14 August 2006

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.

3 comments:

  1. Anonymous5:24 AM

    Thank you, Schelly, for mentioning my site on your blog. If you could, would you please correct the URL you have listed. You wrote www.museumfamilyhistory.com. It should be www.museumoffamilyhistory.com.
    Also you mention that I have over 1200 "cards" in my "Postcards from Home" exhibition. They are pre-war family photographs from Europe, not actual postcards.
    Thank you once again for the mention and keep up the good work.

    Best,
    Steve Lasky
    New York
    www.museumoffamilyhistory.com

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous7:03 AM

    Make that www.museumoffamilyhistory.com

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous8:48 AM

    Thanks for the URL update! Consider it changed.

    ReplyDelete