Galicia, Poland and "The Lost"

Join in a free genealogy day featuring major speakers at the Center for Jewish History, 15 W. 16th St., New York City, on Sunday, October 22, made possible by the cooperation of the CJH and the Jewish Genealogical Society (New York).

From 11.15 a.m., Gesher Galicia will hold its annual regional meeting, followed at 2 p.m. by the Jewish Genealogical Society (New York) meeting, featuring Daniel Mendelsohn, author of the critically-acclaimed The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million, followed by a book signing.

Tracing the Tribe covered Mendelsohn's first public event on his new book at the International Conference on Jewish Genealogy. See August 14's entry, "At the ICJG: Six of the Six Million."

Gesher Galicia’s sessions will include the latest updates by research coordinator Pamela Weisberger; Peter Jassem’s “Unusual Resources in Western Galicia” and “The Revival of Jewish Culture in Poland;” and Michael Berkowicz, with details of the Museum of the History of the Polish Jews, to open in Warsaw in 2008.

Mendelsohn’s book is an odyssey of his search for six relatives who disappeared during the Holocaust. Spurred by desperate letters sent to his grandfather in 1939, he began hunting for eyewitnesses to his relatives' fates in Bolechow, Ukraine, (formerly Galicia). The quest for truth becomes an investigation into the meaning of memory, family and history, and he’ll speak on the "writer's angle" in genealogical research and emotions when moving between past and present to solve a family mystery.

For more information, see the following websites: CJH, www.cjh.org; JGSNY, www.jgsny.org; and Gesher Galicia, www.jewishgen.org/galicia.