In a message dated 6/24/2006 6:39:55 AM Pacific Standard Time, Aida writes: It is just too bad that the only country not represented with microfilm availablity is the Czech Republic and you have to hire a Czech genealogist to actually look up the German records that should be under the ownership of the German public and not the Czech Goverment! You can get all the Danish, Swedish, French, Polish, English, Spanish, Italian, Swiss, German, Romanian, Hungarian, even Russian, Chinese, Japanese and Indian records in their handwriting..... but not the German records that are deposited in the Czech archives. Aida, If that thinking were prevelent, none of us would be able to find records for our ancestors, since the ones for those who moved around would be sent who knows where, and even if you knew where the family came from, the records might be inaccessible just because you don't know where they are. For that point in their lives, at least, finding the records would be a daunting task. And the United States would be devoid of records, because they would not be in US but scattered all over the world. While the CR may not have had records filmed by LDS, they are available to ANYONE who wishes to see them - And don't believe ALL records even in the list of countries you presented are filmed by LDS. They are still working on it; however I know of many records from places I am interested in in other 'filmed' places that haven been filmed. They reside in their rightful places; where they were generated. LDS may film in an eccliastical archive or civil archive covering the same region but not both and the two sources are not identical, so many years for many places do not get filmed. Then one has to go there, or hire research to access those records not filmed. Ya' can't except LDS to guarantee to make the work for you easy. However, there are some LDS records filmed for the German settlements - by the LDS. In WWII, Germans 'repatriated' to a German archive records from some of German settlements in Bohemia. While in German, these records were filmed by LDS and are available as are other records.. After the 'cold' war, or maybe sooner, I am not sure, the records were retuned to their rightful places. Anettka