Mila,

I added upload cap. to this forum. It was turned off my bad. Just clic on "Attach a file" right above the editor.

I have tried attaching the list, but I got the message "No file can be larger than 1KB". My file is 453 KB. Can you fix that?

Ok should work now untill 1.95MB

There you go!

Thank you very much. I presume B stands for birth etc?
I will attach this to the next magazine release for members if that is not a problem I will put your credits to it of course.

Yes, B stands for births, M for marriages and D for deaths.

I have received this list from frinds at FHL, so please don't credit me for it and it would be best if you leave my name off.

As far as Albanian microfilming, I finally found out that there are some microfilms from Albania. If you go to FamilySearch and after you have brought up Albania in place search, click on the prompt in the top right corner labeled "View Related Places." This will bring up all of the subordinate localities under Albania. Church records are found at this level.

I made a mistake about the records from Vojvodina that were microfilmed in Hungarian Archives. There are no Orthodox records on there, only Catholic.

Okidey no worries. I am checking some data but from what I know none of the Serbian Orthodox records inside Serbia have been microfilmed. I know of 1 archive trying to digitalize items,and thats about it. We'll see if policy will change and allow GSU to microfilm in the future. I believe privacy is the biggest concern.

Those documents microfilmed are in a good state. I was glad to see that. I am browsing through it now.

All vital records  of the churches in Croatia were taken to municipal offices in 1948.

The municipal offices were in most areas not destroyed, and even the vital records that were taken by the refugees in 1995. have been returned to the Croatian State Archive .- HDA.

All original church vital records, as well as civil copies of them are now stored in regional state archives ( Karlovac, Zadar, Osijek...).

Any record older than 100 years is open for public research - so anyone born/married /or died before 1912 can be researched without any legal or privacy law restrictions.

As far as the treasures from the Serbian Orthodox Church monasteries and eparchy libraries that were destroyed go, it is an immesurable loss to our culture and heritage. Some of these almanachs and original materials  are now only available in second-hand resources, the scientific books and papers of the scholars who researched them until 1995, like this one by Vladimir Mošin published in 1970 titled " OLD MANUSCRIPTS OF THE SERBS IN CROATIA  XIII - XX  CENTURY":

My profile picture is an archival photo of the library in the monastery DRAGOVIĆ in Dalmatia, which was the parish centre my ancestors belonged to before 1600. All of it is gone.

The bulk of these treasures was destroyed during the Ustasha NDH regime 1941-1945. The manuscripts and treasures that were stolen have never been returned to the SOC, either by the communists or the Republic of Croatia.

Unfortunately, the latest news on the fate of the old manuscripts and records other than vital for SOC in Croatia that survived  WWII and are stored in state archives is equally discouraging - even the vetted historians and chuirch diginitaries are denied access without explanation, and for some of the most valuable old manuscripts  ( XIII century) there is no information available on the current location and level of collection availability because they are not  listed in published lists of archival holdings of the same museums that  had them in their posession before 1991.

Because no one has been able to access them recently, there is no information on whether they are even kept  and stored in the required  way to preserve them. 

Additional hurdle to be considered is the fact that even the most recent catalogs of archival holdings do not identify Serbian Orthodox Church or its eparchies  as central authors , except for two collections that are partial.

For anyone researching the sources of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Croatia, here is an article (in Serbian) by a historian Mr Goran Latinović from the Banja Luka University  that has the most detailed and recent information on the collections of the SOC in archives and museums in Croatia:

http://www.eparhija-gornjokarlovacka.hr/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=446:fondovi-i-zbirke-srpske-pravoslavne-crkve-u-hrvatskim-arhivima-i-muzejima&catid=17:novosti&Itemid=13&lang=hr

If you are a SGS member we will look up the archives and identify holdings relevant for your research (school registers,  land ownership records, SOC documents) and translate the information you need to continue researching your ancestry.

Catalogue of the  vital records available in the Zadar archive:

http://arhinet.arhiv.hr/_Pages/PdfFile.aspx?Id=591

Neither Old Church Slavonic nor Serbian language are identified as the language any of these records are written in  - even for those that are marked as *pravoslavni* (Orthodox).

You will need to ask specifics in many cases - if the records are original parish records or the civil copy, if the civil copies have all residents in them or only of one congregation,  if the church  records not identified by any marker (language, script)  are maybe Orhtodox or  Greek-Eastern...  - compare the DAZ catalogue  listing with the listing of the LDS microfilms for the Serbian Orthodox  parish of Ervenik and you will see  that only three of the  fifteen records LDS microfilmed are identified as being in cyrillic script, and NONE are identified in the DAZ catalogue as *pravoslavni*.:

https://www.familysearch.org/search/catalog/show?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fcatalog-search-api%3A8080%2Fwww-catalogapi-webservice%2Fitem%2F674130

Unfortunately, this particular archive is not   * user friendly* if you are corresponding with them about researching Serbian ancestors, and probably the only way to receive accurate information is to send someone to the archive to look at the records for you and identify the ones you need.