Philly 2009: Two new Polish programs

Philly 2009 program co-chair Mark Halpern has just announced that Kamila Klauzinska, a young Jewish Studies PhD candidate at Krakow's Jagiellonian University, will present two programs at the conference:

8.15am, Monday, August 3: "Preserving Memory and History - The Volunteers who Take Care of Jewish Cemeteries in Poland." She will speak about Poles like herself who work to preserve the rich history and culture of Polish Jews.

11.15am, Tuesday, August 4: "Strategies for the Integration of Genealogical Datasets." She will explain the research project to "virtually reconstitute" a Jewish community before it vanished in the Holocaust. Utilizing details about individuals listed in different databases relevant to a single town, her team develops algorithms/software to merge separate databases and progressively reconstruct family trees.

Klauzinska is a leader of the "Photographic Project in the Jewish Cemetery of Zdunska Wola." She received the 2005 Prize of the Ambassador of Israel in Poland for maintaining the Jewish cemetery, as well as a 2008 Gold Cross of Merit from the President of Poland for preservation of Jewish heritage in Poland. She is the Lodz province administrator for Warsaw's Museum of the History of Polish Jews.

Her PhD thesis has a Jewish genealogy focus and her conference appearance is part of her research.

See Klauzinka's work at the website of The Museum of the History of Polish Jews has a Virtual Shtetl Project, click here.

Also see the Zdunska Wola virtual shtetl here.

Look up your own Polish ancestral shtetl by clicking on "Towns" and using the alphabetical index.

Tracing the Tribe will see you at Philly 2009!