Montreal native Gary Perlman has been awarded the 2020 International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies (IAJGS) Volunteer of the Year in recognition of his outstanding support of Jewish genealogy in Canada.
The award was presented in August at the virtual IAJGS 40th International Conference on Jewish Genealogy. The conference had originally been scheduled to be held in San Francisco, California.
Over the past few years, Mr. Perlman, a retired software engineer, has photographed more than 30,000 gravestones in Jewish cemeteries in the Montreal area, and updated the records of thousands.
He has submitted more than 60,000 records and photos of Montreal area Jewish cemetery gravestones to JOWBR (JewishGen Online Worldwide Burial Registry), a database of more than three million names from cemeteries around the world.
According to Canadian Jewish News, Mr. Perlman’s “most complete project – and most challenging – is the Back River Cemetery in Montreal’s Ahuntsic-Cartierville borough, which dates back to the late 19th century and was in poor condition for many years. He has now shot virtually all of its close to 7,000 gravestones.”
“Gary was up against submissions from societies around the world and a number of people,” said Stanley Diamond, president and founder of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Montreal.
He has also made more than 10,000 additions and corrections to the Baron De Hirsch Cemetery’s in-house database, photographed and documented Holocaust and war casualty memorials while adding Holocaust-related text to JOWBR records.
Mr. Perlman, who holds a PhD from the University of California at San Diego, today prefers to be known as a “volunteer amateur genealogist.”
IAJGS is an umbrella organization of more than 90 Jewish genealogical organizations worldwide.
