Record Atlas
7 eras · 1400–2026 · 7 places

Bukovina

Czernowitz (Chernivtsi), Suceava, Rădăuți. Which empire held this ground in which years — and, the part that matters, which archive that means.

Where researchers lose records here

1991–2026 — The line drawn in 1940 still runs through Bukovina. Northern records are at Chernivtsi in Ukraine, southern at Suceava in Romania, and a family that never moved can have its baptism in one country and its marriage in the other.

Whose archive this ground was

YearsWho held itWhose archive that means
1400–1774 Moldavia, under Ottoman suzerainty no registers survive

Orthodox monastery records, and almost nothing that survives as a register.
1774–1918 Austria — Duchy of Bukovina FamilySearch · ANNO — Austrian Newspapers Online · Arhivele Naționale ale României · GenTeam.at

Registers in German and Romanian, in four parallel series — Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Greek Catholic and Jewish. Czernowitz was one of the most Jewish cities in Europe and its records are filed accordingly.
1918–1940 Romania Arhivele Naționale ale României
1940–1941 Soviet annexation of the north no registers survive
1941–1944 Romania — restored Arhivele Naționale ale României · Yad Vashem — Central Database of Shoah Victims' Names · Arolsen Archives

The deportations to Transnistria fall in these years. Yad Vashem holds the names.
1944–1991 Soviet Union — Chernivtsi oblast no registers survive
1991–2026 Ukraine in the north; Romania in the south Arhivele Naționale ale României

THE TRAP. The line drawn in 1940 still runs through Bukovina. Northern records are at Chernivtsi in Ukraine, southern at Suceava in Romania, and a family that never moved can have its baptism in one country and its marriage in the other.

The rings are approximate — deliberately. They exist to shade which filing system a place fell under, not to adjudicate a border. A place near a ring's edge should be checked against both neighbours.

See the whole span, 1400–2026, on the map →

The map takes a range, and a range that crosses one of the rows above is where records get lost: the family never moved, and the archive on the far side of the handover will tell you it holds nothing.

7 places on this ground

41 FamilySearch collections reach this ground

Ranked with the regional ones first — a collection for a province is usually a better lead than a national index, though the national index is often where a name is actually written down. A free account opens the images.

All record regions · The map