Leipzig is one of the oldest trading cities in the world and its Trade Fair (Germ. Leipziger Messe) is one of the oldest Trade Fairs in the world. Leipzig was at the crossroads of two important trade routes: Via Regia […]
The Jews of Óbuda, Miskolc, and Pest: A Grassroots Genealogical Approach
Avant Propos – a Genealogical Approach to Jewish History In an episode of the NBC television show Who do you think You are?, a show in which Hollywood actors and other entertainers search for their family roots, two historians helped a […]
Genealogical Sources for Researching Jewish Families in Maramaros Sziget and Vicinity
The following article is adapted from a presentation the coauthors gave at the IAJGS conference in Los Angeles in July 2010—Ed. Jewish History in Maramaros Before the Holocaust, the Jewish population of Maramaros County, Hungary, and its capital city, […]
“I Was You”: A True Story
One day back in the 1950s, Irving Spierer, the sole Holocaust survivor of his Hungarian family, was walking down a street in Brooklyn, New York, when a complete stranger—let’s call him Saul Rabinowitz (not his real name), another […]
Constructing a Town-Wide Genealogy: Jewish Mattersdorf, Hungary, 1698–1939
On November 16, 1707, 18-year-old Jakob stood in front of a three-member beit din (rabbinical court) to testify about an unfortunate joke that he had made four years earlier. On the first day of Sukkot in 1703, Jakob, the son […]