AI tool unlocks ancestral letters in Lithuania

In Lithuania, researcher Sergii Gurbych developed VILNISH, an artificial intelligence tool that translates handwritten Yiddish and Hebrew texts. Felicita Trueblood, a woman in California, used VILNISH to read letters from her great-grandfather, Pavel Malisoff, a rabbi in Ukraine, written between 1927 and 1934.

The letters detailed life in Ukraine during a time of hardship, including famine and the decline of Jewish religious practice. Trueblood had inherited the letters but could not read them until VILNISH provided translations.

Gurbych created the tool by training an AI model on a collection of Jewish texts from the interwar period, specifically those housed in the National Library of Lithuania. He drew on his own family history, as his grandfather escaped the Lodz Ghetto during the Holocaust and rarely spoke of his life in Poland. The project aims to make historical documents accessible to a wider audience and to aid those researching their Jewish heritage.

Through the translated letters, Trueblood learned new details about her great-grandfather's life and death. Family lore had led her to believe he died from torture by Stalin’s regime, but the letters revealed he died of a heart attack and received a dignified funeral. Gurbych hopes VILNISH will help many others uncover similar stories and connect with their ancestors, as well as assist with claims for repatriation or citizenship.