ✓ |
| German | Sütterlin, Kurrent, modern | ✓ |
| Arabic | Levantine, Maghrebi family records | ✓ |
| Hebrew | Modern + Mishnaic where present | ✓ |
Often a grandmother's recorded interview, a fading photograph, a town name nobody can pronounce anymore, and a strong feeling that "we used to be from there."
You don't need to read the records. We do. And we don't need them in English — we go to where they actually are.
Every quote in its original language and script, with a translation in the margin. Every claim with a citation pointing at the actual archival file — by fond, opis, delo, list.
You can hand this to a cousin in Tel Aviv, Toronto, or Tashkent and they can read it. The marginalia, they can verify themselves.
The first chapter ships in ten days, in the language of your choosing.