| Diane Goldman |
To read an article or news release excerpted in U.S. Update, order the issue of the publication in which it appeared from the appropriate JGS. A list of Jewish Genealogical Societies can be found at <iajgs.org>/members/members.html>. A list of Special Interest Groups can be found at <www.jewishgen.org>.
Cleveland Vol. 17, No. 1, Spring 2008
The Kol
Includes a list of new society officers. <> Eileen Price’s family history includes the Cleveland textile industry. Her mother supported herself from age 14 by sewing jackets in a suit factory. Her father and uncle owned several manufacturing and retail organizations specializing in hats. <> Norman Henko compares four computer programs for genealogists: Legacy Family Tree (version 6.0 and a free, simpler version); Family Tree Maker (version 16, with some advantages over its successor, version 2008); Roots Magic (version 3); and the complicated Master Genealogist. <> Kenneth Bravo has done much of his genealogy research via computer. He names useful sites for searching Cleveland, Cuyahoga County, and Ohio records. URLs for other research include <www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk> for Scotland; <www.benjamins.ca> for Toronto’s Benjamin Park Memorial chapel; and <www.GetGrandpasFbiFile. com> <> Label photos on the back with photography pencils that will not make an indentation, and avoid writing on the reverse of any faces. <> Neighbors are restoring Cleveland’s second Jewish cemetery, 1862–1969, at 6015 Fir Avenue—the Peach Street (now Fir Street) Cemetery. <> Paul Klein helped Fred Zimmak locate the family of Wilhelm Wolf from Jever, arriving in 1938 in Cleveland to visit daughter Rose Wolf. <> When a New York ship manifest is illegible, try the 1897–1902 index (#T519) or 1902–43 soundex (#T621) microfilms at the National Archives and Records Administration. <> A 1970s survey records wonderful background information on the WWI era, <http://tinyurl.com>/27pb55>. <> Becky Werman lists Jewish family names from Painesville, Ohio. <> Howard Margol found Russian-language KGB documents from the Soviet Baltic states for 1940–41, 1943–53, 1954–59 at <www.kgbdocuments.eu>. <> Zev Kayman wrote about life in Szczuczyn, Poland, 1937–41, to his émigré son in Australia—Eliezer <http://tinyurl.com/35tesx>. <> Visit Scott Seligman’s Loveman family website at <www.liebman-loveman.com>.
Conejo Valley & Ventura County (California)
Vol. 3, No. 4, January 2008
Venturing Into Our Past
Online genealogical resources available from the Grant R. Brimhall Thousand Oaks Library <www.toaks. org/library/>, County of Los Angeles Public Library <www.colapublib.org>, and Los Angeles Public Library <www.lapl.org>. Branch libraries in the Ventura County system have access to Ancestry.com Library Edition, Heritage Quest Online, and newspapers available through ProQuest Historical, <www.vencolibrary.org>.
Vol. 3, No. 5, February 2008. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) has copies of all U.S. naturalizations after 1905. When placing a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, remember to ask for everything in a person’s file. Marian Smith’s list of related records archived 1820–1954 is available at <www.JGSCV.org>. <> Helene Rosen did not know the original family name to search in immigration records. Helene used the Steve Morse search engine to find her great-grandfather, Louis Rosen, welcoming her grandmother, Mary, listed as Mascha Paretzki.
Vol. 3, No. 7, April 2008. Society members benefitted from an afternoon at the Los Angeles Regional Family Center, the LDS’s largest branch Family History Library.
Long Island Vol. 14, No. 2/3, Spring-Summer 2007
LINeage
Includes the list of past and present society editors. <> Chuck Weinstein thanks researchers who have helped him, reminding us all to do the same. <> Search the Yad Vashem website for your own Pages of Testimony and correct any errors in transcription of translation. <> Linda Volin reports some of her experiences at the 2007 IAJGS summer conference, with several contact addresses for archives in Vilnius, Lithuania. The Romanian National Archives waives its 100-year privacy rule for research on relatives (the article does not include criteria). Adoptees and birth parents face very different privacy rules in different countries and even in different U.S. states. <> Steven Lasky has created a virtual Museum of Family History at <www.museumof familyhistory.com>. He displays many photographs and stories submitted by researchers around the world, topographic maps of pre-war Poland, and a variety of research tools.
Los Angeles Vol. 27, No. 3/4, Fall/Winter 2007
Roots-Key
This issue explores shtetl research. Susana Leistner Bloch explains how anyone can organize a shtetl website. Chaim Freedman used a shtetl website to display his information and documents about the Yekaterinaslov agricultural colonies in Ukraine. Eilat Gordin Levitan purchased her family’s house in Kurenets as a museum. <> Sonia and David Hoffman describe how they learned about Ariogala, Lithuania at <www.jewishfamilyhistory.org/program.htm>. Basic tools are a surname list matched to a list of available documents. The Hoffmans discovered an ethnography student interviewing town elders about the bygone Jewish community. <> Look for fragments of Jewish community (kahal) records in archival collections, no matter whether the community and collection are near each other. Nancy Holden describes Myadel and Muchanee (Mostviany), Belarus and Kobylnik (now Naroch), Lithuania. Victor Kumok explains where he found information and records for Melitopol, southeast Ukraine. Some government chronicles (gubernskiye vedamost) include parts of archival or even voting list records. The Center for the Search and Information of the Russian Red Cross contains information from WWII on deportations to the Orient. WWI information on displaced refugees is in the State Archive for Zaporozhye Oblast (GAZO), Ukraine. Records for early agricultural resettlement belonged to the society for Settling Working Jews on the Land (OZET), since transferred to the Russian Ethnographic Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia. <> Vitaly Charny’s research plots the distribution of surnames for Minsk, Belarus. <> Henry Neugass documents Kletsk by soliciting memories, family stories, photographs, and even the relocated Kletzk yeshiva. Town museums may have information on Jewish residents or on community life. <> Mike Marvins was inspired by his photographer grandfather, Zalman Kaplan, to solicit photos of Szczuczyn town life, <www.szczuczyn.com>. <> H. Daniel Wagner has investigated ways to merge individual records in unrelated databases creating a more well-rounded set of data than either does alone. A pilot test uses data from transcriptions of 3,500 tombstones in Zdunska Wola plus three sets of vital records, 1808–1942, for birth, marriage, and death. Wagner determines criteria for successfully mechanizing the process. <> Israel Pickholtz has a system for tracking family members by given name as well as by family name. <> Joyce Field explains the background and content of yizkor books, Holocaust memorial volumes for various towns or regions. Most contain a town (or regional) history, biographies of prominent townspeople, and information on the town’s and townspeople’s fate during the Holocaust. JewishGen’s yizkor book database now lists translations made by contemporary Poles to fill gaps in their local history. <> Martin and Agnieszka Cahn have gradually revived the Jewish heritage of Myslenice, Poland, near Wisniowa, Dobczyce, Sulkowice, Jawornik, and Glogoczow. Their own expertise is exhausted, and they request help in the form of advice and money. <> Eppingen students have created an online memorial for the town’s Jewish residents at <www.juedisches-leben-kraichgau.de>, a yizkor book, and a process to gently accommodate Holocaust survivors. <> Joel Petlin drew on the memoirs of Beryl Root (Berko Dov ber Rutkiewicz) to describe life in tiny Zawady, with log houses and 19 Jewish families. Petlin includes a town map, noting the locations and names of shopkeepers plus recollections of daily life. <> Meyer Swirsky introduces Israel’s Myadel-Kobylnik Association along with the two towns and Yitzhak Gordon’s almost lyrical memorial to the Kobylnik community. <> The descendants of Ignatz and Katherine Bermann, of Klatovy, Czechoslovakia, include son Maximillian, author of an illustrated journal 1924–42; great-great-grandson, Jeffrey Cohn; and in-law, Richard Barth. Their respective families attended Richard’s 2006 bar mitzvah in Klatovy, the first there since 1939, using two local torahs restored after WWII.
Michigan Vol. 22, No. 4, Winter 2007
Etz Chaim
Personal reports from the 2007 IAJGS summer conference. <> Mike Karsen lessens the onus of writing a family history, recommending we set limited goals and focus on his basic elements. <> List of new projects begun by the Heritage Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Cemeteries <www.hfpjc.com>. <> Birth names of selected Jewish celebrities. <> Genealogists can network at <www.familylink. com> and through the group, Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness (RAOGK). <> A new feature of <stevemorse.org> converts letters from cursive to print and vice versa. <> Shelly Weiner created a novel gift, a bus tour of places in her parents’ lives. <> Update on volumes translated through the JewishGen Yizkor Book Project.
Vol. 23, No. 1, Spring 2008. The travels of Sasha/Samuel Buchstaber, born 1898 in Proskurov, Podolia—grandfather of Pamela Buchstaber Smith. <> The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Registry of Holocaust Survivors accepts inquiries about their new International Tracing Service records. Visit <www.ushmm.org/its> for instructions about searching these records at the museum or sending a request by e-mail, snail mail, or fax. <> Use new LDS research tools online at <www.familysearchwiki.org> and at <www.familysearch.org>. Included are: Tracing Your Jewish Ancestors/Finding Jewish Records, Jewish Genealogy Research Online, and the Knowles collection database for Jews from the British Isles. <> Resources to be featured at the 2008 IAJGS summer conference include digitized Cook County vital records from the Illinois Clerk’s Office. Records begin about 1871, after the Great Chicago Fire. A privacy window limits access to birth certificates before 1932, marriage certificates before 1957, and death certificates before 1987.
Orlando Vol. 18, No. 3, Spring 2008
Etz Chaim
Includes list of society officers installed December 2007. <> Obituary for Donald H. “Donn” Gordon. <> Raeburn Wallen has researched his family from 1595 (Ralph Wallen of South Holland, North American immigrant) to the Plymouth Colony Archive Project and several places named for his family. <> The 2010 U.S. census may survey gender, age, race, ethnicity, relationship, and home ownership, if Congress approves. Annual American Communications Surveys have replaced long-form census questionnaires. <> Julie Hart has filled in family stories by researching maternal Lyone relatives and families named Linetsky, Lenit, Caminetsky, Schatz, and Paymer. She used a variety of U.S. and Canadian archives. <> New York’s 2008 Chautauqua Institute includes introductory genealogy. <> Book reviews: Guidebook for Sephardic and Oriental General Sources in Israel (Mathilde A. Tagger and Yitzchak Kerem, Bergenfield: Avotaynu, 2006). Abraham’s Children: Race, Identity, and the DNA of the Chosen People (Jon Entime, Grand Central Publishing, 2007).
Palm Beach Vol. 15, No. 1, First Quarter 2008
Scattered Seeds
Includes a list of archaic occupational terms. <> The National Archives and Records Administration has expanded research hours in Washington, DC, and College Park, Maryland, adding 5–9 p.m. on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, plus 9 a.m.–5 p.m. on Saturday. <> Part 2 of Irv Skorka’s report on his father’s journal, 1910–25, beginning in Konskie, Poland. Herman (Shlomo, Shloima) Skorka, born 1896, fled the Polish army for Beiten, Germany, then Berlin, Baumgarten, Hagen, then to Paris. Without official traveling papers, Herman moved around to avoid police until his fiancée, Chaja, arrived. In 1921, both sailed second class to the United States.
Philadelphia Vol. 26, No. 4, March 2008
Chronicles
This society will host the IAJGS summer conference, August 2–7, 2009, at the Sheraton City Center Hotel, 17th and Race Streets. <> University of Pennsylvania is leading the American Genizah Project through the university’s Center for Advanced Judaic Studies Library. The project digitizes “physically dispersed yet intellectually related materials” to create a complete, searchable, and easily accessed, if virtual, collection. The pilot project digitizes correspondence of Isaac Leeser (1806–68) and includes digitizing all of Leeser’s publications, the Occident, 1843–68, and the American Jewish Advocate. <> Elizabeth Plaut’s comprehensive Plaut family research, organized by Karen Franklin, has been published by Avotaynu. The research covers 11,000 individuals and starts with the town of Willingshausen, Germany. The book may be purchased at the Avotaynu website, <www.avotaynu.com>. <> Previews of the 2008 IAJGS summer conference and the Federation of Genealogical Societies conference. <> Names and addresses of 1894 charter members from Congregation Kesher Israel, 412 Lombard Street, Philadelphia, is excerpted from The Life and Times of Congregation Kesher Israel, (Harry D. Boonin). An emergency request from the Philadelphia Jewish Archives explains the center’s desperate need for operation funds. David Mink describes the Center’s training for 7th graders to properly handle and appreciate documentation of Philadelphia’s Jewish community and of individual life cycle events. <> Harry Boonin describes the Jewish immigrant world of late 19th-century Philadelphia, bordered by Third, Christian, Sixth, and Spruce Streets. Garment wholesalers were located on N. Third Street, between Market and Arch Streets, with 100 sweatshops on the community’s perimeter and the Emigrant Depot nearby at Washington Avenue and the Delaware River. A pushcart market arose on S. Fourth Street, and a wholesale market on Dock Street. Synagogue buildings remain today at 527 Lombard Street (B’nai Abraham) and Sixth and Kater Streets (B’nai Rueben). <> Joan Pollak thanks the generous researchers helping her, from Tarboro, North Carolina, to Binswanger, Bavaria, to Grosseicholzheim and Bodigheim, Germany, and to Janovice and Uhlavou, Czech Republic. Family names include Pollak, Rund, Westheimer, and Heilbroner. <> Rosenbaum (immigrant) bank records led Judy Becker to family names and addresses. See a database of Jewish burials in Baltimore at <jewishmuseummd.org/html/
cr_geneology_fhc.html>. <> Data on the Warsaw Jewish cemetery are found at <cemetery.jewish.org. pl/lang_en/>. Warsaw Jewish Cemetery Director Szpilman uses information from the headstones to replace cemetery records burned by the Nazis.
San Francisco Vol. 2, No. 1, February 2008
ZichronNote
Includes slate of society officers for 2008. <> Ruth Wilnai details the Lifshitz family tree—descendants of Itzka Lifshitz and his son, born 1766, Ydel Chaim Lifshitz of Minsk. The family journeyed to Zaslavl (1802) and Rakow, Minsk, Ivenets, and in 1924 to Palestine—Schunat Montefiori and Herzlya. Wilnai found ship arrivals at the Central Zionist Archives and the Jewish Burial Society. Some relatives settled in New Jersey after fleeing the Holocaust in Poland—Mizeich-Volozyn and Horodok. <> Marian Smith announced the National Archives and Records Administration is preparing microfilm A3388—a name index to case correspondence, 1906–44, in entry 26 of RG 85. Film T458 is a subject index to correspondence in entries 7, 8, and 9. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (CIS) records include visa files, 1924–44; registry files, 1929–44; documents supporting immigrant arrivals before 1924 such as Alien Registration Forms, 1940–44, and files 1944 forward; naturalization certificate or c-files, 1906–56; and odd certificate files, 1929–56. <> Michael Goldstein recommends research in Israel start with a visit to the Israel Genealogical Society website, <www.isragen.org>.il>. <> Judy Baston stresses the need to understand Polish spelling and pronunciation when searching for Polish towns mentioned in family stories.
Utah No. 18, Winter 2007
Atsmi Uvsari “My Bone and My Flesh”
Includes minutes from the society’s meeting, September 18, 2007. <> Part 2 of Utah History: Corinne, the non-Mormon rail transfer point that was built to challenge Salt Lake City. Corinne’s Jewish merchants included Bavarians: Abraham and John Cohn, Adam Kahn, Aaron and Helen Greenwald, and Isaac Levi; Prussians: George and Hellena Goldburg, Emanuel Kahn, Eli B. and Nicolas S. Ransohoff, and Fredrick Scholts; British: David Aurbach; Poles: Jacob Livingston, Saxon Julius Malsh; plus U.S.-born: Jacob Greenwald and William Levi. <> Engage your children in genealogy by collaborating on a family timeline. <> Book reviews: Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors (Nicholas Wade); Sonderkommando: “Dans l’enfer des chambers a gaz (In the hell of the gas chambers) (Shlomo Venezia with Beatrice Prasquier). <> Banai Lynn Feldstein found that official documents may not be factual, or at least realistic. Two New York death records are belied by more recent New York City vital records.
Greater Washington Vol. 27, No. 2, Spring 2008
Mishpacha
Outgoing president Marlene Bishow recognizes the importance of volunteers. The society’s new library includes audio recordings of selected summer conference and society presentations. Long-term and dedicated volunteer Judy Mostyn White announces her retirement as society librarian. <> In 2011, the society will host IAJGS’ summer conference. <> Jeff Malka details the databases available at <www.SephardicGen.com/databases/databases.html>. The Consolidated Index of Sephardic Surnames (CISS) provides a single search engine for multiple sources from places including Turkey, Salonika, Morocco, Bulgaria, Algeria, and Vienna. <> The Jewish Online Worldwide Burial Registry (JOWBR) <www.jewishgen.org/databases/cemetery> evolved from the IAJGS Cemetery Project, <www. jewishgen.org/ cemetery/instructions>, a geographic search engine owing much to society members Arline and Sidney Sachs, recognized at IAJGS Salutes <www.iajgs.org/salute/salute. html>. <> Rose Blitzstein Elbaum describes how émigrés from the Jewish community of Trochenbrod (now Zofyuvka) in northeast Ukraine founded Beth Sholom Congregation in Potomac, Maryland. Rose Blitzstein Elbaum’s landsmen ancestors include great-great-great-grandfather, David Blitstein, born 1790, through father Nathan Blitzstein. The town burned during WWII, and the few Holocaust survivors formed a landsmanschaft (town society) in Israel, known as Beit-Tal, <www.bet-tal.com>. Generations of descendants gathered in Washington, DC, on April 13, 2008. <> International records online include burials from the Yokohama (Japan) Foreigner’s Cemetery– Jewish Section <www.jccjapan.or.jp/Cemetery/index.htm>; the 1911 Dublin (Ireland) City and County census, <www. alemanesvolga.com.ar>; and the digitized Frankfort Memorbuch (Frankfurt am Main, Germany), 1628–1907, <http://jnul.huji.ac.il/dl/mss/heb1092/>, in English or Hebrew for readers with the free DjVu software. <> The Jewish Museum of Maryland has posted information from six Baltimore cemeteries online: Rosedale <http://tinyurl. com/325o94>; and Southern Avenue <http://tinyurl.com/ 32v8q9>; plus Herring Run-Bowley’s Lane, German Hill-Hebrew Mt. Carmel; Hebrew Friendship with Bikur Cholim Congregation; and Oheb Shalom-O’Donnell Street with Hebrew Free Burial <http://tinyurl.com/2j9ehz>. <> Leonard Lobred explains that cash boys preceded cash registers. The boys carried cash payments and receipts, plus any change, between sales clerks and a central cashier.
