AUSTRALIA (Caplan)

Six Australians traveled to Arolsen with Gary Mokotoff and Sallyann Sack to view the International Red Cross Tracing Service records on Holocaust victims. These included Rieke Nash, president of the Australian Jewish Genealogical Society in Sydney; her husband Peter; Lionel Sharpe, the honorary secretary of the Society in Melbourne; and three others. I did not go after hearing from Gary Mokotoff that ITS has no records of victims gassed at Treblinka, like my paternal grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins, and no records of victims of Einsatzgruppen in Eastern Europe who were shot into ditches, like my maternal grandparents and their extended family. [Other related material might be found. See “What We Learned in Bad Arolsen,” this issue—Ed.]

It is a fact that the only Auschwitz victims listed anywhere are those transported from Western European countries like Belgium, France, Italy, and the Netherlands, whose names and dates of birth were recorded by the authorities of the countries that deported them. After the war, Jewish researchers somehow acquired these lists and published them in memorial books in each country.

Even the Germans, first under the Bonn government, then in reunited Germany, first published the two-volume Gedenkbuch and more recently a four-volume expanded version of most of the Jews who had lived in Germany and who perished in the Shoah. Not all victims have surfaced, but these books include Jews who had lived in Germany and who were deported from France, Belgium, or Holland. The Italian Libro della Memoria includes the Jews deported from the island of Rhodes.

Recently, a new book was published in French, La Liste se Saint Cyprien, giving the names and dates and places of birth of several thousand male Jews who were refugees in Belgium and were arrested on the very day when the Nazi troops invaded Belgium, Holland, and Luxembourg, May 10, 1940. They were immediately deported to camps in the southwest of France, notably a small camp where conditions were terrible, close to the Mediterrenean and to the foothills of the Pyrenees, called St. Cyprien. The father of the author Marcel Bervoets, who grew up under his stepfather’s name, was among these transported Jews. Most of them were later deported to Auschwitz. Bervoets has researched in great detail how Belgium, a country with a benign reputation as far as Jews are concerned, could perpetrate such an action so quickly.

At the Annual General Meeting of the Australian Jewish Genealogical Society of Sydney in March, the guest speaker was Lionel Sharpe, who expressed a wish list for Jewish genealogy in Australia. As well as hoping that all Australian Jews who had relatives who perished in the Shoah would enter the names and circumstances of these relatives into Pages of Testimony for Yad Vashem, the next wish was that all Australian Jewish genealogical researchers contribute to a joint database of ancestral shtetls and villages and names. This has been done in Sydney since the beginning of the Society, but only recently in Victoria. An all-Australia database might be very helpful.

Another wish is for retrieval of family data from all books published by past and present Jewish Australian historians, including synagogue histories; birth, marriage, and death (BDM) record books; brit milah (circumcision) rec-ords; organizational histories; and annual reports. An index should be created from the result.

Indeed, this would be useful for most localities in the world where Jews have lived. I wish it existed for Chicago where people from my father’s small shtetl emigrated circa 1900.

Lionel Sharpe, like many others, wishes for an index to the outstanding book by Rabbi John Simon Levi, These Are the Names, published in 2007, which records all Jews who either immigrated to Australia or were born there, from the First Fleet in 1788 to 1850. Many people born in the 1840s survived to the 1920s.

Sharpe also wishes for a database of Australian Jewish family photographs, starting with the collection of the Australian Jewish Historical Societies in each state and also using those collected by the Jewish Museum of Australia in Melbourne for its 2001 book, now out of print, From Where We Have Come; Portraits of the Australian Jewish Family.

Lionel Sharpe himself has been involved in the microfilming of the records of all pre- and post-World War II refugees who came to Australia through the Melbourne offices of the Jewish Welfare Society.

In Sydney, Denise Lvoff and a small team are doing the same task with the records of the Sydney Jewish Welfare Society, which unfortunately are in a worse state. Much of this is being funded by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) in Washington.

Beverley Davis, for many years the honorary secretary of the Australian Jewish Historical Society in Victoria, ran for more than two decades a private project of recording the data on all tombstones of Australian Jews, not only in Australia, but also in New Zealand, Fiji, New Guinea, as well as British war graves in France and in Belgium. These rec-ords cover 363 cemeteries and 48,400 graves. This data has now been placed online as the Beverley Davis Burial Data at <www.bd-bd.info>. The site lacks a generalized index, and it helps to know the year of death.

The Testimony Catalogue for the University of Southern California (USC) Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History is now online, with 50,000 interviews available. Taped interviews with Australian survivors may be viewed at the Sydney Jewish Museum and at Monash University in Melbourne.

We all are looking forward to the first ever National Jewish Genealogical Conference which will take place in Canberra, our national capital, on October 26 and 27, 2008.

The conference is being organized by the Australian Jewish Genealogical Society, Sydney, the Australian Jewish Genealogical Society (Victoria) in Melbourne, and by the Australian Capital Territory Jewish Community in Canberra. A varied program combining lectures, seminars, and discussion panels, as well as visits to national institutions in Canberra, is planned.

Visitors and participants from all over Australia are expected as well as some overseas participants. The registration fee will be AU$120 for the two days, covering lunches, morning and afternoon teas, and conference hand­outs.             Most sessions will be at the National Jewish Centre, which is close to various hotels and motels. For additional information, visit <www.ajgs.org.au/conf08/ index.htm>.

AUSTRALIA (Sharpe)

Jewish Genealogy Downunder, quarterly publication of the Australian Jewish Genealogical Society (Victoria), February–March 2008.

The editorial provides some background to the forthcoming visit arranged by Avotaynu to the International Tracing Service (ITS) at Bad Arolsen in Germany. A full report by the six Australian participants will appear in the next issue of the AJGS (Victoria) newsletter.

Gail Hammer from Sydney addressed the Society on the success of the Blashki family reunion held in Melbourne in March 2008. Phillip Blashki, the oldest of three brothers, was named Favel Wagczewski at birth. Born in the small town of Blaszki in Poland in 1837, he left Poland at the age of 17 and settled in Manchester, England, where he worked as a jeweler. Phillip married Hannah Potash in 1857 and sailed for Melbourne in 1858. The idea for a reunion of the descendants was mooted many years ago, and some 276 indicated their interest. Finally, after considerable hard work, 425 registered, including 20 from outside Australia (China, Germany, Israel, New Zealand, Spain, United Kingdom, and the United States). Hammer outlines the numerous memorable and colorful events that occurred over the three-day event, including a visit to the cemetery and the seashore where Phillip and Hannah set foot in Melbourne. The family tree of the Wagczewski (Blashki) descendants appears on page five.

Naomi Barnett explores the origins of her husband’s surname, Barnett. After 43 years of wondering, the answer came in a recent response from the London Beth Din. Ancestor Jacob Barnett had changed his name from Berzynski in 1877 after his marriage and before the arrival of his first child.

Kerry Martin addressed the society on exploring her father’s Jewish family history. Her late father, Mordko Krzepicki, born in Wielun, Poland, escaped from Poland during World War II and joined Anders’ Army in Palestine. He migrated to Australia in 1949, changed his name to Martin, and married Kerry’s non-Jewish mother. Mordko died before Kerry was born, and her maternal family had no further contact with the Jewish family of her deceased father. Kerry outlined her recent trip to Wielun and the help she received from members of the AJGS in the past year in making contact with her lost family.

Gloria Meltzer writes about her discovery of a Jewish grave in the small central Victorian gold mining town of Chewton. The article outlines how she went about tracing the family history of Moses Phillips who died in 1862, Solomon Phillips who died in 1867, Abraham Martin who died in 1875, and finding a descendant. Their three names appear on the one headstone.

Expressions of interest are again called for the National Conference on Jewish Genealogy to be held in Canberra October 26–29, 2008. The title of the conference is “Jewish Genealogy in the 21st Century.” See details on website <www.ajgs.org.au>.

CANADA (Lederer)

From Montreal Forum, quarterly publication of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Montreal, March 2008.

“The Last Jews of Sherbrooke,” by Louise Abbott, that first appeared in The Montreal Gazette (April 7, 2001), was reprinted in Quebec Heritage News (December 2007) and forms the opening article of the current Montreal Forum. Abbott was taken on a tour of the synagogue, cemetery, and downtown area of Sherbrooke, once the seat of a thriving Jewish community, by Danny Heilig, one of the handful of Jews who still reside there.

The community goes back to Rubin Hart in 1863 and was 20 strong in 1881, with continued growth in the 1880s and 1890s. Danny Heilig’s Uncle Ben founded the B. Cohen Corporation in 1887. By 1897, the Jewish community was large enough to hire a rabbi. Agudath Achim Synagogue was erected in 1920 and served not only Sherbrooke but also several outlying towns. In 1921, the number of Jews reached 265, but as a result of the Great Depression, the number slipped to 152 in 1931. Post-World War II, the community thrived, reaching more than 300 families. By 1967, the Jewish community was described as “struggling to continue.” When it became difficult to draw a minyan (prayer quorum), Congregation Agudath Achim sadly closed its doors in 1983. Occasional burials of persons with strong ties to Sherbrooke are still held in the cemetery.

Annette Colton spent a week in western Ukraine visiting shtetlach (villages) of ancestral interest. She started out in L’viv, where she was hosted by Rabbi and Rebbetzen Bald. For part of her trip, she was accompanied by an Israeli cousin and her son, Yair. Together they visited Nishinov (near Ivano Frankivsk), where they located the house of Yair’s grandfather. They then traveled to Lanchyn, where the paternal ancestry had long lived. Prior to World War II, about 300 Jewish families inhabited Lanchyn. The cemetery is an overgrown field with some stone fragments bearing Hebrew letters. One of the old shuls (synagogues) was used as a storehouse by the Germans. On the banks of the River Prut, women were washing their clothes, much as Colton’s ancestors had done. “Nothing has changed from 100 years ago,” Colton says.

Colton and her cousin also visited Kolomyya, Ottynia, Tlumach, Pshybluv, Bortniki, Khotimir, and Obertyn. The grim spectacle of the destruction and extermination of Jewish life was very much in evidence everywhere.

In a “Tale of Two Willies in Ste-Sophie,” Willie Glaser comments on a 160-slide lecture created by Ruth Lehman and Nathan Rosenberg in 1989 and donated recently to the Canadian Jewish Congress Charities Committee (CJCCC) National Archives. Willie Glaser arrived in Canada in 1947 with the Canadian Government “Polish Soldier Farm Labour Scheme,” where he eventually, through the help of JIAS, found employment in the Jewish farm community in Ste-Sophie, Quebec. He was hired by chicken farmers Willie and Mary Zaritzky and paid $45 per month plus room and board, as stipulated in the government contract. Willie Glaser shares anecdotes about feeding young chicks and caring for the sole cow, which would tend to hide from him in a thicket. He accompanied the farmer to Montreal to sell chickens and eggs, and in the winter assisted in clearing the snow from the surrounding roads. The community of Ste-Sophie was augmented for the yom tovim (Jewish holidays) by all the Jewish farmers and their families from Montreal. Willie Glaser moved to Montreal after his government contract ended and met and married his future wife, Jean.

Anne Joseph in “Montreal—In Days Gone By” focuses on the Jewish cemeteries in Three Rivers. Aaron Hart had designated land that was part of his personal garden for a Jewish cemetery, “a burial ground for the Jewish People of the Province,” which became known as the Jewish Cemetery on Alexander Street. By 1901, when most of Hart’s descendents were no longer Jewish, they sold the land to a developer, who had the bodies disinterred and reburied on the Côteau St. Louis. A second cemetery was established in the early 1800s by Ezekiel Hart on Prison Street. To prevent what had happened to the Alexander Street Cemetery, the heirs of Ezekiel Hart arranged for the removal of the remains in the Prison Street Cemetery to Mount Royal Cemetery of Shearith Israel in Montreal. Similarly, arrangements were made for the reburial of the remains from Alexander Street (removed to the Côteau) to be reburied in the Shearith Israel Cemetery.

CANADA (Tapper)

The 1916 Census of the Western Provinces (Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta) now is available at Library and Archives Canada in Ottawa. The self-serve microfilm reels (T-21925 to T-21956) are in the Microfilm Consultation Room. Copies also are available for interlibrary loan. Copies of the microfilm reels shelf-list have been placed in the Microfilm Consultation Room and at the reference desk in the Canadian Genealogy Centre.

This census is available only on microfilm. It has not been digitized, so it is not available online. The Canadian Genealogy Centre web pages that post census information will be updated soon.

Israel (Pickholtz)

Sharsheret Hadorot, publication of the Israel Genealogical Society, May 2008. This issue appeared just after the celebrations of 60 years of statehood. The day before Israel’s 60th birthday, we honored our fallen soldiers and civilians. The War of Independence took some 6,000 Jewish lives, as people lost parents, children, siblings and friends. One who was born barely ten weeks before independence but never saw his father, who fell in Gush Etzion, is Shilo Gal, whose article about his father’s family appears in this issue of Sharsheret Hadorot.

The idea behind this article was that the main point of interest would be how Shilo completed his genealogy research despite his being severely disabled from a stroke a number of years ago, but the first draft of the article brought up a different point entirely. We, in the genealogy community, have certain ways of doing things. We have genealogy databases and GEDCOM files; we have our resources and discussion groups and archives and meetings, and we think we know how things are done. But many others do their family research without knowing any of these things, and it is useful for us to be aware that such researchers are out there and how they work. Gal’s article offers a glimpse through that window. For that reason, the title of his article remained simply “Writing a Family Tree.”

Gidon Levitas, the president of the Netanya branch of Israel Genealogical Society (IGS), shows how he did his research, as he traces his family from Lithuania to Eretz Israel, on to South Africa and back to the State of Israel.

The newly available records from Bad Arolsen are a magnet for many researchers, and Yad Vashem is one of the places where some of that data is available. Martha Lev-Zion reports on a field trip by the Negev branch of IGS to Yad Vashem for explanations and hands-on assisted research in this valuable database. Another article on a research source is by Harriet Kasow, who tells us about the immigrants to the United States through the southern port of Galveston, Texas.

Two articles feature families. Evyatar (Tari) Chelouche, who is new to the field of genealogy, writes about his Algerian Chelouche family, which is well represented in Israel. The third and final installation of James Montel’s article on his French Montel and Esdra families also appears in this issue.

Edward Gelles provides historical context to our genealogy knowledge with an article about his family’s role in the migration from the Baltic lands to the Black Sea with stops along the way. Two articles discuss the histories of specific towns. IGS member Ruth Marcus presents her father’s hometown of Lunna in present-day Belarus, and Mathilde Tagger reviews the book The Jewish Community of Volos, Greece, by Raphael Frezis (translated from Greek to Hebrew). In the previous issue of Sharsheret Hadorot, we inaugurated a column offering reviews of online resources and genealogy tools. In this issue, we present a review of Logan Kleinwaks’ innovative site <shoahconnect.org> which allows researchers to contact one another through a common interest in Pages of Testimony at the Yad Vashem website. This column will be written by users, much as book reviews are written by readers. Among our regular features, Yehuda Klausner brings us the story of a special type of marriage annulment, called mi’oun, relevant only to marriages of young girls.

We bid farewell to Mathilde Tagger, who has left our Editorial and Translations Board after many years of service. We wish Mathilde well as she dedicates her time to other genealogy projects, and we look forward to her continued appearances as a contributor to Sharsheret Hadorot.