Of all the grandparents I never got a chance to know, I feel closest to my mother’s father Lucian. Perhaps it was my mother’s vivid storytelling that made him seem accessible. I’ve inherited his talents and his temperament; so I […]
Case Study: Tracing a German Refugee, Rosa Katz Adler
In February 1939, Rosa Katz Adler wrote to to Mrs. Herbert H. Lehman, wife of the New York Governor. She was desperate for assistance in bringing her young daughter Lotte to the United States. Rosa’s letter is one of hundreds […]
Project to Identify and Document Holocaust Memorials & Museums in the Americas
As the child of Holocaust survivors, I have been keenly aware of this Jewish and human tragedy since I was of school-age. Now at the age of 52, I see the youngest of the survivors reach old age and die. […]
“Sousa Mendes’s List” — The Search for Survivors
The Sousa Mendes Foundation actively seeks families who received lifesaving visas from the Portuguese diplomat Aristides de Sousa Mendes in the Spring of 1940. Sousa Mendes, stationed in Bordeaux, France, rescued thousands from the Holocaust by providing them visas to […]
“Galicianer Shtetl” – Jews of Galicia Remembrance Days – Tarnow, Poland, June 11-14
“The Galicianer Shtetl” – Jews of Galicia Remembrance Days program is an annual series of events scheduled this year from June 11th to 14th, in the town of Tarnów. The Remembrance Days are organized by the Regional Museum in Tarnów (Muzeum […]
Intergenerational Gathering of Sighet-Maramorish Descendants – Sighet, May 14-18
The Intergenerational Gathering of Sighet-Maramorish Descendants will take place in Sighet, Romania May 14-18, 2015. This event is co-sponsored by the Sighet-Maramorish Municipality under Mayor Ovidiu Nemes and the local Jewish Community. Some of the many exciting features of the […]
The Garnethill Hostel for Nazi-Era Refugees 1939-1948, in Glasgow
The Scottish Jewish Archives Centre is housed in the beautiful Garnethill Synagogue, Scotland’s first purpose-built synagogue, erected in the Garnethill district of Glasgow during 1879. The Centre houses a diverse collection of records of the Jewish experience in Scotland since […]
Yad Vashem Database of Shoah Victims’ Names: From the Future to the Present
Yad Vashem today is in a situation similar to that of 19th-century England—having started the Industrial Revolution, its machines became outdated before those of other countries who had started their industrial development later. Yad Vashem’s database, online since 2004, was […]
Mechanize Your Pages of Testimony Submissions
Yad Vashem’s ongoing program of encouraging world Jewry to submit Pages of Testimony (POTs) on behalf of family victims of the Holocaust has given heightened priority to aging survivors and other eyewitnesses of those times who may not live much […]
Restitution of Holocaust Victims’ Property in Israel and Genealogy
Restitution of Holocaust Victims’ Property in This article is adapted from a presentation at the IAJGS conference in Los Angeles, July 2010—Ed. From the start of the 20th century—and especially during the 1920s and 30s—American and European Jews, many […]
USHMM Resources For Attendees of 2011 IAJGS Conference
Those who attend the DC2011 IAJGS conference in August 2011 will have an opportunity to conduct research at three major institutions: the U.S. Library of Congress, National Archives and Records Administration, and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM). This […]
YadPOT: An Aid to Creating Pages of Testimony
In its Hall of Names, Yad Vashem, the Israeli Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, has documented half of all Holocaust victims, three million of them. Another three million, the second half, remain unmemorialized. Former chief archivist, Yaacov Lozowick, noted some years […]
The Myth of Impossible Proof: Modern Genealogy Methods and a Holocaust Fraud
This article first appeared in Association of Professional Genealogists Quarterly 23 (June 2008): 65–71—Ed. Persuasive arguments may cloud good judgment. When researchers are persuaded to see fiction as fact, they may overlook or ignore evidence. “Conventional wisdom,” scarce sources, unproductive […]
Children’s Archive at the International Tracing Service
Child survivors of the Holocaust seeking to recover their past face particularly serious and unique difficulties. This article describes a little-known but highly valuable resource for such research, the Kinder Archiv (Children’s Archive) of the International Tracing Service of the […]
Holocaust Geographic “How To” for Genealogists
This article first appeared in Mishpocha, the magazine of the Jewish Genealogy Society of Greater Washington—Ed. Genealogists searching for Holocaust information are accustomed to searching databases for family names of interest. They consult data provided by the many […]
The Holocaust—The Korherr Report
This article is based upon a presentation at the IAJGS Conference in Philadelphia, August 2–6, 2009—Ed. Some months ago, I listened to what was billed as a scholarly approach to the fate of German Jews in the Holocaust. It quickly […]
Unwanted Jewish Aliens in France: A Guide to French (and Other) Holocaust Records
This article is based upon a talk given at the IAJGS Conference in Philadelphia, August 2–6, 2009—Ed. For the past five years, I have been researching the fate of Jewish refugees in Belgium, France, Italy, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom […]
Holocaust Records – The Search Goes On
During the past 30 years, I have spent considerable time locating records that indicate the fate in the Holocaust—death or survival—of Jews and non-Jews. I recognize that, even more than 60 years after the end of World War II, while […]
Jewish Labor Committee’s Holocaust-Era Archives
Unknown to most genealogists, Jewish Labor Committee documents in the Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives in New York University’s Tamimet Library represent a remarkable cache of genealogically rich Holocaust-era records. Estelle Guzik devotes two lines to the collection in her […]
What We Learned in Bad Arolsen, by Sallyann Sack, Editor and Gary Mokotoff, Publisher
Jewish genealogists have known of the International Tracing Service (ITS) in Bad Arolsen, Germany, ever since Daniel Rottenberg and Arthur Kurzweil published their seminal “to-do” books more than 30 years ago.1 But we did not know much, because the institution […]
My Search for a Twice-Hidden Child
As we plan a visit to our ancestral towns, we hope against hope that someone may still be in these towns with a memory of the Jewish people who once lived there—if not of our own families, at least of […]
Search Bureau for Missing Relatives: Brief History and Current Status of Records
As head of the Jewish Agency’s Search Bureau for Missing Relatives in Jerusalem for many years until my retirement in 1999, I have helped many Jewish genealogists locate family living in Israel and abroad. Since then, I have often have […]
No Good Deed Goes Unpunished
The well-known saying, “No good deed goes unpunished,” may fairly be applied now to the monumental accomplishment of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) in bringing the records of the International Tracing Service (ITS) of the International Committee of the […]
Search and Find Story
For many years, my family and I longed to know what had become of my mother’s youngest sister, Laja Minc. There were five Minc sisters, one of whom, the second youngest, perished in the Holocaust; the other four survived the […]
How Henry Stern Found Fred Hertz after 67 Years
Within the last two years, AVOTAYNU has published two articles about families being reunited after many years of separation because of the Holocaust (“Finding a Holocaust Survivor after 63 Years,” by Howard Margol [Winter 2005] and “A Family Reunited after […]