Montreal: A Baghdad Jewish family's history on film

Montreal filmmaker Joe Balass's unusual Mother's Day gift for his mother - a memoir of his Jewish family's history in Iraq - was featured in the Montreal Gazette.

These are times Valentine Balass would sooner forget, but it does provide her son with some fascinating, if not harrowing, insights into a previously dark chapter in his family's history.

Balass's documentary Baghdad Twist, opening Mother's Day at the NFB Cinema, will also be quite an eye-opener for others in the dark about life in one of the world's most troubled regions. Using vintage Super 8 footage and faded stills from the mid-1960s, Balass has his mother, off-camera, recount a hair-raising odyssey that brought their family to Montreal from Baghdad.

Making life much more dicey for the Balass clan in Baghdad was the fact they were Jewish. She recalls that the Jewish community of Iraq had been thriving up until the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. But what was once a community of 180,000 had dwindled down to 10,000 to 12,000 by the early 1950s, due in large part to a climate of accusations implying Iraq's Jews were traitors and, as a result, fear of arrest and worse among the Jews.

In the 1960s, the family tried to maintain "a sense of normalcy," depicted in wedding reception footage where guests are doing the twist. Following the 1967 Six Day War, Iraq's Jews were targeted with arrests, spying charges and public hangings.

Balass's dad was detained three times for no specific reason, but after he was let out on bail following the last arrest, Valentine was taking no chances. She took charge and made plans to bolt Baghdad quickly with her husband, three kids and other family members.

Leaving everything in their Baghdad home intact, so as not to arouse any suspicion, this group of 12 fled, at enormous risk, to the Kurdish north of Iraq. From there, they slipped into Iran, then made their way to Israel before ending up in Montreal in 1970 - with pretty much only the clothes on their backs.

The filmmaker was only 4 when they left Baghdad and has few recollections of Iraq.

"I was unaware of what my mother went through and all the pressure she was under," Balass says. "The whole transition she had undergone from a housewife and mother who was being taken care of to someone who had to take control of a situation and take care of a huge extended family in trying to escape Iraq.

"Those were particularly frightening times in Iraq. Saddam Hussein was just starting to make a name for himself then. It was an atmosphere of absolute terror for Jewish families. Our journey was dangerous enough, but if we had been caught ... ."

Read more here.

Montreal readers can see "Baghdad Twist" from Sunday through Tuesday May 11-May 13 at 7pm (English version) and at 8.30pm (French subtitles), at the NFB Cinema, 1564 St. Denis St. The English version will also be shown Wednesday and Thursday (May 14-15) at 7pm at CinemaSpace, Segal Centre, 5170 Côte Ste. Catherine Rd.

Montreal: Juicy tidbits of deli history

According to the Montreal Gazette, a search for a deli founder's history turns up some juicy tidbits from 100 years ago, including stories in the New York Times (1907) and Washington Post (1908)

The story is a fascinating read for anyone connected to Montreal's Jewish community, or for anyone who likes deli food!

Here's the history of Montreal delicatessens in numbers: 100 years, millions of sandwiches, at least a billion antacid tablets.

The latter two statistics are educated guesses. But because Annie Rees Roth went looking for the father she never knew, we know that the British American Delicatessen, Montreal's first, opened 100 years ago today.

The event was heralded by an advertisement in the Jewish Times. Under the assertion "I Am the Man" and beside a photo of the man himself - Lithuanian expatriate, by way of New York, Hyman Rees - the British American Deli opened its doors on May 9, 1908, promising "strictly fresh Smoked and Corned Beef of every description, which I receive daily from the N.Y. markets."

Sandwiches cost a nickel. And for the first time in Montreal, you could sit down and eat smoked meat on the premises.

Schwartz's would not open till 1927, but there were two earlier purveyors of the eastern European specialty: Aaron Sanft's butcher shop on Craig St. (now St. Antoine St.) and Chicago Hygienic Kosher Meats and Fancy Grocery, which, in 1904, advertised "lunches put up and delivered on short notice."

Roth, 86, has photos of the three-storey building where the deli was located on the main floor at 501 Main St, now St. Laurent Boulevard. The story recounts her "Father File" the results of research conducted with help of an internet-savvy neighbor named Rosalee Kovalsky. "Using cyberspace to shake the family tree has yielded a bountiful harvest - and surprises."

Her father arrived in New York from Lithuania at 14, obtained his US citizenship on Sept. 28, 1904 and opened a deli in New York a year later. Roth found a New York Times story in January 1907 of his arrest for not paying $6 a week alimony to his first wife. and quoted letters he wrote from jail:

"I thank you very much for the arrest from last week," he wrote. "You done me a good favour. I was very tired from fixing up the store and I needed the rest."

In 1908, the Washington Post interviewed the former wife, although Rees was already in Montreal arranging to bring in New York-style deli.

Read more here.

One family's journey: Riga, Dublin and Ohio

The Forward has a story about an Irish Jewish family - "A Diary Found, And a World Recovered" - by Sean Martin, associate curator of Jewish history at Western Reserve historical Society in Cleveland, Ohio.

The lilt of a Yiddish-Irish brogue is not heard often in northeastern Ohio. But thanks to the efforts of Eudice Landy Gilman, we can now connect Jewish Cleveland to the Emerald Isle.

Gilman, 91 — who remembers sitting on the porch of her family’s cottage in Chippewa Lake, Ohio, and listening to her grandmother’s stories about life in Ireland — recently resurrected an artifact from her family’s past, bringing those stories to a much wider audience. Gilman’s grandfather, Hyam (Hyman) Singer, a cantor who left Riga in 1888 and immigrated to Dublin, and then to Chicago in 1901, left behind a journal of writings in Yiddish and Hebrew. The poetry records his memories from Eastern Europe and his transition to life in Ireland. Gilman, a published writer herself, received the journal in the 1960s from her sister after their mother’s death, and she promised to find a translator.

The search was a long one. Local rabbis and scholars declined the challenge of translating the densely written Yiddish text. In a remarkable feat of genealogical tenacity, Gilman turned to family members for assistance and was referred to Pollack-Mniewski Research & Translation, co-run by Forward Association archivist Chana Pollack. Now self-published as “I Will Sing You a Verse,” the journal bears witness to Singer’s experiences as an immigrant Jew and serves as an educational tool for future generations encountering the challenges of immigration.

Gilman's grandfather wrote about tradition and modernity, sufferings of the Jews, and relatives’ weddings.

The Singer family was a part of the immigration that developed the Jewish community in Ireland from the 1880s to the early 1900s. Family lore describes life for the Singer family in Dublin as “one grand spree.” In Dublin, the family located itself in the heart of the Irish-Jewish community, across the street from the Walworth Road Synagogue, today the Irish Jewish Museum. Singer may have served as cantor for the Walworth Road Synagogue. A family photo of Singer in top hat and tails suggests the high style to which the family aspired.

A replica of the journal - the original is too fragile to exhibit - will be on display at the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage in Beachwood, Ohio.

Read the complete article and see photographs here.

Roots trip: Germany

Haaretz carried the second part of a roots trip to Germany by Avner Bernheimer, who wrote about his visit to Mainbernheim with his father.

The silver Mercedes that my father and I rented in Frankfurt passed through the city gate of Mainbernheim, a town surrounded by a wall and turrets, and stopped at the small, neat parking lot. Since we were hungry, we went to have lunch in a typical German restaurant on the main street of the Old City, whose roads are paved with cobblestones and are wide enough to accommodate a single truck filled with Jews, and maybe also a small boy running alongside and hurling stones at them.

A stout 79-year-old woman pianist played German country music to accompany the chewing sounds made by customers munching on white sausages, sauerkraut and kroketten. She only interrupted this divine pleasure when my father stood with a liter-glass of beer in his hand and asked her how old she was and if she knew the Bernheimer family that used to live in the city and left before they got old.

Olga first needed a sausage to calm down from the excitement that gripped her. Then she implored us not to move, rushed out of the restaurant in a flurry and disappeared somewhere among the chilly alleyways. A few minutes later, she returned with two women of about 50 - one was the wife of the mayor and the other was the wife of Mainbernheim's top Lutheran minister. They shook our hands warmly and informed us that we were coming with them for a tour of the city and the city hall, and joining them for dinner afterward. I tried to explain that we had come to Mainbernheim for two hours, that we were going to see my grandfather's house and then continue on our way to Baden-Baden for a sauna and massage, but they weren't about to brook any insubordination.

Bernheimer had written an email to the mayor in advance, asking if they could find archival material about their family, and that they would arrive the next month.

Perhaps I need to explain a little about the excitement that seized the town because of our arrival. It's important to note that this is a small place, with about 2,400 inhabitants, and the e-mail I sent to the mayor via the town's Web site was most likely one of a total of two e-mails they received that whole month. In my very polite communication, I wrote that my father and I would be pleased if they could find archival material for us about the family and that we would arrive for a visit sometime in the next month. I didn't even provide an exact date. I didn't expect that we'd have the Mainbernheim municipality hopping to attention in our honor, and put the Lutheran women from the Association for the Preservation of the Region's Jewish Heritage on high alert. But that's exactly what happened. They apologized that there were no Jews left in the region to preserve, but promised that the heritage was in good hands.

The minister's wife took them to see an old woman who had known his grandfather's family.

She told us that my great-grandfather Eliezer was the owner of a shop for designer (of course!) fabrics, very high-quality fabrics, and she described how he and his wife Elsa were terribly isolated when the non-Jewish residents of Mainbernheim were prohibited from greeting them on the street under orders from the Nazis, and how she and her twin sister, who were little girls, said hello to him one day on the street and he was so overcome with emotion that he wept. She told a few more stories and then she pulled out a picture of my great-grandfather as a young boy in a suit and cap, standing next to a horse-drawn cart. It was at that moment that I realized the trip had become serious.

The story covers a city hall visit with the chief archivist, a file documenting the family history since 1868 starting with Emilia who arrived with a baby - his great-grandfather Eliezer, but no other information on her, and they also visited Bernheimer's grandfather's house.

Read the complete article here.

DNA: Family Tree DNA newsletter

To keep up with the news at Family Tree DNA, subscribe to its Facts & Genes Newsletter. To read current and past issues, click here. The current issue - just received - includes the following:

Statistics

Family Tree DNA now has more than 125,000 records in the Y-DNA results database, more than 4,700 surname projects (some 75,000 surnames), and the mtDNA database has more than 66,000 results.

5th International Conference on Genetic Genealogy

The 5th International Conference on Genetic Genealogy for Family Tree DNA Group Administrators will take place in Houston, November 8-9, 2008.

It is open to genealogists from all over the world who currently manage group projects at Family Tree DNA and want to learn more about testing for genealogy and anthropology, and features leading experts and presentations on a variety of topics related to DNA testing for family history and deep ancestry.

I attended the conference in 2006 and was extremely impressed with the content, presenters and a growing number of genealogists who head various group projects focused on Jewish genealogy. Each year, the conference grows in size. While I couldn't make 2007, I am planning to attend 2008.

It is a superb way to learn more and network with others. If you've been planning to start a project, do it now so you'll be eligible to attend the November event.

New Y-DNA Haplogroup Tree

Family Tree DNA announced a change in haplogroup nomenclature, based on the latest research directed by Dr. Michael Hammer of the University of Arizona; recently published in a scientific paper in Genome Research. On May 5, Family Tree DNA implemented the updated Y chromosome haplogroup tree.

For more information, click here, and to see the new chart, click here. A full-color poster of the new tree can be ordered.

Starting a Surname Group Project

Are you thinking of starting a surname or other group project? Family Tree DNA offers resources and consultation, and offers tools and guidance to help make your project successful.

Find out if a project exists for your name by clicking here. If a project has not been established, contact the company to find out more.

Children of a vanished world

Roman Vishniac took thousands of photographs of shtetls and cities in Eastern Europe and their Jewish residents from 1935-1938.

Fifty of them will be on view in the "Children of a Vanished World" traveling exhibit at the National Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts, through August 31. The exhibit is curated by the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York.

Vishniac was on assignment for the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee to photograph poor Jews for a fund-raising effort.

He captured images of traditional Jewish life, children were a favorite topic, and all of this photographed before their world would change so dramatically.

As conditions deteriorated in Germany, Vishniac made plans to safeguard the photos. Some 2,000 negatives reached the US with the help of friends.

In May 1939, his daughter, Mara, was sent to Sweden where her mother and brother later joined her. During that time, Vishniac was in France and was detained in an internment camp for several months. Reunited in Lisbon, the family arrived in the US in 1940.

The pictures were published in the book "Children of a Vanished World" (University of California Press, 1999), which included Yiddish nursery rhyme translations, songs, poems and children’s games. It was co-edited by Vishniac's daughter, Mara Vishniac Kohn, and Miriam Hartman Flacks nine years after his death at 92 in New York City.

For more information, see the link above.

Remembering the forgotten despite roadblocks

As we go through boxes of old family photographs and records, we may find something unsettling. Trying to find information may be problematic.

In this New York Times story - "Trying to Flesh Out the History of a Family That Was Minus One" - one woman tries to trace an older brother.

More than 40 years ago, when she was a teenager, Jean Moore learned something quite by accident that haunts her still.

She was 16, her sister was three years older, and they were sifting through old photos and family memorabilia that their mother had left in an old trunk in an aunt’s attic, when they came across something startling. Mrs. Moore, 62, remembers it as an X-ray of an infant. Her sister remembers it as a birth certificate. Either way it seemed to be evidence of something hard to explain — an older brother neither knew they had.

They asked their aunt about it. Nervous and discomfited, she told them to ask their parents. They did, and the scene was even more awkward. Yes, their father told them, there had been an older brother. His name was Charles. He had not developed properly — mongoloid was the term the family doctor had used. The boy had been sent away to a home that cared for children like that. Her father said such children did not live long, and he was almost certainly dead already. Either way, he made it clear that there was nothing more to be said, and that this subject was not to be discussed again. What was done was done.

When she retired some years ago, Moore began thinking about this. She saw a story about Letchworth Village in Rockland County, NY whose residents were buried in unmarked graves.

Moore learned that without a court order or proof she was a parent or legal guardian there was no way to get information.

Through sheer persistence, she managed unofficially to learn a little. Her brother was born on Feb. 25, 1937, in Brooklyn. He was taken away to Letchworth Village and stayed there until 1950. He was then transferred to Willowbrook on Staten Island, and died seven months later. That’s all she knows about her brother. But she did learn something else.

Moore's research took her to Vanessa Leigh DeBello whose mother was at Willowbrook. DeBello's blog has attracted some 25 people all trying to get the most basic information about a family member.

“In trying to protect the rights of patients, we’ve created a situation that’s kind of ridiculous, where people desperately looking for their own relatives keep running into this wall,” said Mrs. DeBello, who is writing a book about her mother’s experience at Willowbrook. “I see it all the time, and it breaks my heart.”

The story indicates that for the first time the New York State Legislature is considering a bill that would make information available to cemeteries so those forgotten in life could be remembered in graves under their own names.

Where's the nearest genealogy pub?

The Association of Professional Genealogists discussion list has provided a humorous twist over the past few days.

I was all set to document this interesting idea, but Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings beat me to it.

Tom Kemp of GenealogyBank started it all with a post about the first genealogy publication published some 284 years ago, which he shortened to genealogy "pub" - provoking comments about the location of this Colonial-era establishment.

The first genealogy published in America appeared in a newspaper 284 years ago - today – May 7, 1724.

It appeared in the American Weekly Mercury. It was a genealogy of King Philip V of Spain. Genealogy articles routinely appeared in colonial newspapers.

The first genealogy published in book form was in 1771 – the Stebbins Genealogy and by 1876 and the nation’s first centennial there were less than 1,000 genealogies published.

There's more, so read Tom's complete post.

It went giggling downhill from there on the APG list and covered possible pick-up lines, genealogy-compatible liquid refreshments, amenities that might be offered and even included song lyrics by Drew Smith.

A suggestion was made about organizing a genealogical retirement community which might surround the Gen Pub.

Read all about the suggestions here.