| by 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>.
Greater Boston Vol. 17, No. 3, Issue 60
Mass-pocha Includes a brief history of American Ju- daism and the American Jewish community by Norman H. Finkelstein. <> S. Saunders used translated material online plus family correspondence and lore to link actor Walter Matthau (son of Rose Barolsky Mathow), four family branches, and two cousins who thought all relatives had perished in the Holocaust. <> Part II of Michael Marx’s informal series on Internet searches. Marx interprets the Google search screen and provides tips for fruitful searches and even for translations. <> Cartographic historian Ronald Grim describes what we can learn from maps at <maps.jgsb.org>. Including Harvard University, Boston has the largest university map collection as well as untold riches in its public library, see <www.leventhalmapcenter. org>.
Conejo Valley & Ventura County (California)
Vol. 4, No. 1, October 2008
Venturing Into Our Past
In September, the JGS celebrated its third anniversary. <> Try an exciting new soundex system designed for genealogists by Alexander Beider and Stephen P. Morse at <http://stevemorse.org/phonetics/beider.php>. <> Chicago-area Jewish burials are often clustered in cemetery sections owned by Eastern European societies. For information on the Waldheim Cemetery in Evanston, Illinois, see <www.musumoffamily/history.com/cp.waldheimcemetery-societies.htm>.
Vol. 4, No. 2, November 2008. Search for information on more than 100 southern U.S. Jewish communities and congregations through the Digital Archives Project at ISJL <www.isjl.org>; Goldring/Woldenberg Institute of Southern Jewish Life) in Jackson, Mississippi.
Illinois & Fall 2008
Indiana Includes an obituary for Larry Mankin. Illiana Anita Singer and Trudy Barch report high lights from the 2008 IAJGS summer conference. <> Search a variety of Cook County, Illinois, records simultaneously at <www.cookcountygenealogy. com>. <> The Jewish Genealogy Society of Greater Washington is documenting and photographing all Jewish graves in the Washington, DC, area. Their project includes the late Kenneth Poch’s research on the Jewish burials at Arlington National Cemetery.
Greater Miami August 2008
Branches Includes sample correspondence from. U.S. Passport Applications, 1795–1925, posted at Ancestry.com. <> Betty Stoop Mas <bettesscf@bell south. net> is researching the Feit family of Galicia, Austria—near Lviv and Krakow. <> Barbara Musikar introduces her family, great-grandparents Meir Chaim Klempner and Sure Liebe Padlowsky, and how their children left Brest-Litovsk for Brooklyn, New York. <> Aryeh Barkai is searching for the families Graber and Tenzer, Fass and Ringelheim from Sokolow Malapolski in the area of Rzeszow. <> Book review: My Future is in America: Autobiographies of Eastern European Jewish Immigrants (Jocelyn Cohen and Daniel Soyer, ed./trans. [New York: New York University Press, 2005]).
Michigan Vol. 23, No. 3, Fall 2008
Generations Introduces the new JGS board. <> Part II of an ongoing series about research tips from Donna Potter Phillips, plus beginner hints from Harriet Rudnit. <> The 50 most popular websites, from the Wayne County Genealogy Society. <> Baltania’s small Jewish community (200 people) survived WWII along with 400 more Jewish refugees <www.jdc.org/peealb_history. html>. Sample headstones display a wealth of family information.
So. Nevada Vol. 11, No. 3, Fall 2008
Family Legacies Includes an obituary for Nadine (Mrs. Ed) Kaufman. <> Several perspectives on the 2008 IAJGS summer conference. <> JewishGen enters a partnership to gain technical strength from Ancestry.com, excluding secure JewishGen databases. <> If you purchased Family Tree Maker 2008, you should receive a debugged replacement, FTMaker.2009.
New York Vol. 29, No. 2, Winter 2007–2008
Dorot Includes a list of films planned for the 2008 IAJGS summer conference. <> Several impressions from the research group visiting the International Tracing Service (ITS) records in Bad Arolsen, Germany. Valery Bazarov reviewed CM1 files, looking for interviews of Holocaust survivors who were leaving displaced persons camps for the United States. The CM1 files have background information—personal, biographical and medical. Joan Engel explains the challenge of ITS research tools and the paucity of records for some geographic areas. There is no mechanism to simultaneously search by surname and location. Surnames and alternate spellings must be searched, one record at a time. Janet Isenberg found that individual T/D (case) files mentioned previous inquiries similar to hers. She explains the archive’s three sections: incarceration documents, forced labor documents and post-war documents. <> Linda Cantor uses inventory spreadsheets to track what records she has found for which relatives. <> Arizona Research Labs is using DNA to reconnect families torn apart in WWII, <www.dnashoah.org>. <> Alexander Zaslavsky is gathering and posting names of Jews from former Soviet Union nations who were killed in action during WWII <www.jgsny. org/russianintro.htm>. <> Nolan Altman announces a unique Yearbook Project from the JGS of Long Island <www.jgsli.org/yearbook_ Form.pdf>. Individuals lend their privately owned yearbooks to fulfill requests submitted through a centralized database. The JGS matches each request and provides appropriate written agreements. <> Book summary: Finding Home: In the Footsteps of the Jewish Fusgeyers, by author Jill Culner (Toronto: Sumach Press, 2004); by Susan Fifer (Ilford, England: JGS of Great Britain, 2007). <> Americans fought and died in southern Africa’s Boer Wars. For examples, see <www.movinghere.org.uk/galleries/roots/ jewish/service/service.htm>. Ann Rabinowitz struggled to research veteran Harry Spanier, along with Abraham Roeser and Roeser’s invalid claim to a Victoria Cross. She had better luck researching Solomon Cantor, great-uncle of Linda Cantor and a veteran of the Cape Cycle Corps <http:// hometown.aol.co.uk/tamsinasplin/cccc. html>. <> Teri Tillman reviews her 2007 award-winning research on Benjamin W. Cohen, an early 20th-century New Yorker with ties to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Natchez, Mississippi. <> Linda Cantor investigates the search tools of Google.com and shares her research discoveries.
Palm Beach Vol. 15, No. 4, 3rd Quarter 2008
Scattered Seeds The exhibit Seeking Refuge introduces German Jews who survived WWII in South Africa, <www.goethe.de/lns/za/prj/jue/en.index. htm>. <> Only the Dominican Republic welcomed Jewish refugees after the 1938 Evian conference. About 600 German and Austrian Jews arrived in 1940, promising to do agricultural work. Today only 12 families remain in the Dominican Republic town of Sosua. Molly Arost Staub relates her personal visit and a related exhibit at the Museum of Jewish Heritage. <> Latest entry in a series on archaic occupations. <> Cindy Potter Taylor proves the value of patience. She is researching Potter, Ploshchok, Poleszcuk of Maine, Massachusetts, and Pinsk, Belarus.
Philadelphia Vol. 27, No. 1/2, June 2008
Chronicles Includes an obituary for Holocaust hero Irena Sendler. <> Philadelphia’s Kesher Israel synagogue was key to the lives of local Russian immigrants and Zionists. The building was restored in 1998 (Harry Boonin, The Life and Times of Congregation Kesher Israel, available from the author). <> The Jewish Americans: 3 centuries of Jewish Voices in America (Beth Wenger, Doubleday) tells the story of U.S. Jewish communities through contemporary voices and first-person contacts. <> A previously unpublished memoir by the late Rabbi Malcolm H. Stern relates the evolution of many local synagogues, schools and clubs (Philadelphia’s German Jews, Their Mores and Institutions). <> Death certificates and cemeteries gave Peggy Morrow the clues she needed to unravel her orphaned father’s family history. Great-grandparents Samuel and Katie (Goldstein) Morrowitz came to the United States from Iasi, Romania, in 1882. <> Harry Boonin explains how Ward Atlases tell the story of Philadelphia in 1890, when the influx of Eastern European Jews began. Ward maps list property owners and businesses plus the architectural features of each building. <> Stanley Sandler had just enough family information to look for his aunt through the Austrian State Archives. Aunt Jeanette Sandel was born in Kolomyja (at various times Poland, Austria, Ukraine) and lived in Vienna before WWII. <> Inge Heiman Karo revisited her family’s daily life in Germany through her father’s Gestapo file and provincial real estate records. <> New online data: orders for English marriage authorization certificates, 1880‑86 <www.theus.org. uk/support.services/find_your_family_marriage_records>; trial records from London’s central criminal court, 1674–1913 <www.oldbaileyonline.org>; and passenger lists for ships leaving British ports 1890–1960, <findmypast.com>.
San Francisco Vol. 28, No. 3, August/September 2008
ZichronNote Includes obituaries for Bernard Kaufman, Jr. and Jan Engel. <> The JGS is donating microfilmed records from the Gold Rush period (1848–52) for the region between San Francisco to the Sierras <www. oaklandfhc.org/catalog/oaklandregionalfhc>. <> Highlights of the 2008 IAJGS summer conference include information on major collections in southeastern Wisconsin. <> Book and program review: Erased: Vanishing Traces of Jewish Galicia in Present-Day Ukraine (Omer Bartov, 2002). Bartov posits a regional trend—Ukrainian nationalists who cite the Holocaust era to excuse modern problems.
Utah No. 19, Summer 2008
Atsmi Uvsari “My Bone and My Flesh” Part 3 of Utah His- tory describes the Jewish community of Ogden. <> Lane Fischer created Microfilm Races to encourage good research practices by his children. Each child or team needs to find a specified film, then locate and copy a particular record. Each team starts with a worksheet providing relevant names, death dates, death certificate numbers and microfilm numbers.
Greater Vol. 27, No. 4, Fall 2008
Washington Society announces a new mailing address Mishpacha (JGSGW, P.O. Box 1614, Rockville MD 20849-1614). <> Fred Kolbrener explains why, why not, and how to transfer audio recordings from tape recorder to computer. <> Nancy Weinberg stresses the importance of family conversations in addition to document research. <> Larry Kohn explains how he submits illustrated family trees to Beth Hatefutsoth. He was inspired by the limitations of Family Tree Maker. <> Librarian Gene Sadick highlights books on the Romaniote Jewish community from Greece. Assistant librarian Vera Finberg suggests books for general Sephardic research. <> Past-president Marlene Bishow compares the late Kenneth Poch’s research on Jewish soldiers buried in Arlington National Cemetery to less comprehensive information available from the Department of Veterans Affairs at Gravesite Locator or, for a fee, from Ancestry.com. The Washington JGS publishes its Poch collection at <www.cygnet. org/anc2008>.
Special Interest Groups
Sefarad Vol. 11, No. 40, March 2008
Etsi mon arbre Includes surnames and some first names of 1877 donors to Turkish Relief drawn from records in the Paris Alliance Israelite. Donors came from the Moroccan towns of Chauen, Tetouan and Larache. Phillip Abensur points out that Alliance lists comprise either those wealthy enough to donate or poor enough to need assistance, and few in between. Includes the donors’ surnames plus the first names of those from Chauen. <> Evyatar Chelouche used overseas archives to look for his family name in North Africa. He uses tables to look for naming patterns and to analyze varied spellings attributed partly to differing pronunciation between Arabic-speaking Algerian Jews and French-speaking officials. <> Vidal Serfaty reports on presentations from the Conference on the Jewish Life of Fez sponsored by Israeli Jews of Fez Descent. His selections include History of the Fez Jewish Community, 1492–present; Fez as a repository of Spanish Judaism; Poetry of Rabbis Yaacov Ebn Tsur, of Fez, and Moshe Elbaz, of Sefrou.
Vol. 11, No. 41, April 2008. Includes a reference list for researching Sephardic names in general and specifically from North Africa, Spain, Greece, Italy, Turkey and Yemen. <> The Purim of Saragossa was discussed in a previous issue (vol. 2, no. 5, Summer 1999). Maggy Saragossi has now established the year as 1405 and the location as Syracuse, rather than Saragossa. She places events in context by recounting the history of Sicily, the region where Syracuse was located. <> Laurence Abensur-Hazan introduces the Turkish carpet weavers and merchants of Smyrna, focusing on several Jewish families: Barki, Habif, Polako, Soncino and Pontremoli. Includes a family tree circa 1916 linking the Soncino and Polako families.
