At the ICJG: The eyes have it

Four years ago, optometrist Steve Lasky got into genealogy when he found his grandparents’ old photos at his mother’s home.

Lasky conducted interviews with relatives and collected photographs with an eye to creating a Web site, which ended up as www.museumoffamilyhistory.com.

You have to appreciate your roots, he says. "Anything I can do to remind people of where they come from, is a mitzvah, a wonderful thing."

He is also doing extensive photographing of cemeteries: He’s photographed every plot associated with his grandparents’ shtetls, some 18,000 stones, and has more than 80,000 digital pictures in his database. He will look up names – he doesn’t ask for money for the service, but won’t refuse contributions either.

He’s currently working on Holocaust and Yiddish sections and Postcards from Home, with more than 1,200 photographs of pre-WWII vintage sent to him. He’s added names, indexed names and towns, added photographs of 150 New York-New Jersey Holocaust memorials, as well as some Eastern European countries. Additionally, he accepts copies of photographs from all over, thereby preserving Jewish heritage, restorations and images.

Contact him through his website for more information.