Rosalyn Livshin is a freelance genealogist, specialising in Manchester Jewish Genealogy. She was born and grew up in Sunderland and left there for Manchester in 1972

Rosalyn Livshin gained a B.A. (Hons) in History in 1975 and a M. Ed. in 1982 at Manchester University. Her master’s thesis focussed on the Acculturation of the children of immigrant Jews to Manchester 1890-1930. During the research for this thesis, Rosalyn interviewed many of the children of immigrant Jews to Manchester, helping to establish an oral archive, now held at the Manchester Jewish Museum. She also gathered photographs and supporting evidence, copies of which are now also held at the Manchester Jewish Museum. Whilst conducting this research Rosalyn worked as a Research Fellow with the Manchester Studies Unit at Manchester Polytechnic and she was awarded the A.S. Diamond Memorial Prize in 1985.

Rosalyn was one of the founders of the Manchester Jewish Museum in 1984 and helped to set up the permanent exhibition on the history of Manchester Jewry at the Museum. She has also worked on temporary exhibitions at the Museum.

Rosalyn has been involved in interviewing refugees and survivors of the Holocaust for a number of years. The first interviews began in 1979, whilst working for the Manchester Studies Unit. In 1983 she worked closely with a refugee from Leipzig, recording her life story and translating her diary kept from 1939. In 1985 Rosalyn was asked to undertake interviews for the Manchester 45 Aid Society and in 1987 she became the North West Co-ordinator for the National Sound Archive’s Project on refugees and survivors of the Holocaust.. These interviews were copied and deposited in London and in the Manchester Jewish Museum. In 1997 she became an interviewer for Steven Spielberg’s Shoah Foundation and was involved in many of the Manchester video interviews for that foundation.

In 1999 she was appointed Honorary Research Fellow of the Jewish Studies Unit at Manchester University.