Upcoming Meeting:

Jewish Genealogical Society of Sacramento                                                                Using the Internet for Genealogy                                                                       Monday, Sept. 14, 2009, 7 p.m.

Jerry Unruh, a longtime member of the Placer County Genealogical Society, will speak about how you can effectively search for your ancestors on the Internet.  Although the Web contains a vast amount of information, the majority is not about our ancestors. What can you do to find the information you know is out there.  Jerry will share the procedures and techniques he uses to research the Internet.

Jerry Unruh is a Loomis resident who’s been researching his genealogy for more than 25 years. Early on, he wrote his own genealogy program when the few programs available were unable to meet his needs. He eventually switched to Family Tree Maker to be able to more easily exchange data with other family members.  Jerry has been a member of the Placer County Genealogical Society for the last twenty years, including three years as president. He currently maintains their Web site, is their newsletter editor and has been supporting their Family Tree Maker User Group for the last several years.

 

From the August 30 Avotaynu E-Zine:

CJSI to be Updated
Avotaynu plans to update its Consolidated Jewish Surname Index (CJSI) in the next few months. CJSI is the gateway to information about 700,000 surnames, mostly Jewish, that appear in different databases. These include most of the JewishGen surname databases, all surname books published by Avotaynu and other databases such as the Poor Jews Temporary Shelter, Sephardic surname databases, and Holocaust memorial books such as Gedenkbuch and Memorial to the Jews Deported from France. The database is sequenced phonetically rather than alphabetically using the Daitch-Mokotoff Soundex System. Therefore, spelling variants of a name that sound the same are grouped together.

The major advantage to genealogists with Jewish heritage is that it is not necessary to search all the individual=20databases. CJSI will identify which database being searched has the surname (and its variants). For each online database in CJSI there is a link to the site where the surname can be individually searched, or there is link to a website where additional information can be found about those databases not online.

CJSI is used by non-Jews who think they may have Jewish heritage to determine if a surname is Jewish. This misuse of the database is so great that the matter is addressed at the site where there is a discussion of what is a Jewish surname. It notes that a surnames in CJSI is not necessarily Jewish because:

   • Jews and non-Jews share surnames. The third most common Jewish surname in the United States (after Cohen and Levy) is Miller. Clearly Miller in both non-Jewish and Jewish.
   • Intermarriage and conversion. The fact that the surname McKenney appears in CJSI does not mean necessarily that Jews bore this name. One source , the Family Tree of the Jewish People, is a database of family trees developed by Jewish genealogists, but these trees would also include non-Jewish branches of families.
   • Nature of database. Some of the databases named are predominantly Jewish but do contain non-Jewish individuals. An example is the Russian Consular Records database of people who transacted business with the czarist consulates in the United States.

Some years ago I found a link to CJSI at an anti-Semitic site. The site stated that if you want to know if you are dealing with a Jew, go to CJSI and see if his surname appears. This is nonsense because of the reasons described above.

CJSI is the most-visited page at the Avotaynu website with more than 2,500 visits per week. It is located at http://www.avotaynu.com/csi/csi-home.htm


IAJGS Plans Multilingual Conference Internet Site
Planners for the 30th International conference on Jewish Genealogy are looking for volunteers to translate the informational pages of the conference’s website. The event will be held July 2010 in Los Angeles. The languages are Farsi, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Lithuanian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Ukrainian. Translation is needed for descriptive text of about 1,000 words. Persons fluent in any of these languages willing to volunteer for the project should contact Pamela Weisberger, Co-Chair IAJGS Conference 2010 at pweisberger@....


Ancestry.com Is Going Public
Ancestry.com has filed an Initial Public Offering to sell $75 million of stock to the public. The filing requires disclosure of the company’s operations. As of June 30, 2009:
   • they had just short of one million paid subscribers
   • revenue from paid subscribers approaches $200 million per year
   • they spend $60 million per year on marketing and advertising
The full public disclosure document can be found at http://sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1469433/000095012309028902/d68252orsv1.htm

.

New England genealogy 101: top 10 reasons to print on paper

August 26, 9:21 AMBoston Genealogy ExaminerRobin C. Mason

 

Upcoming Meeting:

Jewish Genealogical Society of Sacramento                                

Using the Internet for Genealogy                                                                                Monday, Sept. 14, 2009, 7 p.m.

Jerry Unruh, a longtime member of the Placer County Genealogical Society, will speak about how you can effectively search for your ancestors on the Internet.  Although the Web contains a vast amount of information, the majority is not about our ancestors. What can you do to find the information you know is out there.  Jerry will share the procedures and techniques he uses to research the Internet.

Jerry Unruh is a Loomis resident who’s been researching his genealogy for more than 25 years. Early on, he wrote his own genealogy program when the few programs available were unable to meet his needs. He eventually switched to Family Tree Maker to be able to more easily exchange data with other family members.  Jerry has been a member of the Placer County Genealogical Society for the last twenty years, including three years as president. He currently maintains their Web site, is the newsletter editor and has been supporting their Family Tree Maker User Group for the last several years.

Please join us Monday at 7 p.m.

 

 

Q: Previously I had a Dell and Windows and used Family Tree Maker for genealogy records. Now that I'm an Apple owner, I find that Family Tree Maker does not work on an Apple, only Windows. What can I do about this?

A: It seems to me that you have three obvious options. If you still have your old Dell, you could crank it up again just for the purpose of running Family Tree Maker. Or, you could buy a boxed copy of Windows and install it on your Mac, which is fully capable of running Windows and Windows programs (assuming it’s an Intel-based Mac). Finally, you could switch to one of the native Mac-based genealogy programs and import your data from Family Tree Maker via the standard GEDCOM file format used in genealogy. One such program, called Reunion, includes specific instructions on importing data from Family Tree Maker on its “Top 10 Questions” page, at leisterpro.com.

—You can find Mossberg’s Mailbox, and my other columns, online for free at the new All Things Digital web site, http://walt.allthingsd.com.  Write to Walter S. Mossberg at walt.mossberg@...

30th IAJGS International Conference Now Has Web Site
The Jewish Genealogical Society of Los Angeles, host of the 30th International Conference on Jewish Genealogy, has established a conference website at http://www.jgsla2010.com. The event will be held from July 11–16, 2010, at the JW Marriott Hotel at L.A. Live. L.A. Live is a new downtown Los Angeles entertainment and cultural complex.

The Call for Papers will begin on November 15, 2009, and close on January 15, 2010. Persons who would like to lecture can see a list of possible presentation categories at http://www.jgsla2010.com/conference-program/
 

JewishGen Offering “Build Your Owen ShtetLinks Page” Course
Interested in creating a website for your ancestral town but don’t know how to do it? JewishGen is offering a course on "How to Make Shtetlinks Web Pages" to begin October 15. It is a six-week course where you will learn how to create web pages for ShtetLinks. JewishGen provides a free, downloadable, simple-to-use web page editor that runs on both PCs and=2 0Macs. They claim that only basic computer skills are need to develop a ShtetLinks site. Cost for the course is $36. Additional information is available at http://www.JewishGen.org/education..

NewsLibrary.com
A news clipping service at http://NewsLibrary.com claims to have online 182 million newspaper articles published in the U.S. At no charge, they provide approximately the first 7520words or the article; for $5.95 the entire article will be provided. A one-month membership is $19.95. There are 81 articles that include “Gary Mokotoff” and 266 articles that name any person named Mokotoff (all Mokotoffs in the U.S. are related to me).


GuyShachar.com
Guy Shachar, an Israeli photographer and traveler, has created a number of PowerPoint presentations of European synagogues at http://guyshachar.com. Click the word “English” in the upper left corner to view an English-language version of his site. The synagogue presentations are at
http://www.guyshachar.com/Synagogues_of_Slovakia_GuyShachar.pps
http://www.guyshachar.com/Budapest_Synagogue_Guy.pps
A photo essay of Berlin can be found at http://guyshachar.com/Berlin_Jewish_Journey.pps.

A complete list can be found at http://guyshachar.com/content/photography/presentations/presentations-full-list/. There are also photo essays at the site.

 

Footnote.com Allows Access to Holocaust Collection Free in October
Footnote.com and the U.S. National Archives and Record Administration have announced the availability of more than one million Holocaust-related documents and an index at the Footnote.com site. For the month of October 2009 the records are available at no charge.

NARA records at the site include:
   • Concentration camp registers and documents from Dachau, Mauthausen and Flossenburg.
   • The Ardelia Hall Collection of records relating to the Nazi looting of Jewish possessions, including looted art.
   • Captured German records including deportation and death lists from concentration camps.
   • Nuremberg War Crimes Trial proceedings.
Also included are nearly 600 interactive personal accounts of those who survived or perished in the Holocaust provided by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Gary Mokotoff found locating the search engine difficult. The following procedure is recommended.

Sign up (or log on) before using the site because the ability to save or print documents is not possible without joining Footnote.com, at least as a free-access user. (You can view documents without signing up.) Sign up at http://www.footnote.com/, then link to the Holocaust Collection from the home page. The Holocaust Collection page does not have a search function (those shown are ads for other web sites). Instead, click the words “National Archives Records” which will bring you to http://go.footnote.com/holocaust_records/. Click on an individual collection, for example “Dachau Entry Registers” if you want to search that collection only. Instead, use the search function to the right of the screen. It permits searching the entire Holocaust collection (actually the entire Footnote collection).

A subscription to Footnote.com costs $11.95/ month or $79.95/year. The home page shows a seven-day free trial. After inspecting the complete collection, it might be worthwhile to take out at least a one-month subscription to capture the documents of interest. You can browse their list of collections at http://www.footnote.com/browse.php.

 

Company provides insight on Jack the Ripper's victims

Jill Lawless, Associated Press

Sunday, September 20, 2009

(09-20) 04:00 PDT London --

- The world is endlessly fascinated with Jack the Ripper - but what about his victims?

Last week, an online genealogy company published census information that casts light on the lives of the women murdered by the Victorian serial killer.

The company, Findmypast.com, trawled records of Britain's 1881 census for information on the five women generally accepted as victims of the Ripper: Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes and Mary Jane Kelly.

All were killed between Aug. 31 and Dec. 20, 1888, in London's East End, where they worked as prostitutes. Their bodies were mutilated.

The firm said the census data - available on its site and elsewhere online - provides "a small window onto the past" and dispels an image some people might have of the victims as teenage streetwalkers. Most were formerly married women with children who resorted to prostitution when their lives took a turn for the worse.

There is no record of Nichols or Kelly in the census, taken April 3, 1881, suggesting they already might have been working the streets at that time.

Stride was recorded as 37 and living with her husband, a carpenter. Eddowes was 38, living with her husband and two children, her occupation listed as "charwoman."

Chapman was 40, married but living with her parents. She later moved out of London to live with her husband, a stud groom.

The women appear to have turned to prostitution after their marriages dissolved. According to newspaper reports at the time, none of the victims was living with her husband at the time of her death.

"Some people treat the Jack the Ripper story as a bit of a game," said Alex Werner, a Museum of London historian and curator of a recent Jack the Ripper exhibition. "It wasn't a game. It was against real people in the East End, people who had fallen on really hard times, who had gravitated to the East End as a place where they could earn some kind of living as a prostitute."

Newspaper accounts at the time, which helped the Ripper's fame spread, touched on the women's fall from respectability.

The Star newspaper's report on Sept. 27, 1888, on the death of Chapman, struck a sympathetic tone, describing how a woman who "had perhaps a happy and innocent girlhood, and was once a wife, had to turn out and seek the sale of her body for the price of a bed."

"A few hours later," the newspaper said, "she was found a corpse."

The murderer's infamy spread quickly around the world. London newspapers reveled in the gore, which was spread across the country and to distant lands by telegraph. The killer was dubbed "Jack the Ripper" after a man using that pseudonym claimed responsibility in letters to the media and police.

No one was prosecuted for the murders, helping to fuel speculation about his identity that continues to this day. Among the suspects identified at various times are Francis Tumblety, an American quack doctor; Sir William Gull, physician to Queen Victoria; Victoria's grandson, Prince Albert Victor; and artist Walter Sickert.

Andrew Cook, author of the recent book "Jack the Ripper," thinks the Ripper always has been a media creation. He argues that the crime could not have been committed by a single person.

Cook said the Ripper myth has been constructed from "layer upon layer of sediment, nonsense and crazy theories."

"It has become an industry," he said. "What really was a terrible scenario of events has almost become over-commercialized."

Jewish Genealogical Society of Sacramento

Sunday, October 18, 2009, 10 a.m.  -- Jewish Genealogical Research in South

Africa  --Albert Einstein Residence Center, 1935 Wright Street, Sacramento

 

Roy Ogus will be the October speaker for the Jewish Genealogical Society of Sacramento. 

Roy is vice-president of the Southern African Jewish Genealogical SIG (Special Interest Group) on the JewishGen Web site.  He was born in South Africa and has lived in the Bay Area since the 1970s.

 

The South African Jewish community is a large one, and while we may not know it, many of us may have South African connections through ancestors who may have emigrated there.  During the great wave of emigration from Eastern Europe (1881-1930s), many Jews, especially Lithuanians, left for the economic opportunity and freedom of South Africa.  Following the recent emigration of many South African Jews during periods of political unrest in the country, the end of apartheid in 1994 has revitalized our cousins’ homeland.
 
Roy’s presentation will summarize key sources of documentation and genealogical information of genealogical value in South Africa, and how these materials can be accessed and researched.  He’ll also provide an overview of South African history as a backdrop for the discussion of Jewish migration to that remote area.

 

All are welcome to attend the Sunday, October 18, 10 a.m. meeting.  It's also an opportunity to make use of our extensive genealogy library.

 

 

And from today’s Washington Post ..  where Al Franken, Tom Friedman and the Coen Brothers grew up…

 

My Dad Takes The Coen Bros. Back to Shul

By Neal Karlen
Special to The Washington Post
Sunday, October 11, 2009

 

Fyvush Finkel, a venerable star of Yiddish theatrical melodrama, was expecting Joel and Ethan Coen to feed him nothing but juicy lines for their new film, "A Serious Man." Yet he felt they'd given him dreck. So Finkel, 86, did the heretofore unthinkable: He kibitzed the Coens on-set, and then, unbidden, rewrote 10 pages of the latest of their always-inviolable scripts.

 

It was 2008, and the brothers were filming in their home town of St. Louis Park, a Minneapolis suburb that would serve as the backdrop for "A Serious Man," their latest cinematic ode to tragicomic weirdness, this time grounded in their Jewish upbringing. As Joel later explained, it's a picture "filmed in the context our own youth in St. Louis Park, but with a made-up story."

 

Personally, however, nothing in their brilliant oeuvre could top the weirdness of Joel Coen phoning my 83-year-old father at home for a reason also never before thought possible: The sibling auteurs wanted an outsider's opinion on one of their scripts, specifically the 10 pages Finkel found so noxious.

 

Joel heard through the St. Louis Park grapevine that my father, Markle, was the most vital and fluent member of the local Jewish Community Center's Yiddish club. Dad, a widower, had recently hooked up with an 84-year-old friend, Roz Baker, who'd invested $500 in "Blood Simple," the Coens' first film, and was still receiving small royalty checks. Her son, David Amdur, one of the Coens' best friends since junior high school, told Joel that the most proficient local source was my father. Roz agreed.

 

If you're getting the sense that it's a small world in the Coens' home town, you'd be right. And such a prolific town it is in terms of Jewish achievers: Among St. Louis Park's roughly 10,000 Jews circa 1967 (when the new film is set) were near or actual teenagers Allen Franken, who went from "Saturday Night Live" to the U.S. Senate; Tommie Friedman, who alchemized into the celebrated New York Times columnist and author; Norm Ornstein, perhaps Washington's smartest political polymath; and of course "Joe" and "Eth" Coen, who vow to spend the rest of their lives collaborating, because, as Ethan said the other day, "two heads are better than none."

 

Oh, and now my father, the brothers' octogenarian script adviser. When Joel Coen gave my pop a call, he politely asked if Dad would compare for accuracy, tone and narrative flow their own 10-page prologue, written in Yiddish with English subtitles, against Fyvush's scribbled rewrite. Joel and my father talked for about 10 minutes about linguistic nuance; the essence of 19th century Jewish Eastern Europe; and Fyvush vs. the Coens. Joel immediately dispatched two versions of the script for exegesis.

 

In "A Serious Man," Finkel plays Reb Groshkover, a mysterious sage. During the film's opening scene -- which has no linear connection to the rest of the movie -- he wanders inside a rickety, 19th-century shtetl lean-to, inhabited by a peasant couple. Some crazy stuff ensues. Turns out the Reb may or may not be a dybbuk, a mischievous Jewish specter.

 

Two days later, Dad dialed one of filmdom's most guarded private numbers. "Joel, the first version wasn't bad," he said, "but the second one was pure dreck." My father waved his hand in the universal language of "Feh!" (The brothers' script was the first version, though my father was unaware of which was whose.)

 

And the story?

 

"Ach," Pop said, "It's the usual shtetl shtick. A woodchopper. A poor old woman. A dybbuk. Who needs it."

 

Hey, what about me? The Coens were my favorite local heroes. I'd seen their films more than 100 times (granted, 36 viewings were "The Big Lebowski"), while my father had never seen a single one, and even turned down a chance to invest a few hundred bucks in "Blood Simple" back in the mid-1980s. ("Meshugas," he still says.)

 

I was the guy in the family who made a living sweating out narrative arcs. Before he retired from medical practice, Markle Karlen had been a people doctor, not a script doctor. But at that point, unlike virtually everyone I've ever known from St. Louis Park, I had never laid eyes on the Coen brothers in my entire 48 years. I was a few years younger (Ethan is 52; Joel 54), but we'd all gone through the same public and Hebrew school systems, had our bar mitzvahs at the same synagogue, and had recently spent time quizzing my father.

 

Watching the movie the day it opened in Minneapolis -- there were lines around the block -- was a lot like going home (then again, I live seven minutes away from St. Louis Park). It tells the tale of beleaguered and a cuckolded physics professor named Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg), who attempts to divine the existential meaning of his disintegrating life in St. Louis Park from three incomprehensible rabbis.

 

Gopnik lives with his family -- adulterous wife Judith, pot-smoking son Danny and bohemian daughter Sarah -- on a street called Fern Hill. That was the name of my elementary school.

 

"Mr. Turchick," the Hebrew School principal Danny Gopnik was sent to after listening to his transistor radio with an earplug during his lessons, was the same Mr. Turchick I was condemned to see after I'd committed the exact same crime.

 

My first girlfriend was seventh-grade femme fatale Kori Samsky, who introduced me to the French kiss; Professor Gopnik's femme fatale next-door neighbor is Mrs. Samsky, who introduced him to infidelity. (The Coens were friends with Kori Samsky's older brother. You follow?)

 

Built-In Irony

 

The Coens didn't need to inject their usual surreal sense of character and space into this paean to their youth: Jews on the prairie is seemingly enough of a bizarre incongruity. Growing up in St. Louis Park, however, is not an exercise in Lake Wobegon-goes-to-Hebrew School.

 

Although roughly 20 percent of the suburb's residents are actually Jewish, the image of a gilded ghetto remains indelible in a state where only 42,000 Jews (29,000 in Minneapolis) dwell amid 5.2 million people. And despite Minnesota's progressive tradition, Midwest populism has historically carried a troublesome whiff of anti-Semitism. (In 1946, Carey McWilliams, editor of the Nation, wrote, "Minneapolis is the capitol of anti-Semitism in the United States.") As late as the 1990s, bagels were being thrown onto the rink when St. Louis Park's high school hockey team took the ice at away games.

 

Though anti-Semitism has eased over the years, a unique kind of Jew evolved in this atmosphere. This fact was of supreme importance to the Coens when casting their film. "Jews in the Midwest just sounds abnormal," Ethan says. "We were determined to use as many local Jews as we could instead of resorting to the usual Hollywood ethnic type. We wanted to communicate that there are Jews on the Plains. It is a subculture, and a feeling, that is different from Jewish communities in New York or Los Angeles."

 

That unique "feeling" is perhaps one reason St. Louis Park's most famous natives almost always come back. Al Franken came home to Minnesota to challenge a coreligionist, Brooklyn-bred Republican incumbent Sen. Norm Coleman. During the campaign, Franken liked to point out that "I'm the Jew who was actually raised in Minnesota."

 

Days after Franken announced his candidacy in 2007, his first large rally was held in the gym of St. Louis Park Junior High School. Dave Griffin, Franken's close friend since they met in the school's halls in 1963, introduced him with details of his old pal's run for seventh-grade class president. Franken won in a walk, with posters of him wearing a beard and a stovepipe hat atop the words "Vote for Honest Al."

Decades later, during the bruising Franken-Coleman battle, one of the only genuinely sweet moments was a commercial featuring Val Molin, Franken's fourth-grade teacher at St. Louis Park's Cedar Manor Elementary School.

 

Mrs. Molin filmed a spot for "Allen" in her natural "yer darn tootin' " accent, seemingly imported straight from the Coen brothers' "Fargo." The popular ad helped make the point that Franken was no New York carpetbagger.

 

Today, from his Senate office, he can tick off all his elementary school teachers with the rapidity of a Henny Youngman routine, minus any jokes. "Miss Jackson, first grade. Mrs. Morrison, second grade. Miss Bullock, third. Mrs. Molin, fourth. Mrs. Lungabaugh, fifth. Mr. Knudsen, sixth."

 

Thomas L. Friedman's timbre, meantime, turns from sober triple Pulitzer Prize winner to chairman of the St. Louis Park Chamber of Commerce when asked about his memories. "You can never go home again," he says, "unless you're from St. Louis Park."

 

His first bylines came as a junior on the high school newspaper. Among those stories was an interview with Ariel Sharon, who'd given a speech in Minneapolis. "My whole identity is St. Louis Park," he says, adding that the death of high school classmate Judy Bernstein on American Airlines Flight 11 on Sept. 11 "has partially informed my opinions of terrorism."

 

Friedman thinks there is a sui generis atmosphere to his home town that resulted in such an eruption of talent. "It was the mystery of a moment," he says. "It was this stew of a cosmopolitan community that had the tremendous stability of 'Leave It to Beaver.' We had a creative Jewish community mixed together during a progressive moment in politics when Minnesota meant Walter Mondale, Eugene McCarthy and Hubert Humphrey."

 

Friedman, who commands five figures per lecture on the Chautauqua circuit, has spoken gratis in St. Louis Park several times, helping to raise $350,000 for a local Jewish nursing home and $1 million for combatant casualties in Minnesota, among other causes.

 

He also spent his 50th birthday in Las Vegas with his best friends -- the same guys with whom he played cards during junior high school. Norman Ornstein, the political quote machine based at the American Enterprise Institute, also says he still considers St. Louis Park his home. The suburb's fame quotient might stem from its "warm environment for creativity," he speculates. "Conformity isn't valued in St. Louis Park. Great value was put on education, an offbeat sense of humor, and looking outside of ourselves to the rest of the world."

 

Interconnections to home often seem to entail zero degrees of separation. Ornstein once went on a date with Friedman's sister, and he gave Franken his guest bedroom while the neonatal senator looked for Washington lodgings. Friedman, Franken and Ornstein all angled for parts in the picture, but the scheduling didn't work out. The Coens, meantime, owe their career to contacts and introductions made in St. Louis Park with several dozen friends and acquaintances; friends of friends; and acquaintances of acquaintances of their parents and neighbors from childhood.

 

In junior high school, Joel made enough money mowing neighbors' lawns to buy a Vivitar Super 8 camera. The brothers' first movie was a remake of Cornell Wilde's "The Naked Prey," which they renamed "Zeimers in Zambezi." Later, although still not shaving regularly, the Coens were soon making three-to-five-minute films with titles like "Henry Kissinger -- Man on the Go." "Ed . . . a Dog" was their remake of "Lassie Come Home."

 

"Blood Simple" was financed via Joel giving a story pitch in hundreds of St. Louis Park living rooms, showing a two-minute film clip to shake loose $500 to $5,000 from potential investors.

 

For a quarter-century, the Coens were my Loch Ness Monsters, my Moby-Dicks. The only bumper sticker I'd ever put on my car bore the keynote line of "The Big Lebowski": "The Dude Abides." So, last year, I decided, the time to cross paths had finally come. I would try out to be an extra in "A Serious Man," and somehow meet the men who'd long served as living proof that just because you came from Minnesota didn't mean you had to end up as a citizen of Garrison Keillor's state-of-mind, which is apparently composed entirely of village idiots.

 

The casting company instructions: "PHYSICAL LOOK: Specific characteristics represent 1967 . . . ASM is not a 'glamorous' film. WE LOVE INTERESTING FACES. The dorkier, the better!"

I could do this. I could do "dorkier." Tryouts were held in a nondescript building west of St. Louis Park. I went into a small room filled with nine other hopefuls, and a woman with a Polaroid took a group shot. I faced forward, snap. I turned to the side, snap. I turned to the door, please leave.

 

Rejected, I drove home, passing St. Louis Park High School. Despite my geographic pedigree, I would never be a Franken, an Ornstein, a Thomas L. Friedman, or even see from afar the Coen brothers. They would remain as ethereal and frightening as dybbuks, a pair of ghosts.

 

Then I got this assignment, and weaseled my way into an evening with the Coens at Minneapolis's Walker Art Center a couple of weeks ago. It was a fundraising event reserved for the museums' best-heeled patrons. Most major donors seemed to have given their tickets to their Richie Rich children; the audience seemed filled with postmodern cinema hipsters straight out of "Sprockets," Mike Myers's "Saturday Night Live" bit.

 

Over the years, the Coens had blown me off at the last second for two interviews. I'd been treated like dog-dirt at tryouts for extras. And now, as their talk concluded, I was being warned by a supercilious film company minion to stay far away. (Evidently he'd been tasked with protecting the Coens from human beings unworthy to grasp at their jacket sleeves.)

 

Panicking, I performed a one-man Green Bay Packers-style sweep, and came within inches of running into Ethan's rear-end. Ethan, unperturbed, turned toward me, and I began babbling names we both knew at the speed of one of their favorite actors, Steve Buscemi.

 

Ethan shook my hand, apologized about the missed interview, and amiably chatted about life, movies, home. He also asked me to pass along greetings to mutual friends he wouldn't have time to call during this brief trip.

 

"Go say hi to Joel," he said, as the studio nabob looked on as if he needed a Valium the size of a pizza.

The elder Coen laughed, remembering my father's career as his script doctor. He too chatted warmly. "Say hi to your pop and Roz," he said.

 

"Did I do something terrible talking to you?" I asked Ethan, who'd circled back, seemingly trying to avoid the "Sprockets" crowd.

 

"No!" he exclaimed. "It's nice just to talk. And can you tell David [Amdur, Roz's son] I'm sorry we can't come over for dinner this trip?"

 

Dybbuks? Feh. Turns out they were just a couple of mensches from the old neighborhood.

 

Neal Karlen's most recent book is "The Story of Yiddish: How a Mish-Mosh of Languages Saved the Jews."

Jewish Genealogical Society of Sacramento

 

Sunday, October 18, 2009, 10 a.m.  -- Jewish Genealogical Research in South Africa  --Albert Einstein Residence Center, 1935 Wright Street, Sacramento

 

Roy Ogus will be the October speaker for the Jewish Genealogical Society of Sacramento. 

Roy is vice-president of the Southern African Jewish Genealogical SIG (Special Interest Group) on the JewishGen Web site.  He was born in South Africa and has lived in the Bay Area since the 1970s.

 --------------

 

From the Oct. 13 Avotaynu E-zine:

IIJG Announces Latest Grants

The International Institute for Jewish Genealogy has award two additional grants for research associated with genealogy; one for Latvian research and the other for Hungarian Research.

The first proposal is entitled “A Systematic Study of the Riga House Registers as a Source for Jewish Genealogy in Pre-War Latvia.” It will result in a detailed database of the 20–21,000 Jews living in Riga in the inter-war period.

The second project is entitled “Communal Protocols and the Daily Life of Hungarian Jews - Proposal for a New [Genealogical] Research Tool”. Its central aim is the creation of a database of mini-biographies of Jews who lived in the 18th and 19th centuries in three major Hungarian Jewish communities—Pest, Óbuda, and Miskolc

The IIJG Web site is at http://www.iijg.org.


Museum of Family History
I (Gary Mokotoff) have not visited Steve Lasky’s Museum of Family History at http://www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/ for some time. It had always contained a wealth of useful exhibits that are ancillary to Jewish genealogical research. One reason I avoided it is that it was not well organized—even though it had good information—and I found I was using the site map rather than links.

This is a thing of the past. The Museum of Family History site now has a very slick design. In fact, Lasky has taken the title of his site seriously and had created a virtual museum complete with floors, theaters, dining facilities and a bookstore. If a new visitor did not catch on that the Museum exists only on the Internet, I am sure Lasky would get e-mail questioning where the facility is located and what are its hours.

Many complex Internet sites have a site map. Lasky calls it a floor plan.  Visit a floor plan (site map) and you can click on the link to any of the exhibits on the virtual floor. For example, on the extreme left of the Main Floor plan are the country exhibits: Austria, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Romania, Scandinavia, Spain and Ukraine. In the center of the main floor is the Family History Theater which links to audio/visual presentations at the site.

On the more serious side are the wealth of exhibits: visual, audio and video. Here are some of the recent additions to the site:
   • Shabbat and the Jewish Holidays
   • Castle Garden and Ellis Island: Ports of Immigration
   • Philanthropy: Jewish Hospitals and Societies which Cared for the Needy in New York City (1902)
   • Screening Room: Film clip no. 21: “A Great Day on Eldridge Street” Klezmer celebration on the Lower East Side
   • Photographic Studios of Europe

In the Educational Research section are items that are more pertinent to genealogy: Cemetery Project, Map Room of Eastern Europe, Synagogues of New York City and Genealogy and Family History. Visit the Museum of Family History. Lasky provides a monthly update of new items on the JewishGen Discussion Groups.

Ancestry.com Offers Webinars
Ancestry.com has a number of webinars (web-based seminars) that can be viewed at no cost. The list can be found at http://learn.ancestry.com/LearnMore/Webinars.aspx. A sample of some topics that might be of interest include:
   • Genealogy in Gotham: New York City Research
   • The Canadian Historical Censuses, 1851–1916
   • European Research: Tips and Tools for Success,
   • Genetic Genealogy Made Easy
   • Planning a Perfect Family Reunion


Philadelphia Conference Session Recordings Available
All the sessions recorded at the 29th IAJGS International Conference on Jewish Genealogy (Philadelphia, August 2–7, 2009) are available for purchase online or on CD. Only those sessions where the presenter gave approval for the recording are included. You can order a set for the whole conference, specific days or individual sessions. The cost appears to be $14 per session. To order online, go to http://www.softconference.com/IAJGS/slist.asp?C=3086. To order by phone, call (314) 487-0135.


Reminder: Footnote.com Holocaust Collection Accessible at No Cost in October
Footnote.com and the U.S. National Archives and Record Administration (NARA) have announced the availability of more than one million Holocaust-related documents and an index at the Footnote.com site. For the month of October 2009 the records are available at no charge.

NARA records at the site include:
   • Concentration camp registers and documents from Dachau, Mauthausen and Flossenburg.
   • The Ardelia Hall Collection of records relating to the Nazi looting of Jewish possessions, including looted art.
   • Captured German records including deportation and death lists from concentration camps.
   • Nuremberg War Crimes Trial proceedings.
Also included are nearly 600 interactive personal accounts of those who survived or perished in the Holocaust provided by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

See you Sunday morning!

 

October 29, 2009

 

Upcoming Meetings:

Sunday, November 15, 10 a.m. – Jim Van Buskirk, “My Grandmother’s Suitcase”

Sunday, December 20, 10 a.m. – Ron Arons, “Mapping Madness”

 

October 18, 2009 Meeting

The meeting was called to order by President Mort Rumberg.  He talked briefly about our upcoming meeting schedule, which inlcudes a presentation on “My Grandmother’s Suitcase” by Jim Van Buskirk on Sunday, November 15 and a program on “Mapping Madness” by Ron Arons on Sunday, December 20.

The 30th annual International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies conference is set for July 11-16, 2010 in Los Angeles.  A  Web site is now established for the conference: www.jgsla2010.com .

The Sacramento Regional Family History Seminar will be held Saturday, November 7 from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the LDS Library on Eastern Avenue.

Member Allan Dolgow is not here today because he’s presenting his talk on his trip to the Ukraine to the Bay Area JGS.  Mort mentioned that his talk to us generated considerable e-mails interested in his presentation.

From Treasurer Allan Bonderoff, our current account  balance: $1,217.39.  Your dues allow us to buy selected books for our library, offer small travel honorariums to our speakers, and more.

 

October Program

Our speaker for October was Dr. Roy Ogus, whose topic was Jewish Genealogical Research in South Africa.

Roy is vice-president of the Southern African Jewish Genealogical SIG (Special Interest Group) on the JewishGen Web site.  He was born in South Africa and has lived in the Bay Area since the 1970s.  Note that it is the Southern African SIG he’s involved with, taking in more countries than just South Africa.

Roy said his parents were born in South Africa but his grandparents emigrated there from Lithuania around the turn of the 20th century.

He began his talk with an overview of South Africa, which is about three times the size of California.  The population is about 47.3 million.  There are three capitals, one each for the legislative (Cape Town), executive (Pretoria) and judicial branches (Bloemfontein).

Until about 1850, the economy of the country was largely based on livestock and crops.  However, in the late 1800s, diamonds and gold were discovered “and it completely changed the country,” Roy said. “Mining became the basis of the economy.”

In 1820 the first British settlers came to South Africa, about 150 years after the Dutch.  The British abolished slavery which made the farmers irate.

In 1910 the colonies became self-governing (Union of South Africa) but part of the British Empire.

In 1948 the Afrikaner party wins the general election and apartheid begins.

 

Jewish Migration to South Africa

Roy gave us an historical overview that began in about 1652 when Jews were among the Dutch settlers, but were forced to convert to Christianity.

In 1820, there were 16 Jews recorded among the British settlers, and in 1841, the first Jewish congregation in Cape Town was founded by the British Jews.  By 1880, there were about 4000 Jews in the country.

Then came “Wave 1” of the Jewish migration, Roy said.  Between 1880 and 1910, a large number came from Lithuania.  The push to emigrate came from pogroms, catastrophes while the pull was the financial opportunity.

Then a chain reaction helped -- with family members already there, more emigrated from Lithuania.  By 1911, there were 47,000 Jews, mostly Lithuanians, in South Africa.

Why Lithuanians?  There was easy access to shipping companies, who had already set up trips for Cornish miners. Lithuanians had access to all-weather ports such as Libau. Some of the Lithuanians basically tried to recreate their shtetls in South Africa.

According to records of the Poor Jews Temporary Shelter in London, 40 percent of their clientele went to Africa, and of that 40 percent, 90 percent were from Lithuania.

“Wave 2” of emigration to South Africa occurred in the 1920s. And before the Holocaust, about 8,000 Jews from Germany came to South Africa.

From 1970-1992 there was the opposite trend, and an exodus of Jews leaving South Africa, many for political reasons.  The current Jewish population is about 72,000 and is pretty homogenous, Roy said, predominantly Lithuanian.  “It’s overwhelmingly Ashkenazi, with a low level of intermarriage.”  About 80 percent are Orthodox, with a Jewish Board of Deputies overseeing the congregations.

Southern African SIG on JewishGen: Roy is the vice-president of the SIG and said this site should be the first step for someone doing research.  There is a discussion forum and a newsletter as well as Web pages.

Other sources of genealogical information include the South African National Archives, with many records kept in the provincial archives.  “I’ve never visited the archives in South Africa but put together my complete family history,” Roy said.

There is also the South African Office of Registrar of Births, Marriages and Deaths, the Master of the Supreme Court, and “a wealth of records” on microfilm in the LDS Library.

For Jewish South African records, the Kaplan Center for Jewish Migration and Genealogical Studies at the University of Cape Town has a Jewish Rootsbank database. The South African Board of Deputies has burial records and there are 2-3 Jewish Genealogy historical socieites.

Estate documents -- Roy said these are valuable documents, “they can be unbelievably rich in information.”

He said census documents do not exist in South Africa-- they are routinely destroyed. “It’s one of the few countries in the world that without census documents.”

Roy showed some of the documents he has been able to gather, including naturalization and estate documents.  He also had a “complaint” document by one of his relatives against his landlord.  “It’s not genealogical but it does show the texture of their lives,” he said.

In order to obtain information from some agencies, such as the Registrar of Births, Marriages, and Deaths, “it’s a Catch-22 -- you almost need all the information from the recrod to get the record,” he said.

In terms of death certificates vs. death notices, he said the death notices have more information.

Roy wrote a paper on the LDS records for South Africa which include relevant film numbers and information on estate documents up to 1950, death certificates and burial information. The article will soon be posted on the Southern Africa SIG.

Roy can be reached by e-mail at r_ogus@...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

From the JGS of the Conejo Valley (Ventura County) newsletter:

Vintage New York  --   An excellent compilation of vintage photos of New York City dating back to the late 19th century can be found at http://tinyurl.com/ygh9r5d.  Expect to find an uncommon blend of artistic photography, traditional snapshots and historical perspective.

From Family Tree Magazine  -- Family Tree Magazine has compiled the 10 best genealogy websites in each of 10 different categories –and one more for good luck. See if you agree at http://tinyurl.com/yhnk9b7

101 Best Web Sites 2009

By David A. Fryxell  9/30/2009

If our ancestors had swung down from the trees with six fingers on each hand, we'd probably be counting by dozens. But thanks to humanity's development of 10 fingers and 10 toes, we count things in 10s, group the years in decades and celebrate anniversaries ending in 0—such as this 10th annual  installment of Family Tree Magazine's 101 Best Web Sites.

 What's the one Web resource in a class by itself? Ancestry.com $$, of course. What can we say? With its ever-expanding collection of databases and globe-spanning country-specific sites, Ancestry.com comes the closest to realizing the dream of doing real genealogy online—not just finding a few clues, but tracing your ancestors in primary sources. The complete US census, indexed, searchable and linked to images, is only the beginning here. An annual membership is $155.40 for US collections only, or $299.40 for the World Deluxe membership.

10 Best Web Sites to See Dead People

Use these sites to find obituaries, cemeteries and other traces of your departed ancestors.

10 Best Web Sites for Vital Records

These are the best searchable databases of vital records from health departments, historical societies and state archives.

10 Best Web Sites for Storing and Sharing

Sharing your family history just got easier with these Web sites that let you create a family tree, store pictures and more.

10 Best Big Web Sites

You're sure to find information about your family in these stellar genealogy Web sites.

10 Best Web Sites for Maps

Trace your family's paths, find your ancestors' homes and explore the old country.

10 Best Web Sites for Local Searches

You can thank your lucky stars if your ancestors resided in the areas these Web sites cover.

10 Best Web Sites for International Searches

Tracking down immigrant ancestors has never been easier.

10 Best Cutting-edge Web Sites

Stay informed about the latest technology for genealogists with these sites.

10 Best Web Sites for Military Research

Find ancestors who served their country in these databases.

10 Best Virtual Library Web Sites

Powerful search tools let you explore great library collections in the comfort of your own home.

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Scientist works with stem cells during day, solves Jewish genealogy riddles in spare time

 

Dr. Karl Skorecki works on the cutting edge of molecular science, revolutionizing medicine through genetics and the use of stem cells to test anti-cancer therapies.

But as a sideline, the former University of Toronto professor has become world famous for applying genetics to genealogy and transforming history. He has found evidence to support traditional claims that modern-day Jewish priests, Cohanim, are descended from a single common male ancestor - biblically said to be Aaron, the older brother of Moses.

Among the other intriguing findings he has uncovered: that 40% of Ashkenazi Jews can trace their descent to four "founding mothers" who lived in Europe 1,000 years ago, evidence that all Jewish communities share a common paternal origin in the Near East, and genetic evidence supporting claims southern Africa's Lemba tribe may be Africa's "Black Jews."

"It began as a hobby, but it took on a life of its own," Dr. Skorecki says. "I didn't think anyone would really be that interested. I'm a nephrologist and a physician but I've always been interested in the genetic predisposition to disease."

Fifteen years ago, as he attended Shabbat services at his Toronto synagogue, Dr. Skorecki says his mind wandered during the reading of the Torah.

"A Cohen [Jewish priest] of North African, Sephardic, non-Ashkanazi origin was called up to read the Torah and it just got me to thinking what we have in common," he says.

"I myself am also a Cohen, but of recent European ancestry. It struck me as interesting that, on one hand, our paternal genealogies have been geographically separated for at least a thousand years. Yet, on the other hand, we share a Biblical oral tradition of common male ancestry dating back more than 100 generations."

According to tradition, the status of priest (Cohen) was conferred on Aaron and his sons, and has been passed on from father to son ever since the Exodus from Egypt.

As he sat in his Toronto synagogue, Dr. Skorecki says, "I realized if that were true, then it was a scientific hypothesis that was testable."

He reasoned the Cohanim should all have a common set of genetic markers at a higher frequency than the general Jewish population. After consulting Dr. Michael Hammer, a geneticist at the University of Arizona and a pioneer in studying the Y chromosome, the two men developed an experiment to test his thesis.

Besides determining maleness, the Y chromosome consists almost entirely of non-coding DNA, which is passed from father to son without recombination. Therefore the genetic information on a Y chromosome of a man living today is basically the same as that of his ancient male ancestors, with rare mutations that occur along hereditary lines.

By tracking those neutral mutations or genetic markers scientists can come up with the genetic signature of a man's male ancestry.

Dr. Skorecki's test found an array of six common chromosomal markers in 97 of the 106 Cohens he tested. Calculations based on variations of the mutations rooted the men's shared ancestry 106 generations in the past - 3,300 years ago, or the approximate time of Exodus.

He also discovered the common set of genetic markers in both Ashkenazi (European) and Sephardic (North African) Cohens, indicating they shared the same ancestry before their communities were separated more than 1,000 years ago.

"It's amazing," Dr. Skorecki says. "It's like an archeological finding. But instead of digging up in the sand, we dig in contemporary DNA."

His findings triggered a storm of interest in Jewish genealogy and the application of DNA analysis to the study of history.

The only child of Holocaust survivors, Dr. Skorecki was born and raised in Toronto. He took his medical degree at the University of Toronto, where he taught for 11 years before moving to Israel in 1995.

He is now director of the Rappaport Family Institute for Research in Medical Sciences and a researcher at the Rambam-Technion University Medical Center in Haifa, Israel's largest medical centre. After moving to Israel, Dr. Skorecki continued to dabble in genetic genealogy and conducted studies that suggest there is genetic evidence to support a common paternal origin for all Jewish communities.

In yet another study, Dr. Skorecki discovered an unusual genetic signature, thought to have originated in Central Asia, in more than half the Levites of Ashkenazi descent.

"They seem to be the descendants of one man who lived about 1,000 years ago somewhere between the Caspian and the Black Sea," he says. "Whether his ancestors originated there or he migrated from the Near East is unclear. We can't tell. But that is also the time and location of the mythical Khazar kingdom."

Dr. Skorecki says one of the most surprising discoveries of his genetic analysis of Jewish genealogy involves claims by the Lemba tribe of southern Africa to have Jewish origins.

The Bantu-speaking tribe of roughly 70,000, now mostly Christians, are spread across South Africa, Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe. But the tribe's oral history claims Jewish ancestry, saying their founding fathers were Jews, led by a man named "Buba" who sailed to East Africa.

Unlike any of their surrounding neighbours, the Lemba observe many Jewish traditions, such as kosher-like dietary restrictions and slaughter practices, male circumcision and one holy day a week.

"Most historians were skeptical," Dr. Skorecki says. "But the genetic evidence is one of the most surprising stories we've encountered.

It is not clear whether the genetic origin was Jewish or Arab or a mixture. But a strikingly high number of Lemba males also carry the same genetic signature markers Dr. Skorecki discovered in modern-day Jewish Cohanim.

More remains to be done, but Dr. Skorecki is convinced genetic research is a powerful tool for historical study.

"It's not perfect. It's not physics. But it is not less reliable than lets say fossil records, archaeology, liturgy or oral histories," he says. "In the larger context it adds further insight."

National Post/ pgoodspeed@...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

 

Jewish Genealogical Society of Sacramento

Sunday, November 15, 2009, 10 a.m.  Albert Einstein Residence Center.

“My Grandmother’s Suitcase: Unpacking Generations of Secrecy”

 

Jim Van Buskirk of the Bay Area will be the November speaker. Shortly after publishing an essay exploring his mysterious lifelong attraction to Judaism, Jim was told a secret by his mother: “You are Jewish.”  She showed him his grandmother’s suitcase filled with photos, letters and documents.  Jim continued to look for answers to his family’s history.  His audio-visual presentation is adapted from his memoir-in-progress.

 

After working as program manager of the Hormel Gay and Lesbian Center at the San Francisco Public Library for 15 years, Jim is currently Book Group Coordinator at the Jewish Community Library. Jim's essays have been featured in various books, newspapers, magazines, radio broadcasts and Web sites and he is working on a full-length manuscript of his family memoir.  Jim has co-authored "Gay by the Bay: A History of Queer Culture in the San Francisco Bay Area" and "Celluloid San Francisco: The Film Lover¹s Guide to Bay Area Movie Locations." 

 

Join us next Sunday to hear Jim's presentation.
 

 

From the Nov. 1 Avotaynu E-Zine by Gary Mokotoff

Arthur Kurzweil To Be “Genealogist in Residence” at Annual Conference
Arthur Kurzweil, author of the pioneering book on getting started in Jewish genealogy, From Generation to Generation, has been designated “Genealogist in Residence” for the 30th annual International Conference on Jewish Genealogy to be held in July 2010 in Los Angeles. Kurzweil will give two hands-on workshops, “Climbing Your Jewish Family Tree” and “Holocaust Research: How and Why to Locate Information about What Happened to Your Family during the Holocaust.” He is an amateur magician and will perform his show “Searching for God in a Magic Shop.”

You can sign up for the Los Angeles conference newsletter at http://www.jgsla2010.com/about/sign-up-for-the-announcements-newsletter/. There is also a conference blog at http://www.jgsla2010.com/blog/2009/10/conference-firsts-from-iajgs-2010-conference-central/.

 
Trip to the Candy Store – Reflections by Gary Mokotoff

I just returned from my annual trip to the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, the place I affectionately call the “candy store” because of all the genealogical goodies that are in the Library. This year, researchers in the group came from Australia, Canada, United States and Venezuela. The most significant discovery was by a regular on these trips, Ignacio Sternberg of Caracas, who found his parents’ marriage record in the Jewish records of Chernowitz (now Chernevtsy, Ukraine).

For those readers familiar with the Library, they have replaced their microfilm printers with a computer network based system that uses scanners. Images can now be saved directly to a flash drive or printed. Copying to a flash drive is free and printed copies of the documents cost only five cents (10 cents for 11x14 copies). Previously they cost 23 cents. A 2GB flash drive can be purchased at the Library for only $9.00. The network system also supports printing from the Internet be it genealogically relevant material, e-mail or boarding passes.

David Lebovitz of Chicago, another veteran of the annual trips made by Eileen Polakoff and me each October, shared with the attendees the advantages of keyword searches using Ancestry.com. Some of the data fields provided by Ancestry results are not part of the search parameters. Using the keyword option causes any data field for the keyword. Lebovitz used it to search the U.S. Immigration Collection to locate any immigrant from one of his ancestral towns.

 

I took advantage of the Footnote.com site to copy naturalization records for a number of people in my family history. Rather than print them, I copied them to a flash drive (and backed up the data on the laptop I brought along). For someone who claims his “genealogy is done,” I came home with 37 documents, mostly from Footnote.com.

Next year’s trip will be from October 14–21, 2010. Eileen Polakoff and I act as consultants, lecturers and social event planners. Additional information about the trip can be found at http://www.avotaynu.com/slctrip.htm.

----------------------------------

 

See you next Sunday the 15th!

You won't want to miss Jim Van Buskirk's personal story, "My Grandmother's Suitcase," that is our program this Sunday.

 

Join us at 10 a.m. on November 15th at the Albert Einstein Residence Center.  It's also a chance to take advantage of our extensive genealogy library.

December 6, 2009

 

Upcoming Meetings:

Sunday, Dec. 20, 10 a.m. – Ron Arons, “Mapping Madness”

Sunday, Jan. 17, 10 a.m. – Joann Weiser, “Everyone Has a Story”

Sunday, Feb. 21, 10 a.m. – Victoria Fisch, “Jews of the Gold Rush”

 

Dues are Due

Treasurer Allan Bonderoff has e-mailed a notice for 2010 dues.  The $25 per year helps us purchase new books, assist with speakers, provide the Einstein Center a Chanukah gift each year, and more.  You can bring your check to the next meeting or mail it to Allan Bonderoff, 1935 Wright Street, #116, Sacramento, CA 95825. Any additional sums donated are always appreciated.

Magnes Museum Archives Closure

 

Bob Wascou advises us hat that the collections of the Magnes Museum, including the archives of the Western Jewish History Center, will be closed to researchers starting January 1, 2010 due to the imminent move of the Magnes collections to the University of California at Berkeley. Reference and other collection services will resume in 2011, once the Magnes relocates to its new facility near UC Berkeley Campus.

 

Reference desk hours are by appointment only.  http://www.magnes.org/

 

Sacramento Spring Genealogy Seminar

Now’s the time to save the date for the Root Cellar –Sacramento Genealogical Society Spring Seminar.   It will be held on Saturday, March 27, 2010;

The annual event will feature Daniel M. Lynch, author of “Google Your Family Tree.”  He will discuss techniques for using Google to conduct effective family history research.

The Spring Seminar will be held from 9 a.m. to  3:45pm at the Fair Oaks Presbyterian Church, 11427 Fair Oaks Blvd., Fair Oaks, CA.  Check the Root Cellar website www.rootcellar.com for registration details and updates. Contact Sammie Hudgens at 916-481-4930 or e-mail samihud@....  This event is open to the public.
 
Visiting the National Archives in D.C.?
If you’re planning a trip to Washington D.C. and visiting The National Archives, there is a new online reservation system, to make it easier to visit the National Archives. The convenience fee for online reservations is $1.50 per person.  While reservations are not required to visit the National Archives and admission is free, this new system will eliminate the long lines and often lengthy wait. By going online, visitors can reserve their choice of dates and times.

 

Reservations will be handled through the National Recreation Reservation Service (NRRS). Visitors to the National Archives Experience can make reservations online http://tinyurl.com/d4by4o from the NRRS Web site at www.recreation.gov. Reservations can also be made through the NRRS Call Center: 1-877-444- 6777.

 

Meeting Notes – November 15, 2009

President Mort Rumberg called the meeting to order.  He mentioned that he had attended the recent meeting of the Genealogical and Historical Society of the Sacramento Valley, and they had passed out a CD with all the genealogy books in the Sacramento Library. They offer free genealogy classes and also have a speakers’ bureau.

Bob Wascou noted that all the headstones at the Home of Peace Cemetery in Sacramento have now been photographed, thanks to help from Carl Miller, Mark Heckman, Burt Hecht and Mort Rumberg.  Bob said they found an original plot book and beginning minutes from the cemetery from 1924.

November Speaker

Our speaker for the meeting was Jim Van Buskirk of San Francisco, discussing “My Grandmother’s Suitcase.”

Jim said his grandmother, Georgette Simon, was an opera singer in France in the late 1920s and 1930s.  She met her an American doughboy during World War I, Theodore Burns, who later became her husband. It was not a happy marriage but they had a little girl, Anne Marie,who Theodore took at age six to the United States in 1933.  He ended up with the girl in Los Angeles.  In 1945, after the war, Georgette went to the U.S. and found Theodore and her daughter.  Jim remembers his grandmother, Georgette, and especially a large ring she promised him.

In October 2000, Jim, who had been estranged from his mother, heard from his brother that she wasn’t doing well, so he went up to Seattle to see her.  “My mother said I have something to tell you – ‘you are Jewish.’”

His mother said there was a document somewhere with the name Bernstein. 

Jim said he had written an essay a few years before entitled “At the Museum of Jewish Heritage.” And he had just published an article on “Identity Envy” about the Jewish faith.

He was having brunch with his mother when she said “I have your grandmother’s suitcase.  The next day we went through it,” Jim said. “I envisioned an old suitcase maybe with stickers from places around the world – it turned out to be a piece of Samsonite.”

In the suitcase were documents, photos, contracts and letters, including letters from a young child to her mother.  His mother said there was also a document in another suitcase or trunk somewhere mentioning the word “Israelite.”

Jim said when he got home he attended a Jewish genealogy seminar by Judy Baston in San Francisco, and Judy helped him get started with his research.  He found a World War I draft registration card for his grandfather, Theodore Burns, which listed both Burns and Bernstein on it.  It also listed his place of birth in Russia.

“My mother then started doling out cousins – one side had not changed its name and were Jewish.”  One cousin sent a photo and family tree.

“I sent away for four siblings’ applications for Social Security – all had different names for their parents and different places of birth,” Jim said.

Theodore’s brother turned out to be president of a synagogue in Beverly Hills, but was introduced at the time as his lawyer.

Then Jim found a 1906 ship’s manifest for a Bernstein family and five children arriving in New York, noting they were going to meet a J. Bernstein in New York.

Jim said he read Arthur Kurzweil’s book, “From Generation to Generation,” talking about Jewish genealogy as a spiritual pilgrimage.  “I realized that was what I was on.  Kurzweil said the most important thing was to interview people while they were still able to tell the story.  So I told my mom I was coming up to visit with a tape recorder.”

“She said it was fine for her to tell me the stories, but she didn’t want to be identified as Jewish,” Jim said. “It turns out she was sworn to secrecy by an aunt by marriage.”

Jim ultimately was able to convince his mother to talk with him, noting how he had come out to his mother years earlier as a gay man.

“I was estatic with this new-found heritage,” Jim said.  “It confirmed the feelings I had had.”

He threw a party for himself – “a combination 55^th birthday/retirement/bris/bar mitzvah – my acknowledgement to my friends of my Jewish heritage.”

After his mother passed away, Jim cleaned out her apartment but never found the suitcase with the “Israelite” document

On a trip to New York, he did find a Jennie Bernstein – his grandmother -- through his research, and ultimately, her gravestone.

Jim joined a Jewish congregation in San Francisco and is in the process of writing his memoir.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~

 

This article first appeared in the October, 2009 issue of “Family Gatherings, Newsletter of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Broward County, Inc.” It is reprinted with their permission and that of the author, Ed Kritzler.

 

COLUMBUS’ ISLAND: JAMAICA FOR THE JEWS

By Ed Kritzler

 

Google “Christopher Columbus” and you find more than three million entries. Thousands of towns and cities bear his name. Yet, the wayward sailor, honored this week on the anniversary of his discovery of a New World, remains a mysterious figure. Italy, Spain and Portugal each claim his birthright, and much about him is debated. However, beyond dispute is a previously unreported relationship involving the Great Explorer and his family, and the Jews of Jamaica. From 1536 to 1655 (when England conquered Jamaica), the island was ruled by Columbus’ family who provided a haven for Iberian Jews on the run from the Inquisition.

 

Columbus’ close relationship with Jews began before his voyage of discovery. It was in the spring of 1492. Columbus was meeting with King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. They agreed to sponsor his voyage but balked at his demand for hereditary rights to any land he might discover.Columbus, disheartened, was leaving the royal quarters when the king's financial advisor Luis de Santangel caught up with him. “Hold firm to your demand” he urged the explorer, explaining that he would try to get the royal couple to reverse their decision.

 

Santangel, a covert Jew, knew what was at stake. As the king’s counselor, he was aware that soon, town criers throughout Spain would proclaim the Expulsion Order of the Inquisition that mandated all Jews under penalty of death must leave. If Santangel could persuade the royal couple to accede to the explorer’s demand, Columbus, as ruler of a new land, would be in a position to provide a haven for banished brethren.

 

Granted an audience, the counselor addressed the monarchs. Columbus’ demand should not trouble them, he said. He and his crew could not possibly subdue one of the powerful Asian nations. However, if he was allowed to rule over a few islands he captured in the course of his  voyage, Spain would gain strategic way-stations for her trading ships plying the shortcut passage to Asia. Ferdinand relented, and Columbus set sail, having gained hereditary rights over any newly discovered lands – to be “enjoyed forever by his heirs.”

 

With Santangel (not Isabella’s jewels) paying for the voyage, Columbus – on the same day that Jews were expelled from Spain – set sail with a hidden agenda. Along with his stated goal to gain the riches of the East, he hoped to acquire a land where Sephardi could live free from the Inquisition. It was not to be. He never reached Asia. Nor did he secure hereditary rule over any land in his lifetime. However, his promise to provide a homeland for covert Jews was kept by his family in the one “new land” the Crown eventually ceded his heirs – the island of Jamaica.

 

It’s been theorized that Columbus’ pledge to Santangel was reinforced in 1504, when,

marooned on Jamaica for one year, he rewarded the young sailors who, led by his brother Bartholomew, defeated a mutinous uprising by older members of his crew. One may ask the reasons for the youths’ allegiance. First, they had a fiscal interest in the voyage, as their fathers helped finance it. Second, their families, being wealthy conversos (Jews who converted to the Catholic faith), were suspect and therefore targeted by the Inquisition. To keep their sons safe, Columbus agreed to take them along.

 

While the Jewish boys may have looked to Columbus as their Moses (as he himself did), Jamaica was no Promised Land. Still, after leading underground lives in Spain, a year’s idyll on a tropical island was likely no hardship. How much their support played in fulfilling Columbus’ early promise to Santangel cannot be quantified. When rescued from Jamaica, Columbus and his crew were first taken to Hispaniola before departing for Spain. But the young Jews, rather than go back to the dreaded Land of the Inquisition, remained in Hispaniola and in 1509 returned to Jamaica as the island’s first settlers.

 

For more than a century, Columbus’ heirs kept Jamaica – alone in the Spanish Empire

off-limits to the tentacles of the Holy Inquisition that had spread over the New World. As far as Jamaica’s proprietors were concerned, as long as their Jewish settlers wore a Christian mask, no one in power might question the sincerity of their religious beliefs. Protected by the Columbus family, Jamaica’s Jews posed as New Christians from Portugal (known as Portugals), the only category of settlers that did not require proof of Catholic ancestry.

 

 The family in partnership with Jewish traders and merchants ran Jamaica as a major smuggling port. This was revealed in 1568 when the Crown accused the current heir, Don Luis Colon, of “blocking an investigation into charges [he] used his private jurisdiction on Jamaica to cover illegal trade.” This violated Spain’s trade policy that required all goods to and from the New World to go via Seville.

 

Given that the Columbus family owned every inch of the island, Jamaica attracted few

Spanish settlers. No matter how prosperous they were, Spanish ranchers were little more than legalized squatters. To gain title to their estates, they needed the king to reclaim the island. Their means was the Inquisition. If they could expose Jamaica as a heretic island, it would give the Crown a reason to oust the Columbus family. In 1654, the opportunity arose when a Dutch ship carrying Jewish and Calvinist refugees from Brazil (after Portugal re-conquered the colony), was blown off course and forced to land in Jamaica. Local hidalgos thereupon invited Inquisitors from Columbia to investigate these “suspect heretics.” Jamaica’s covert Jews, fearing the inquiry could lead to their own exposure, sent a note to Oliver Cromwell’s agent: Jamaica could be conquered

with little resistance, and pledged their assistance.

 

The following year, a Jewish pilot led 36 English ships into the harbor, and two local

Portugals negotiated the treaty that surrendered the island. The Spanish were exiled, and Cromwell invited the Portugals to stay on as openly practicing Jews. Welcomed by the English, covert Jews throughout the New World shed their Christian cloaks and immigrated to Jamaica.

 

Until the 19th century, when its role as sanctuary was supplanted by the land of the free and home of the brave, Columbus’ island served as the principal haven for Jews in the New World.

 

In September, America’s Jews celebrated their New Year in freedom, thanks in part to the Discoverer and his family’s mitzvah in providing a sanctuary in Jamaica for Jews on the run from the Inquisition.

 

Author's note: Ed Kritzler, author “Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean” (Doubleday 2008), lives in Jamaica where he researched the island’s extraordinary Jewish history. He may be contacted asedkritzler@...

 

See you at our next meeting, Sunday morning, Dec. 20.

Jewish Genealogical Society of Sacramento

Sunday, December 20, 2009, 10 a.m.

Albert Einstein Residence Center, 1935 Wright Street, Sacramento

“Mapping Madness” with Ron Arons

Ron Arons returns to discuss Web sites offering historical maps for genealogical research and review the basics of both Google and Microsoft’s map sites. He’ll also talk about other online mapping sites such as whitepages.com, MapCruncher, IBM’s Many Eyes, and more.

Come hear the program at 10 a.m., Sunday, December 20 at the Albert Einstein Residence Center, 1935 Wright Street, Sacramento. All are welcome to attend and to use the JGSS library collection. For more information about the JGSS, visit www.jgss.org, e-mail the JGSS at jgs_sacramento@... or leave a message at 916-486-0906 ext. 361.

 

And Mort Rumberg passes on the news that the Web site of the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies can now be read in numerous languages:

El web de IAJGS se puede leer ahora en muchos idiomas
IAJGS Website kan nu worden gelezen in vele talen
IAJGS site peut être lu aujourd'hui dans de nombreuses langues
Honlap IAJGS olvasható most már több nyelven
Il sito d'IAJGS può essere letto oggi in molte lingue
IAJGS site web poate fi citit în prezent în mai multe limbi
DO WE NEED TO SAY MORE?
Now the IAJGS Website can be read in many languages:
Hebrew, Spanish, German, Bulgarian, Russian,
Hungarian, Italian, Danish, Dutch, Norwegian,
Turkish, Rumanian, Portuguese and many more.
Check the list of languages on the IAJGS homepage
and if you think we need another one, just let me know.

See you next Sunday.

 

Ron Arons is back to discuss Web sites offering historical maps for genealogical research and review the basics of both Google and Microsoft’s map sites. He’ll also talk about other online mapping sites such as whitepages.com, MapCruncher, IBM’s Many Eyes, and more.

Come hear the program at 10 a.m., Sunday, December 20 at the Albert Einstein Residence Center, 1935 Wright Street, Sacramento.

And why not bring your 2010 dues check ($25) this Sunday, or mail it in to Allan Bonderoff if you can't attend.

 

January 1, 2010

 

Upcoming Meetings:

 

Sunday, January 17, 10 a.m. – Joann Weiser, “Everyone Has a Story”

 

Sunday, February 21, 10 a.m. -- Victoria Fisch, “Jews of the Gold Rush – Who Knew?”

 

Sunday, March 21, 10 a.m. -- Liz Igra, “Connections Small and Grand: A Better Understanding of the Holocaust”

 

 

Notes from December 20, 2009 Meeting

 

President Mort Rumberg called the meeting to order.  He mentioned that Avotaynu is publishing the second edition of Sephardic Genealogy.

 

Information on the 2010 international conference, to be held in Los Angeles July 11-16, is available at www.jgsla2010.com.  Several of our members have already indicated they plan to attend and hotel reservations can now be made.

 

If you have not yet paid your dues for 2010, the $25 check can be given to treasurer Allan Bonderoff at the next meeting, or sent to him c/o the Albert Einstein Residence Center, 1935 Wright Street #116, Sacramento, CA 95825.  The dues help us buy books for our library, provide travel expenses and small honorariums to our speakers, and more.  Any additional sums you may wish to donate are always appreciated.

 

Allan advises us that as of December 20, we have $1,214.39 in our account.

 

December Speaker

 

Our December program featured Ron Arons of Oakland, speaking about “Mapping Madness.”  He presented a similar talk at the 2009 Philadelphia conference.

 

Ron talked about historical map collections as well as online mapping sites.  For historical maps, the New York Public Library has a large digital collection – check out http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/index.cfm .  There is also the David Rumsey Collection – www.davidrumsery.com.  The University of Texas has a map collection as well as the Library of Congress.  For eastern European maps, www. Feefhs.org., also Avotaynu (www.avotaynu.com).

 

Ron says www.HistoricMapworks.com has wonderful maps, but charges about $30/year.  For British historical maps, try www.alangodfreymaps.co.uk.  Also check out Cyndi’s List for maps as well.

 

Online mapping sites include Google’s map site  (www.maps.google.com )

 as well as images – www.images.google.com.  Microsoft has www.bing.com/maps.  “Each has its advantage,” Ron says.

 

With Microsoft (and a Microsoft account), you can put up to 10 pushpins in various locations simultaneously (to show cities or locations of relatives); the Google world allows you to do more.

 

Microsoft also has a bird’s-eye view feature allowing you to see in four directions from a particular location. 

 

Microsoft has drawing tools built in where you can construct your own map, then send the url to people.

 

Ron notes that with Google maps, if will tell you which side of the street has odd numbers, which has even.  Google has 3-D maps of buildings and also street views of various cities in the U.S. and Europe.

 

Ron said he happened to be in Sonoma when the Google mapping car was taking photographs, and was able to get into a photo, which he showed us.

 

 

 

With www.panaramio.com, this is a Google site where you can upload photos and videos of different locations.

 

Ron did a Microsoft vs. Google test for eastern European maps, involving Suwalki, Poland.  His conclusion? You really have to use both.

 

Ron also pointed out Steve Morse’s one-step tools for various maps at www.stevemorse.org.

 

Other mapping tools include Microsoft Map Cruncher, which will put two maps together, superimposing the old on the new.  Also www.names.whitepages.com  and www.Muckety.com will do maps related to surnames (whitepages) and relationships among individuals (muckety), tying people of interest together.

 

And there’s even www.madoffmap.com, for those who want to see a searchable map of the 8,000 victims of  Madoff.  (Ron also showed us a Google image of his former penthouse in Manhattan.  Don’t forget, Ron is the author of “The Jews of Sing Sing.”)

 

IBM’s Many Eyes – http://manyeyes.alphaworks.ibm.com/manyeyes/ -- you need an IBM account for this and the data you upload is not private.

 

Other sites to check out:  www.ancestralatlas.com, a service which allows bulk loading/mapping of multiple locations, and www.earth.google.com, which offers Google Spreadsheet Mapper.

 

Want U-2 reconnaissance photos? Type in the National Archives site (NARA) for College Park, MD and then German aerial reconnaissance photos.  The photos are expensive, $50-75, and you have to have the coordinates of the town you’re looking for.

 

There are several sites dealing with Sanborn maps (cities mapped by Sanborn), including www.proquest.com, www.lib.berkeley.edu/EART/snb-intr.html, for libraries with Sanborn map collections, and a site for ordering Sanborn maps, which Ron says are quite expensive: www.edrnet.com/sanborn/htm.

 

-------------------

 

 

A recent travel article in the Washington Post focused on Kiev – here’s the link:

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/24/AR2009122401974.html?wpisrc=nl_travel

Visiting Kiev, the capital of Ukraine and a cradle of Russian culture

 

--------------------

 

See you Sunday, January 17.

Sunday, January 17, 2010, 10 a.m.

Jewish Genealogical Society of Sacramento

 

“Everyone Has a Story to Tell…”

 

Joann Weiser will focus on the importance of preserving stories of family members and ancestors. Memories not recorded are soon forgotten. How often have you heard someone say, “I wish I would have asked my mother or father more about their lives?”

 

Joann is originally from Sacramento, where she met her Israeli husband while earning a teaching credential at CSUS. They moved to Israel, where they spent 28 years before returning to this area. The idea of becoming a personal historian came about on one of her visits back to Israel, where preserving the personal histories of Holocaust survivors and Israeli pioneers has become a national priority.

 

Joann is a member of the Association of Personal Historians and helps people write their life stories.

 

 

Sacramento Regional Family History Center Classes

Sacramento Regional Family History Center, located at 2745 Eastern  Ave., sponsors FREE public classes on Wednesday evenings from  7p.m. to 8 p.m. To register for a class sign-up in the Family History Center or call 916 487-2090.

  
January 20 – Genetic Genealogy – Jim Rader
 
January 20 – New Family Search-Part 2 – Elder & Sister Judd
 
January 27 – Godfrey Library – Valerie Tice
 
January 27 – New Family Search-Part 3 – Elder & Sister Judd.

 

9 million visitors log on to Irish census online

 

(Note – while most of us aren’t in need of Irish census data, we have to feel for those who are – see last paragraph.)

 

By  Antoinette Kelly, IrishCentral.com Staff Writer    Published Monday, January 11, 2010, 12:33 PM

 

A whopping 9 million people have visited Ireland's online census since it was launched in 2007, and there have been 1.39 million new visits to the site since August alone when all 32 counties were added to the database. There were 200,000 visitors alone to the 1911 census website last November. The largest number of international visitors came from Britain (90,000) followed by the U.S. (22,000), Europe (10,500), Canada (10,000) and Australia (8,500).

Indeed, the National Archives say that that in comparison, there were only a couple of hundred visits to the physical archive when it was stored offline in Dublin.

The 1911 census website is free to visitors and was a joint project with Canada's National Library that cost €4m ($5.8m). The Canadians are world leaders in digitization.

Crowe said the project was great value given the numbers of records they were able to get online. And she said it would be a huge boost for future tourism in Ireland. "We're collaborating with Tourism Ireland to try to encourage roots tourism, so that people will come to visit the country of their ancestors," she said.

The Archives will make the 1901 census records freely available on the site this year.

However, these are the only surviving full censuses open to the public.  The records from 1821, 1931, 1844 and 1851 were lost in the destruction of the Four Courts in Dublin during the Civil War.  And, incredibly, British authorities destroyed the census records of 1861, 1871, 1881 and 1891 because they believed there were other copies available.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

See You Sunday Morning!

 

 

 

 

January 31, 2010

Upcoming Meetings

Sunday, February 21, 10 a.m. – Victoria Fisch, Jews of the Gold Rush – Who Knew?

Sunday, March 21, 10 a.m. – Liz Igra, Connections Small and Grand – Reflections from a Holocaust Survivor

Sunday, April 18, 10 a.m. – Daniel Horowitz, Facial Recognition Technology for Genealogy

 

January 17 Meeting Notes

President Mort Rumberg called the meeting to order and welcomed members and guests. He noted that new members will receive a copy of the “Introduction to Jewish Genealogy” book, as well as all the other benefits of membership.  For continuing members, the $25 annual dues are due.

Coming attractions:  Upcoming meetings will include our own Victoria Fisch February 21, on Jews of the Gold Rush, Liz Igra on March 21 on her experience as a Holocaust survivor, Dan Horowitz on April 18 on facial recognition technology, and on May 16, Leslie Nye on handwriting analysis.

Mort passed around information about classes being held at the Sacramento Central Library during January and February, including a January 24 class by Glenda Lloyd.

The Nevada City genealogy group is holding programs on January 26 on Web sites and February 23 on the upcoming census.   And the Family History Center on Eastern Avenue in Sacramento is holding classes on Wednesday evenings through March.

Dave Reingold noted that the Sacramento County History Day is coming up and judges are needed to spend about a half a day reviewing student programs. Call Myron Piper at 916-868-1049 if you might be interested.

 From 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on February 6 will be the county’s annual Museum Day, with free admission.    See www.sacramentomuseum.org . And Dave also passes on the Web site for the Sacramento County Historical Society: www.sachistoricalsociety.org.

Bob Wascou said he is looking for photographs or other information on Sacramento burial plots going back to the 1800s.  Contact him if you know of someone who might have something to share on burials prior to the establishment of the Home of Peace Cemetery.

Treasurer Allan Bonderoff reported a checking account balance of $1,414.39 after a providing a $50 honorarium to December speaker Ron Arons.  Your dues go to help us pay for speakers, books for our library, and more.

January Program -- “Everyone Has a Story to Tell”

Our January speaker was Joann Weiser, who was born in Oakland in 1948, on Israel’s Independence Day.  At age 5 she moved to Sacramento, where she grew up and attended school.  She attended college at U.C. Berkeley and earned a degree in American History.  Unsure of what to pursue next, she talked to a rabbi at B’nai Israel who linked her up with a program in Israel.

“I spent a year in a kibbutz, and fell in love with Israel,” Joann said.  She returned home and began a teaching credential program at Sacramento State, where she met the head of an Israeli organization.  Two years later, she had married him and moved to Israel, where she and her husband raised a family and remained for 28 years.

They are now back in the Sacramento area, where her mother, Dorothy Novack, still lives.

“Everyone Has a Story to Tell” is the name of Joann’s business, which focuses on the importance of memories.  “If we don’t know where we came from and who we came from, how do we know where we’re going in the future,” she asks.

In Israel, Joann noticed the surge in personal histories being done.   There was considerable interest in interviewing Holocaust survivors after Steven Spielberg set up his foundation. Then, in the last decade, there was an effort to interview many of the early pioneers of Israel.

Joann started with her mother (who was on hand at the meeting) but has since completed 7 or 8 books.

“We start with a family tree -- there’s always someone who’s been collecting family information.:”

Joann has subsequently become a member of the Association of Personal Historians, which has about 600 members across the country.  “Most got involved by wanting to do their own family history.”

She said family stories are very personal but also reflect a time or place in history.

About her mother’s book, she said her children were unaware of a lot it, and there was of characteristics brought out that they’d like to share or emulate.

“And for many books people say --‘oh, we didn’t put that in the book,’ so there’ll be a second edition.

Joann said her mother-in-law was one of the last living members of her generation, and she knew if she didn’t start telling stories, they would never be told. The mother-in-law was born in Frankfurt and had been a dancer.  Most of the family left Germany in 1936 to link up with an uncle in the United States, but she decided to go by herself to Israel.

 

Joann also did a book for Joe Schwartz of Sacramento.  The request came from his children.  While it was hoped to have the book ready for Joe’s 80th birthday, it took longer than expected to complete, about two years in all.

In the book, Joann touches upon Joe’s family in Helena, Montana, coming to Sacramento when he was three years old, to later in life when he and his wife, Harriette, took their children and grandchildren on a trip for their 50th anniversary. 

“I think one of the biggest gifts in this book,” Joann said, ”was recounting many of the family traditions for Yom Kippur, Chanukah, seders, etc.”

“At the end of the book, there is a place to reflect back -- Joe talks about the technological changes he’s seen in his life.”

What is the process Joann uses?  Here is her basis approach:

1)Taped interviews

2) Word-by-word transcription (for every interview hour, about 4-5 hours to transcribe)

3) Edit material into flowing text (the most laborious part)

4) Make corrections, additions, changes

5) Choose pictures, letters, documents

6) Design book

7) Add family tree and dedication

8) Coordinate book printings

9) Delivery of family heirloom books   

                                                                                                                               The books are written in a first-person narrative, so the person is telling his own story.  “It’s your book; I’m just an instrument for you.”

Among the areas Joann asks about in her interviews are:

Childhood memories, parents and siblings, school days, college, marriage, profession, becoming a father or mother, significant people, hobbies and passions, becoming a grandparent, losing a spouse, reflecting on life.                

In terms of reflections, things to ask about include the legacy the person wants to leave behind, hopes and dreams, lessons learned, accomplishments, values, life then and now, what you wish for your children, the way you’d like to be remembered.

Joann said the benefits of telling your story include sharing your thoughts and feelings, connecting the generations through a common thread, a positive emotional experience for the storyteller, enabling children and grandchildren to identify with family members from the past, capturing and giving life to a period of history that children and grandchildren never knew, and showing appreciation and telling someone how much you love them.

“It’s an opportunity to preserve your family heritage and give a lasting gift to your family.”

Joann added that “it’s not a confessional -- you don’t want to leave a bomb.  You have to be sensitive and discreet.

The best classroom in the world is at the feet of an elderly person.

-- Andy Rooney

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

Kimberly's Genealogy Blog  By Kimberly Powell, About.com Guide to Genealogy

Two New iPhone Genealogy Apps

Tuesday January 26, 2010

This month two nifty new genealogy apps have made their way onto my iPhone, which I thought some of you might find interesting.

The first is a great app for iPhone / iPod Touch users of Ancestry.com Family Trees. The free new Ancestry.com Tree to Go iPhone app offers up a lighter version of your family tree that you can easily access on the go. You can search or browse your family tree while at the library, easily add a new tombstone photo right after you take it at the cemetery, or add interview notes directly to your tree as you talk to your relatives.

You can't begin a new Family Tree via the Ancestry.com Tree to Go app (at least not yet), but you can actually scroll through your existing trees a bit easier than is offered online. The navigation is different than what you're used to online (no more pedigree view for example) due to the need for streamlining for the iPhone. You also can't yet search Ancestry.com databases and upload your finds to your tree through the app (thought that will hopefully be available in the future). But even with these limitations, I love the new Ancestry.com Tree to Go app. Download it now for free in the iTunes store and let me know what you think.

The second is an iPhone / iTouch app for Lisa Louise Cooke's Genealogy Gems Podcast which streams her free genealogy audio and video content on the go (a nice feature for genealogists like me who are always on the go!), and also offers exclusive Bonus Content. The app streams all Genealogy Gems podcast episodes, which cover everything from research strategies to celebrity and family history expert interviews; new episodes are downloaded automatically. While Genealogy Gems podcasts are free online, the new Genealogy Gems app is available for $2.99 from the iTunes Store with exclusive bonus content such as custom genealogy themed wallpaper as well as Cooke's 20 page e-book, 5 Fabulous Google Research Strategies for the Family Historian. More bonus content will be released with future episodes.

Comments  January 26, 2010 at 2:58 pm

Maureen says:

REUNION (Mac Genealogy program) also has an app for the iphone. This may have already been mentioned in previous discussions. The app has been ‘out’ for about a year.

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From the January 18th and 31st Avotaynu E-zines

Online Information about 10,000 European Jewish Cemeteries
An organization, Lo Tishkach Foundation, has developed an online database of more than 10,000 Jewish cemeteries located throughout Europe. It also includes information about mass burial sites in Eastern Europe. Many entries included pictures of the cemetery as it exists today.

The current inventory by country is: Austria (66 cemeteries), Belarus (298), Bosnia and Herzegovina (28), Bulgaria (31), Croatia (82), Czech Republic (419), Denmark (16), Estonia (28), Finland (4), France (263), Germany (2401), Greece (31), Hungary (1313), Ireland (3), Italy (66), Kosovo (1), Latvia (169), Lithuania ( 417), Luxembourg (5), Macedonia (5), Malta (4), Moldova (41), The Netherlands (244), Norway (2), Poland (1453), Portugal (13), Romania (870), Serbia (103), Slovakia (415), Slovenia (8), Spain (26), Sweden (6), Switzerland (28), Turkey (50), Ukraine 1666), United Kingdom (196)

The site is located at http://www.lo-tishkach.org/. Touch the “Database” tab to open a pull-down menu with the option to search the database. The Search tab on the home page is used to search the web site, not the database.

The Lo Tishkach European Jewish Cemeteries Initiative was established in 2006 as a joint project of the Conference of European Rabbis and the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany. It aims to guarantee the effective and lasting preservation and protection of Jewish cemeteries and mass graves throughout the European continent. Lo Tishkach is Hebrew for “do not forget.”


Register Now for the 30th IAJGS International Conference on Jewish Genealogy
Registration is now open for the 30th IAJGS International Conference on Jewish Genealogy being held at the newly built JW Marriott Hotel Los Angeles at L.A. LIVE from July 11–16, 2010. The Jewish Genealogical Society of Los Angeles is the host. Full registration prior to May 1 is $265 with spouse/partner an additional $150. There are also discounts for full-time students or those 18 or younger. It is also possible to register on a daily basis.

Register at https://www.goeshow.com/jgsla/IAJGS/2010/Registration.cfm. The complete schedule of rates including the cost for late registration can be found at http://www.goeshow.com/jgsla/IAJGS/2010/Registration_Pricing.cfm.

The conference is the premier event of the year for Jewish genealogy. It is anticipated that more than 1000 people will attend to hear presentations by renowned scholars, archivists and research specialists from around the world. The conference will offer films, methodology workshops, evening musical and dramatic performances, and opportunities to network and schmooze with a friendly, global community of Jewish genealogists. The resource room will be staffed by representatives from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Shoah Foundation, Steven Spielberg Visual History Archive, Jewish Genealogy Learning Center in Warsaw and Yad Vashem, providing attendees with one-on-one assistance with their research.

There are also lunches and dinners sponsored by Special Interest Groups (SIGs), Breakfast-with-the-Experts, Midnight with the Mavens, computer lab and tours of the Los Angeles area.

A description of the conference hotel with a link to hotel reservations can be found at http://www.jgsla2010.com/hotel-los-angeles/the-marriott-at-l-a-live/.  The conference has an e-mail newsletter. Subscribe to it at http://www.lyris.jewishgen.org/listmanager. Login required.


Mount Olives Cemetery Graves to be Indexed
The graves at the world’s oldest Jewish cemetery—that on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem—are in the process of being indexed and placed on the Internet at http://www.mountofolives.co.il/eng/. Approximately 20,000 of the estimated 200–300,000 graves have been indexed to date. For notable people, there is biographical information. There is an option for anyone to upload data and photographs for a given person.

Further information about the project can be found at http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=166478


Germany Relaxes Access to Civil Registration Records
It was reported on the JewishGen German SIG Discussion Group that the German Standesamt (civil registration offices) have relaxed restrictions on access to post-1875 civil registration birth, marriage and death certificates. Previously laws restricted information to spouses, direct-line ancestors and direct-line descendants. Now exempt from these restrictions are records of births through 1898, marriages through 1928 and deaths through 1978. Additional information indicated that access to information will increase by one year every year. That is, birth records available after 110 years, marriage after 80 years and deaths after 30 years. After these time periods, records will be transferred from the local civil registration office to the local archives. It was also reported that it is now possible to obtain extracts of genealogical information or uncertified photocopies of these documents.


RTR Foundation Now Has Databases (searchable by family name) and Photos
One site I  (Gary Mokotoff) visit regularly is the Routes to Routes Foundation at http://rtrfoundation.org. The site has the most complete inventory of Jewish record holdings in the archives of Belarus, Lithuania, Moldova, Poland and Ukraine. If not identified at the RTRF site, the Jewish vital records (birth/marriage/death/divorce) likely do not exist. The Archive Database also includes inventories of other types of documents including census records and family lists; recruit lists; lists of voters, taxpayers, merchants and school records; Holocaust records (lists of victims and survivors); immigration/migration records; land and property records; name changes; pogrom records; local government records (such as wills, notary records, etc.).

To search for records of a particular town, click on “Archive Database” on the home page and then click on “Archive Documents.” Type the name of the town of interest, and the next screen will display of the types of Jewish and civil records available for that town, which archive has the records, years available and archive file. There are no actual surnames in this search result, but rather an inventory of the surviving documents.

Genealogyindexer.org
Beginning in 2005, Logan Kleinwaks has placed digitized and indexed Eastern European directories on his Internet site. This started with ten business and phone directories for Galicia, Poland, Posen and Romania and now has grown to more than 100 databases. He has placed them all on their own site: http://genealogyindexer.org. They include directories from Bulgaria, France, Israel, Lithuania, Poland, Galicia, Silesia, Pomerania, Posen, Romania, Carpathian Ruthenia, South America and United Kingdom. A complete list can be found by clicking the word “Directories” at the upper left portion of the home page.

Also at the site are 64 digitized and indexed yizkor books and lists of Polish military officers.

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See you at the next meeting, February 21…

At 8 p.m. Wednesday evening, Feb. 10, on Channel 6/PBS – “Faces of America,” the first segment in a four-part series exploring family history and DNA of 12 famous Americans.  The series is hosted by Dr. Henry Louis Gates.

 

One of the celebrities to be featured is director Mike Nichols, who was born in Germany and has both German Jewish and Russian Jewish roots.  Nichols, like the others, takes a DNA test as part of the genealogical explorations.

Sunday, February 21, 2010, 10 a.m.

Jewish Genealogical Society of Sacramento

 

This presentation is an overview of the Jewish presence in the Gold Country from 1850 to 1900.  Our very own Victoria Fisch will discuss the geography of the Mother Lode, and events in central Europe and California that coincided with the discovery of gold in 1849. She will explain how Jewish immigrants traveled here, where they settled, and describe their unique experience in this region.

 

While Victoria grew up in New York City, her mother told her tales of her childhood in San Francisco. In 1978 Victoria moved to the Bay Area, and began her to fill in the puzzle of her Western relatives. For the last 20 years she has undertaken genealogical projects for friends and clients, including supplying documentation to furnish proof of Jewish ancestry for aliyah.  In early 2009, Avotaynu, a Jewish genealogical publisher, asked Victoria to write a chapter on Sacramento Jewry for a U.S. sourcebook. This led to a fascination with the history of the Jewish merchant pioneers of the Gold Rush and a desire to make their story widely known.

 

The program is set for 10 a.m., Sunday, February 21, at the Albert Einstein Residence Center, 1935 Wright Street, Sacramento. All are welcome to attend and to use the JGSS library collection. For more information about the JGSS, visit www.jgss.org, e-mail the JGSS at jgs_sacramento@... or leave a message at 916-486-0906 ext. 361.

 

March 1, 2010

 

Upcoming genealogy-related TV programs this week:

Wednesday, March 3, 8 p.m., Channel 6 (PBS), last segment of “Faces of America” with Dr. Henry Louis Gates.

Friday, March 5, 8 p.m., Channel 3 (NBC) -- “Who do you think you are?” 

Follow the heartwarming journeys of Sarah Jessica Parker, Emmitt Smith, Lisa Kudrow, Matthew Broderick, Brooke Shields, Susan Sarandon and Spike Lee as they embark on a journey to discover the story of their ancestors. From Salem witches to French royalty to former slaves, the stories they uncover hold fascinating twists and turns that are at times touching, at times heartwrenching and always revelatory. Who Do You Think You Are? also shares ideas and research strategies that could help you make new breakthroughs — and help people understand what they can discover about their own families.

 

Upcoming JGSS Meetings:

Sunday, March 21, 10 a.m. – Holocaust Survivor Liz Igra

Sunday, April 18, 10 a.m. –Facial Recognition Technology, Daniel Horowitz

Sunday, May 16, 10 a.m. ­­-- Handwriting Analysis, Leslie Nye

 

 

Notes from February 21, 2010 Meeting

President Mort Rumberg called the meeting to order and introduced a new member. Welcome to Suzanne Donachie, who is researching Chicago relatives.

Mort mentioned that the Einstein Center is broadcasting live programs from New York City’s 92nd Street Y.  The lectures and a buffet dinner are $25.  For more information, call 972-9555.

Upcoming meetings -- on March 21, we have Liz Igra, a Holocaust survivor; on April 18, Daniel Horowitz, talking about facial recognition software; on May 16, Leslie Nye will talk about handwriting analysis; on June 21, the president of Sacramento’s Root Cellar will talk about “Research out of the Box;” on August 8 (date change), Aaron Joos of Antwerp will talk about “One Foot in America,” a talk he will have given at the July conference; and on October 17, Dale Friedman will present an introduction to Jewish genealogy.

Bob Wascou noted that a recent story in the Bee highlighted “Dr. Bob” La Perriere, who gives historical tours of the old city cemetery.  Our Bob said he will be doing some research at the cemetery, which is associated with the Center for Sacramento History.

Root Cellar/Sacramento Genealogical Society is holding its spring seminar Saturday, March 27 from 9 a.m. to 3:45 p.m.  The featured speaker will be Daniel M. Lynch, author of "Google Your Family Tree". He will conduct four sessions:

1--Introduction to Google for Genealogists
2--Using Google for Genealogy Research
3--Google News Archive, Google News Timelines and Google Alerts
4--Google Images, Video and other Tools for Genealogists

A registration form and more details about the seminar are available at www.rootcellar.org.  Space is limited so don’t delay if you’re interested in attending.

Treasurer Allan Bonderoff reports that we have $1,556.20 in our checking account as of February 21.

 

February Speaker, Victoria Fisch -- Jews of the Gold Rush -- Who Knew?

Victoria presented a historical overview of pioneer Jewish merchants in Northern California.  She has prepared a chapter for an upcoming publication by Avotaynu.

“On Passover we ask four questions -- today I have five,” she says.  “Why did Jews come; where did they come from and where did they go; when did they come; what did they do; and who were they.

Here is some of what Victoria mentioned in her presentation.

Why did they come and where did they come from?

In 1848, it was the year of the revolutions in Europe. 

There were1848 reforms in Prussia, but they resulted in a big backlash, with anti-Jewish riots.  The Jews in Bohemia and Moravia formed militias for protection.

Earlier in France, in 1830, the government took over control of the rabbis and Jewish institutions.  There were riots in Alsace in eastern France and some Jews crossed the border to the other side of the Rhine.

From 1845-1871, the number of Jewish emigrants, not including those in the Austro-Hungarian empire, totaled about 110,000.  About half were from Prussia, the next largest group from Bavaria.

1871 was the Franco-Prussian war which had an impact as well.

Why did they come to California?

The California Gold Rush:  In 1848, President James Polk mentions the gold in his State of the Union speech.  Within two months, there were no sailing vessels left on the eastern seaboard.

How did they get here?

Victoria says there were several methods of travel. The first was ships.  New Orleans was the 2nd largest port of entry during the Gold Rush, after New York.   By land, there were both northern and southern routes of travel to California.

To get to California, ships could go around the horn, requiring an extended journey, or go through the isthmus of Panama, with cholera prevalent at the time.  Victoria read an account of the Panama travel, involving mules, malaria, cholera and heat.

Arrivals at the port of San Francisco in 1848 totaled 98.  In 1849, it jumped to 500, and in 1850, to 12,000.

Because the fares for steamships, stagecoaches, etc. were expensive, it weeded out those who made the trip.  “You had to have money to get here.”

When did they come to California?

Beginning with the gold strikes, Victoria extends the Gold Rush period to the beginning of the 20th century.

What did Jewish immigrants do?

They were merchants, something they were well-equipped to do, Victoria says, given their experience with agrarian economies.  They were able to do the same in California.

The first established merchants were in big cities; then, it was typical to send single male relatives to outposts and camps.

Victoria says the tax records for 1862-65 were filled with Jewish names.

The Jewish experience in the Gold Rush -- Victoria says it was very unique -- different than for those who came in the 1880s and 1890s to eastern cities.

Because there were new mining towns, it was an open, integrated situation for Jews -- the pioneer environment enabled them to participate as equals.

Victoria cited Robert Levinson and his doctoral thesis, “The Jews of the California Gold Rush,” which we have in our library.  Levinson notes that longtime Jewish residents could not recall incidents of anti-semitism.  “The acceptance of Jewish citizens extended to newspaper accounts,” Victoria says, “and the papers always published the dates and times of high holiday services.”

Victoria also noted that there was more assimilation with the Jews in California versus those back east.  “There was freedom to intermarry -- something not seen on the eastern seaboard.”

I.J. Benjamin, a Moravian traveler, authored “Three Years in America,” writing about his visits to the gold fields.  He encouraged Jews to buy land and purchase cemeteries.

Victoria provided a handout on the pioneer Jewish cemeteries (some of which the Sacramento JGS has visited and worked in over the years).  She says there are eight Jewish cemeteries in the Gold Country, along with one in Sacramento, three in Stockton.  Some are still in use.

“I think the most beautiful one if the one in Sonora,” Victoria says.  There is one in Oroville, maintained by the city, and six under the direction of a Magnes Museum commission.

Yolo County -- in 1891 a Woodland Burial Society was formed, with the last interment in 1939.

A handout was distributed on cemeteries in Sacramento, Stockton and the Gold County.  Victoria also provided information on Gold Rush synagogues, congregations and benevolent societies.

Jews were also enthusiastic participants in fraternal organizations – the Masons, Odd Fellows, etc., Victoria says.

Victoria showed a wedding guest list for nuptials held in San Francisco -- there were 85 guests from throughout Northern California and beyond.

“The other answer to what did the Jews do -- merchant’s fortunes were based on mine’s successes.  Some merchants stayed in a particular area, others left.”

After 1879, only a handful of Jews remained in the Gold Rush areas -- most had moved to the port areas.

Who were they?

Albert Abraham Michelson was the first American to win the Nobel prize in physics (focusing on the measure of velocity of light).

In the 1850s he lived in Murphys in Calaveras County, then moved to Virginia City.  He had gone to hi

gh school in San Francisco and then to West Point.

Philip Charles (P.C.) Cohn -- He had a business in New York then came west with his father for the Fraser gold strike in British Columbia (1862).  By 1863, he came back to Sacramento and started a mercantile store.  In 1904 P.C. was a California delegate to the Democratic convention and elected senator from Sacramento from 1913-16.

He purchased 60 acres in Orangevale, 240 acres in El Dorado County and seven acres in the Tahoe area.  After he died in 1928, a park in Folsom was named after him.  “Bob Wascou e-mailed me his funeral record ... currently his headstone is missing.”

Victoria says as more and more databases are put onto Ancestry, she’s getting more and more hits, for naturalization records, passport applications and more.  “I believe in exploiting Ancestry to the max,” she says.

Victoria notes you can put in just the first three letters of a name, followed by an asterisk; you can do first-name only searches, and no-name searches, putting in dates or states.

Victoria cites a few books of interest:

-- The Age of Revolution -- “very readable.”

-- Pioneer Jewish Cemeteries

-- Businesses of Jews in Louisiana

-- The Jewish Settlement in Sacramento (Wyatt, 1987)

-- Ava Kahn’s book -- Jewish Voices of the California Gold Rush -- “very dense.”

“My perception is that with most of the books,” she says, “your head will spin.  I don’t believe there is a book out there that gives you a comprehensive picture of the Jews of the Gold Rush.”

Victoria brought many of the books she researched  to her presentation; several are part of our JGSS library.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

From the JGS of the Conejo Valley (Ventura County) newsletter:

NARA MOVES TO PERRIS 

As of March 1, the National Archives and Records Administration facility previously located in Laguna Niguel has moved to Perris in Riverside County.  The move is being made for cost-savings to the federal government.  The address for the new regional archive is:

National Archives at Riverside

23123 Cajalco Road

Perris, CA 92570

 

COLLECTIONS OF JEWISH CULTURE

 

Ten institutions across Europe have joined forces to provide online access to their Jewish culture collections. The joint project, called "Judaica Europeana," is part of an effort to digitize

many of Europe's cultural resources. The European Commission provided a major grant for

Judaica Europeana. The first phase of this project can be visited at www.judaica-europeana.eu.

 

From the Orlando Sentinel:

Daughter discovers a genealogy gold mine in father's letters

Joanie Schirm talks about her father's collection of letters and documents. Since her father Dr. Oswald A. Holzer's death in 2000, she has amassed an extensive collection of his World War II-era letters, documenting the impact of the Nazi regime on his life. (Joe Burbank, Orlando Sentinel / February 15, 2010)

 

In the upstairs rec room of her home on Lake Concord, Joanie Schirm has spread her father's life over a leather-sheathed pool table. Curled black-and-white photographs spill from overstuffed envelopes. There's a stack of home movie canisters, plastic filing boxes with hanging folders of documents, and thick binders with letters written in Czech 70 years ago.

Her father, Oswald Holzer, a Jewish physician, deserted the Czechoslovakian Army in 1939 as Nazi Germany overtook the country and conscripted the army. He ended up in China where, eight days after they met, he married Ruth Alice Lequear on Sept. 20, 1940.

Nearly 60 years later, when Oswald and Ruth died within three days of each other, Schirm and her siblings discovered 534 documents dating back to 1885 and including 392 letters written to her father by 78 different people during World War II.

"It was a great gift to me," she said. "My sense is that it was meant for me to do this. It was meant for me to free all these voices."

Schirm is 61, a solid gold member of the Baby Boom generation that is spurring a resurgence of interest in ancestry and genealogy. Two new television shows are devoted to people digging up their past. The popular on-line genealogy website Ancestry.com has an estimated 850,000 paid subscribers.

"We Baby Boomers are getting to the place in our lives where this craze for genealogy is going to get bigger and bigger," said Schirm, who owned a successful engineering firm and was instrumental in bringing World Cup soccer to Orlando in 1994. "My message is to do it while you can. There are so many questions I wish I could ask my parents."

Schirm will share what she has learned from exploring her father's life at a talk on genealogical research Tuesday at the Congregation of Reform Judaism in Orlando.

Some of what she discovered includes:

•44 of her ancestors, including her paternal grandparents, perished in the Holocaust.

•Czech is a hard language to learn.

•The Czech tailor who made her father's Army riding britches hanging on the wall of the rec room was executed in 1942 for his role in the assassination of Reinhard Heydrick, the Nazi overlord of Czechoslovakia who came up with the plan to create extermination camps as the "final solution to the Jewish problem."

The letters, the documents, the photographs and movies her father left behind are a genealogist's dream — a rare opportunity for Schirm to travel back in time and crawl inside her father's mind. Because Holzer kept carbon copies of the letters he wrote, she can read conversations between him, his friends and relatives that took place decades before her birth.

The letter that means the most to Schirm was discovered eight years after her father's death on the bottom shelf of a cabinet he made that stored his children's board games.

It was the last letter written to Oswald from his father, Arnost Holzer. It was dated April 21, 1942 — three days before Arnost and his wife were sent by the Nazis to the Czechoslovakian ghetto and from there to their death at an extermination camp.

Arnost's letter begins, "My dear boy," and says, "I am not certain whether I will see you ever again, so I decided to write these lines as my good bye to you." And then it offers this advice to his son, the doctor: "I wish for you to find full satisfaction in your profession. I also wish that your profession of curing doesn't just become a source of wealth for you, but that you yourself become a benefactor to the suffering humanity."

In those final words, Schirm said, she recognized the origins of her father's compassion for others and the stacks of billing receipts he left behind with the notation "NC" — no charge.

She has compiled her father's letters and her own research into a book she calls My Dear Boy: A Memoir by Joanie Schirm.

"My father would love this," Schirm said. "He was a great storyteller and in the end I'm telling his last story."

Schirm's talk on genealogical research takes place at 1 p.m., Tuesday at the Congregation of Reform Judaism, 928 Malone Dr., Orlando. Jeff Kunerth can be reached at jkunerth@... or 407-420-5392.

Copyright © 2010, Orlando Sentinel

-------------------------

See you Sunday, March 21.

For those of you who have not yet heard, we were saddened to learn that Bonnie Yates, the wife of Art Yates, has passed away.  Art is a long-time, active member of the JGSS, and one of our past presidents.

 

The funeral for Bonnie has been tentatively set for 1 p.m. this Friday at the Home of Peace Cemetery on Stockton Blvd, with Rabbi Matt Friedman expected to conduct the service.  An obituary will run Thursday or Friday in the Sacramento Bee.

 

We extend our deepest sympathy and condolences to Art and his family at this difficult time.

I have verified the list serve address

 took out a graphic, and resent, but neither the 1:31 p.m. mailing or the 3:23 mailing without graphic seem to have gone through.

 

Same address I used to send out the info. on Art Yates a few days ago, which went thru.

 

I know I've sent out longer stuff, so don't think it's the length...

 

Any ideas?

Sorry, this went thru, did not mean to cc everyone.  My previous info has not yet shown up.

 Jewish Genealogy Society of Sacramento

Sunday, March 21, 2010, 10 a.m.

Connections Small and Grand  -- Holocaust Survivor Liz Igra

Liz Igra is a Holocaust survivor born in Krakow, Poland.  After she and her mother escaped  from the Czorkow ghetto in October 1942, they hid on false papers, crossed the Carpathian Mountains on foot, spent some time in a Budapest jail and were released, only to go into hiding when Germany took complete control of Hungary.  Liz and her mother were liberated in 1945 and returned to Poland to find only one other member of their family alive.

After time in Poland and France, she and her mother immigrated to Australia in 1949. Liz was married there in 1956 and came with her family to the U.S. in 1968. Liz has been an elementary and high school teacher, administrator, workshop presenter, and helped start Shalom School in Sacramento. In the last twenty years she has been a guest speaker in many classrooms and teacher conferences. Many teachers confirmed her personal observations, that even the best seminars do not equip teachers to meet the challenges of teaching about the Holocaust.  So Liz founded the Central Valley Holocaust Educators' Network.
 
Liz hopes her story will lead to a better understanding of the Holocaust and the important lessons to be learned.

The March 21 meeting will be held at 10 a.m. at the Albert Einstein Residence Center, 1935 Wright St., Sacramento.

 

Another Holocaust-related speaker:

Schindler’s List Survivor to Speak in Vacaville Thursday

By Ian Thompson
March 5th, 2010   McNaughton Newspapers

Leon Leyson, the youngest survivor of Schindler's List, will speak in Vacaville about his escape from the Nazi death camps and life in the fragile sanctuary of Oskar Schindler's factory.

Leyson, 80, now a member of the Rodgers Center for Holocaust Education Advisory Board at Chapman University, will speak at 7 p.m. Thursday, March 18, at the Vacaville Performing Arts Theater, 1010 Ulatis Drive.

Leyson, then known as Leib Lejzon, was the youngest of five children whose parents lived in a town 150 miles northeast of Warsaw.

After the invasion of Poland in 1939, Leyson's family members were herded into the Krakow Ghetto. By 1941, his oldest brother had been killed, but his father and another brother were working in Schindler's factory near the ghetto.

Schindler's efforts to bribe and use his connections with Nazi officials to save as many Jews as possible from the death camps reunited the Leyson family.

In 1949, Leyson came to the United States, joined the U.S. Army to fight in the Korean War and then taught high school industrial arts for 39 years until he retired.

Leyson now talks to school groups, universities and community organizations about the Holocaust.

Tickets are $20 in advance or $25 at the door. To reserve a seat, call the theater at (707) 469-4013 or visit http://www.vpat.net.  . For more information, call (707) 592-5300 or visit http://JewishSolano.com

.

From the March 7 Avotaynu E-Zine by Gary Mokotoff

Conference Speakers
 While reading the article about the planned speakers for the annual International Conference on Jewish Genealogy which will be held this July in Los Angeles, I was amazed at how the conference planners now reach out beyond the Jewish genealogical community for lecturers. The list is an array of stars that includes:

Linda G. Levi, of the American Joint Distribution Committee, who will explain how the Joint’s archives is organized and describe how to conduct research there.

Renowned geneticist, Dr. Harry Ostrer, who will speak on “The Jewish HapMap: What Genetics Has Given to Jews and What Jews Have Given to Genetics” and other topics

Lisa Yavnai, Director of the Registry of Holocaust Survivors at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), will discuss the registry with a view towards the future. Megan Lewis and Jo-Ellyn Decker, also from USHMM, will discuss “Improving Your Research Experience at the USHMM.” They will also discuss how to use the records of the International Tracing Service at the museum.

Professor Vincent Cannato of the University of Massachusetts will talk about his book, American Passage: The History of Ellis Island, the first full history of America’s landmark port of entry.

Zvi Bernhardt, Deputy Director of the Hall of Names at Yad Vashem, will speak on “Using the Yad Vashem Database (of Shoah Victims’ Names) for Beginners.”


More country-specific lectures will be given by:
Wolf-Erich Eckstein, director of the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde of Vienna; Julius Muller, director of Toledot, the Jewish Family History Center in Prague; Dr. Egle Bendikaite, associate professor at the Vilnius Institute in Lithuania; and Yale Reisner of the Jewish Genealogy and Family Heritage Learning Center at the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw.

The keynote speaker, Daniel Mendelsohn, is author of The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million. Arthur Kurzweil is Scholar in Residence.

The program has not been posted yet but it is anticipated that about 150 lectures will be presented over the six-day period.

Oh yes, my (Gary Mokotoff’s) contribution to the lectures is “The Paternal History of Bernie Madoff.” About a year ago, as an intellectual exercise, I traced the notorious Madoff’s family history back to 1807 using the Internet. I then realized it is an excellent example of how to use census, naturalization and immigration records to trace one’s American ancestors, so it is now part of my regular lecture repertoire.

The conference is being held at the Marriott LIVE Hotel in Los Angeles from July 11–16, 2010. Additional information can be found at http://www.jgsla2010.com. To keep up to date about conference information, subscribe to the newsletter at http://www.jgsla2010.com/about/sign-up-for-the-announcements-newsletter/.


1930 U.S. Census Available Free of Charge on the Internet
Portions of the 1930 U.S. census are on the Internet free of charge at http://www.archive.org/details/1930_census. The records are unindexed and organized by enumeration district (ED) within state. To determine the correct enumeration district use the Stephen P. Morse “1900-1940 Census ED Finder” located at http://stevemorse.org/census/index.html. This requires that you know the street address where the person lived. The Morse site also requires the cross streets of the block where the person lived. Determine the cross streets using any online map site such as mapquest.com. The result is usually two EDs because often the opposite sides of a street are in separate EDs. Then browse through the ED pages to find the street address.


New Internet Sites and Updates:
More Canadian Newspapers Digitized by Google. Google News Archives now includes archived editions of the Montreal Gazette, Ottawa Citizen and the YMHA Beacon. The News Archives is located at http://news.google.com/archivesearch/advanced_search. It appears to include only newspapers from the U.S. and Canada for the period 1880 to about 2005.

1939 “Census” of England and Wales Available. In 1939, at the beginning of World War II, there was a National Registration of all persons living in England and Wales. The National Health Service Information Center is now making available this information for £42 per search. Data will only be released for those individuals who are deceased. Information about members of a household includes names, sex, age, occupation, profession, residence, marriage status, membership in the military or civil defense. Additional information about the project can be found at http://www.ic.nhs.uk/news-and-events/news/nhs-ic-launches-the-1939-register-service.

Ohio Obituary Index Online. More than 1.5 million Ohio obituaries, death and marriage notices are now online at http://www.rbhayes.org/hayes/index/. The time period is from 1810 to the present. It is only for selected counties and does not include the counties in which Cleveland and Cincinnati are located. The source of the data is newspaper notices.

Aerial Photographs of Lithuanian Cities. A link to aerial photographs of a large number of Lithuanian cities can be found at http://www.lithuania-photo.com/all-cities/. On the toolbar, click the rightmost icon to get a full-screen view of the photograph.
 

TV shows pique Americans' interest in genealogy

March 8th, 2010  By John Daley

SALT LAKE CITY -- An American pastime with deep roots in Utah is seeing an explosion in public interest. Two nationally televised programs are giving genealogy research the kind of profile not seen since the TV series "Roots."

For many people, the allure is irresistible. NBC's "Who Do You Think You Are?" takes famous Americans on a genealogical journey. For example, Sarah Jessica Parker's search led to ancestors at the Gold Rush and the Salem witch trials.

Likewise, the PBS show "Faces of America" chronicles scholar Henry Louis Gates following similar surprising treks through history.

Thanks to all the national attention, local organizations and companies say interest in genealogy is now at an all-time high.

Those shows have turned to Utah for research and access to vast genealogical records assembled by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints at the Family History Library, which is seeing a sharp uptick in visits, calls and hits on its website.

"Everything across the board is just rising, and we're seeing a huge surge in interest now that people can do more and more in their own homes," says David Rencher, chief genealogical officer for FamilySearch.

In the ‘70s, the TV series "Roots" created a national sensation. Since then, technology and science have utterly changed genealogy, providing spectacular amounts of information available on the Internet and new genetic tests not even possible a few years ago.

Utah companies and organizations, which helped lead the way, are now reaping the benefits. For instance, in the past week, Genetree.com has seen a 400 percent increase in contacts from potential customers.

"It's created new jobs, new opportunities for people who couldn't connect before. [They] can connect now," says Scott Woodward, chief scientific officer for GeneTree.com.

Ancestry.com, which helped NBC research "Who Do You Think You Are?", says the popularity of genealogy is being driven by the enhanced ability to find out details about your ancestors.

"That's one of the great things about doing your family history: It's like a puzzle. It's a mystery. You never know what you're going to find," says Mike Ward, spokesman for Ancestry.com.

You could call it a genealogy revolution. It's global, it's digital, and best of all it's personal.

"Who Do You Think You Are?" airs Fridays on KSL Channel 5 at 7 p.m. This week the program will follow a genealogical journey to surprising places for football legend Emmitt Smith.

Meantime, the National Genealogical Conference is coming to Salt Lake City in April. CLICK HERE for details.

E-mail: jdaley@...

 

Correction regarding recent notes on Victoria Fisch’s talk on Jews of the Gold Rush

It was P.C. Cohn’s father, Charles, not P.C. himself, who started a mercantile store in Sacramento. P.C. was left behind in Alabama, made his way to Mississippi, and then in 1872 finally got out here to be re-united with his sister and father.

In 1904 P.C. was a California delegate to the Democratic convention and elected senator from Sacramento from 1913-16.

~~~~~~~

See you next Sunday!