The Geneva (Switzerland) Cantonal Archives has posted a list of 25,604 names of persons who entered Switzerland through Geneva during World War II at <http: //etat.geneve.ch/dt/archives/a_votre_service-liste_refugies-1700. html>. Specific dates are not given. The information for each individual includes name, (including […]
Book Review: The Life of Glückel of Hameln, Written by Herself. Translated and edited by Beth-Zion Abrahams.
The Life of Glückel of Hameln, Written by Herself. Translated from the original Yiddish and edited by Beth-Zion Abrahams. New edition published in hardcover by the Jewish Publication Society, Philadelphia, 2010. <www.jewishpub.org> If, as historian Jacob Shatzky once observed, catastrophe […]
“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 […]
Knowles Collection: Connecting Jewish Families
Genealogists always look for new ways to break through stubborn brick walls. Whether walking through graveyards that have not been maintained, calling everyone with our surname from some obscure directory, or spending nights without sleep when trying to […]
From Popelnya to Pittsburgh: The Deaktor Family
From Popelnya to Pittsburgh: The Deaktor Family, by Susan Glickman Davis and Alan Steinfeld. This book covers the years 1830 to 2009 and traces the history of the Deaktor family from its beginnings in Ukraine and Romania through its emigration […]
A Translation Guide to 19th-Century Polish-Language Civil Registration Documents (including Birth, Marriage and Death Records). 3rd Edition, by Judith R. Frazin
A Translation Guide to 19th-Century Polish-Language Civil Registration Documents (including Birth, Marriage and Death Records). 3rd Edition, by Judith R. Frazin. Published by the Jewish Genealogical Society of Illinois, 2009. Hardcover, coil-bound, 464 pages. $35.00. It has been about 20 […]
Odessa Dreams
I dream of Odessa, not the modern city, but the way it was just over a century ago, when my mother Florence Granofsky Arkin’s family still lived there. In his novel, The Five, Vladimir (Ze’ev) Jabotinsky poured out his feelings […]
The Six Lives of Gregory Meisler: Jew, Warrior, and Polish Patriot
The deeds of man, when unconfirmed by the voices of the witnesses or written documents, are bound to pass swiftly away and disappear from memory. Prince Boleslaw V the Pious The history of the Holocaust is never ending. Every […]
From Cracow to New Orleans: How Google Helped Reunite a Family Separated by War and Migration
Our visit to New Orleans in December 2002 was the culmination of an exciting adventure in family history. Just a few months earlier, who would have thought that my mother, brother, and I would travel from Vancouver, Canada, to attend […]
How the Virtual Shtetl Project’s Website Can Help Genealogists
Much has been written about the Virtual Shtetl Project, but no detailed discussion of what this project can do for genealogy researchers has appeared until now.1 The website www.shtetl.org.pl/ has many resources for genealogists interested in researching the Jews of […]
Vilnius and Belarus: Genealogical Travel
“Do you speak Yiddish?” my newfound cousin queried on behalf of her father, a Holocaust survivor who had settled in Paris after the war. I had located him through research at Bad Arolsen in the International Tracing Service records. His […]
Cemeteries in Upper Silesia
The Shoah has been called the end of European Jewry, and it is hard to argue the point. In most places, though, memory—wanted or unwanted—persists. The many efforts to deny the past are eloquent confirmation of its continued presence. In […]
Wine Goblets Reunite Cousins
About ten years ago, I noticed on an early 1900’s birth record from Ukraine a notation in the margin indicating that a copy of the document had been issued in 1963. I still remember the significance and excitement of this […]
A Poker Player’s Approach to Genealogical Research
Last year I flew to Israel to visit my cousin, H. Daniel Wagner. For some of us, I guess, family ties and tales become increasingly important—or at least, more interesting—as we get older. The events of our youth acquire a […]
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 […]
Vilnius Jewish Leaders Who Were Killed (1941–1945): Seeking Answers
In July 2007, I attended the IAJGS International Conference on Jewish Genealogy in Salt Lake City, Utah. After returning home, I received a message from Carol Rombro Rider, who also had attended the conference. During her visit to the LDS […]
Directories
This section will discuss four categories of directories whose contents can be useful for genealogical research: city directories, telephone directories, biographical directories, and professional directories. All of these valuable reference sources can be found in the United States and internationally. […]
When Jews Could Not Marry: Forbidden Marriages in 18th- and 19th-Century Bohemia
Bohemia now constitutes the western and central part of the Czech Republic and includes Prague. My grandfather, Hugo König (later King), came with his parents to the United States from Bohemia as an infant in the 1860s. My wife, Esther, […]
The Jews of Vienna and Their Moravian Hometowns
The marriage records (1850–90) of Sechshaus/ Fünfhaus, a heavily Jewish neighborhood of Vienna, show that a significant number of Jewish families came to Vienna from several towns of southwestern and central Moravia. Nikolsburg (Mikulov) is the most frequently mentioned town, […]
British Migration Records, 1793–1960
This article is adapted from a talk given at the Chicago 2008 IAJGS conference—Ed. Genealogists sometimes tell me that they know what I do, but don’t need it because [they] have found [their] ancestor’s arrival records in the Ellis Island […]
Book Review: A Dictionary of Jewish Surnames from the Russian Empire: Revised Edition. 2 vols, by Alexander Beider.
Dictionary of Jewish Surnames from the Russian Empire: Revised Edition. 2 vols, by Alexander Beider. Avotaynu, 2008. $118.00. To order: http://www.avotaynu.com/books/DJSRE2.htm When the first edition of Alexander Beider’s massive Dictionary of Jewish Surnames from the Russian Empire came out in […]
A 180th Birthday Celebration
In 1828, in the small South Bohemian town of Ckyne, a businessman offered to build a new synagogue for the Jewish community if they would sell him the land on which their shul (synagogue) stood. The community agreed, and the […]
Personal Journeys: The Isenberg Family Comes Alive
The year was 1970. One morning that summer, I was exiting, quite unexpectedly, the railway station in Hamburg, Germany. It was the last place I wanted to be. I had misread the train schedule, leading me to believe I could […]
The Berliner/Berkenstat Connection
I am a second-generation Holocaust survivor. My mother, Lea, was born in Antwerp, Belgium, in 1925. Luckily, she spent the war years with her parents and brother hiding as a Catholic in Chateauneuf-les-Bains, France. My dad, Murray (Mordkhe, Motek) Berliner […]
Lessons Learned in Finding the Chajkielson Family of Suwalki
Many Jewish genealogists have wondered what happened to relatives who did not emigrate from Europe during the 20th century. Older family members typically report that “all communication was lost after World War II. They must have been killed in the […]