Italy and France are also blessed with valuable records, although they are primarily maintained locally. You must know the exact place in Italy your family came from, and then go to the regional capital. Vital records in France are kept in the archives of each d partement. In both countries, church registers remain in the local churches. Switzerland 's tidy genealogical records are found in its cantons.
Similar conditions prevail in the Benelux countries of Belgium , Holland and Luxembourg .
Searching in Germany can be difficult. When the country was formed in 1871 from a number of kingdoms and city-states, the local governments elected to keep their own archives. If you know the place of origin, you should have no problems other than separating your relatives from other families with the same surname. If you are searching for Jewish ancestors , the problems are not nearly as great as you might imagine, because civil events were recorded for all persons, regardless of religion. Most records of wills and census returns survived the Holocaust.