Southern California: Gurs concentration camp, May 1

Holocaust Memorial Day will be commemorated by the Jewish Genealogical Society of the Conejo Valley (JGSCV) on Sunday, May 1.

Speaker Werner Frank will speak on this little-known first massive Jewish deportation to Camp de Gurs in 1940.

The meeting - co-sponsored with Temple Adat Elohim - runs from 1.30-3.30pm, at 2420 E. Hillcrest Drive, Thousand Oaks. There is no admission fee.

Gauleiters Robert Wagner and Joseph Bürckel, administrative heads of the States of Baden and the Pfalz/Saar, sought to be the first among their Nazi cohorts to make their territories Judenrein (free of Jews). They had engineered a massive expulsion of over 6,500 Jews to Camp de Gurs, located in unoccupied Vichy France. The event became known as the Wagner-Bürckel Aktion and was offered by the Gauleiters as their gift to the Führer on October 23, 1940.

The relocation of Jews to the Gurs concentration camp became only an intermediate step prior to the infamous "Final Solution" which was pronounced in January 1942. This Nazi inspired annihilation program triggered yet a second round of transports that would move the incarcerated from Gurs to the Parisian suburb of Drancy, an assembly point where the victims faced a final deportation to the death camp of Auschwitz.

Frank will delve into the background of the historical events that led to the Aktion, and recount the impact of this cataclysm on his hometown of Eppingen, as he relates the tribulations and ultimate fate encountered by his widely located family in the State of Baden.

He is a founding member, former board member, former JGSCV newsletter, and a member of JGSLA. He was one of the founders of GERSIG (the German Special Interest Group of JewishGen) and has written articles for ROOTS, Maajan, Avotaynu and Stammbaum.

He has been researching his family’s history, amassing a genealogical database of more than 33,000 names, and published his family history ("Legacy: The Saga of a German-Jewish Family over Time and Circumstance," Avotaynu 2003).

For more information and directions, click here.

Geneabloggers: 41 new blogs?

As readers know, Tracing the Tribe often lets them know about the new blogs discovered by Thomas MacEntee at Geneabloggers.

Although he recently posted 11 new blogs, he did post another, listing 41 new blogs on December 4.

One never knows how a particular blog might help you in your own quest, so check these out and you might receive some help for some aspect of your search. I've written only smatterings of the blog descriptions, so if you want more, see the link above, or click on each individual blog URL.

All About GEN
Individual family history

Ancestor Search
Australia genealogy, Individual family history

Anderson / Spence / McKenney, 1800’s
Individual family history

Annapolis Royal Heritage
Canadian genealogy

• Author is a museum director in Annapolis Royal, and will try to feature some interesting artifacts and archival resources in the collections.

Are My Roots Showing?
Individual family history

Arkansas Roots: The Stories of My Family
Arkansas genealogy, Individual family history

•  SMITH, SLOAN, HAWKINS & PATTILLO, Dallas County, Arkansas; POOLE, Union & Hemstead Counties.

Barnett Family Genealogy
Individual family history

• Barnetts of Parker County, Texas.

Borreson Cousins
Individual family history

• Norwegian immigrants Emil Borresen and Gina Estensen married in 1899 in Pigeon Falls, Trempealeau County, Wisconsin, had 10 children and 29 grandchildren. Author is one of the grandchildren.

Butler Cemetery
African-American genealogy, Cemetery blog, New Jersey genealogy

• Butler Cemetery (established c1867 by Dempsey Daniel Butler, prominent businessman, real estate entrepreneur, and more. When he died in January 1900, he was noted as the wealthiest African American in New Jersey.

Digging Under My Family Tree
Individual family history

Dr D Digs Up Ancestors
Genealogy education

Exile’s Return
Individual family history

Fiji Genealogy
Fiji genealogy,

• Many resources and ideas for tracing your family tree and researching your family’s history in Fiji. Whether your ancestor was a temporary visitor who married or died in Fiji, or whether you are descended from a long line of settlers or natives, you will find something here to help you...lists of websites, books, and repositories of records and microfilmed records to help you...

Genealogie Blog
French genealogy

• Author is professional genealogist Stéphane Cosson.

Genealogy Dragnet
Individual family history

Genealogy of Oldendorf, und Nahrendorf
German genealogy

• Regional villages: Dannenberg area, Uelzen,Elbe region, Goehrde and Bleckede area.

Genealogy Quest
Individual family history

Geoff’s Genealogy
Individual family history, UK genealogy

Glasgow Ancestry
Scottish genealogy

Gregory Fearon’s Family History Blog
Individual family history

Glimpsing the Past
Individual family history, UK genealogy

Grow Your Own Family Tree
Genealogy industry blog, Irish genealogy, UK genealogy

• Author Alan Stewart writes regularly for UK magazines Practical Family History and Family Tree Magazine, and for North American-based Internet Genealogy and Discovering Family History, among others..

In Our Hearts: A Family Tribute & Scrapbook
African-American genealogy, Alabama genealogy, Individual family history

• Ford, Martin, Morton, Green(e)

Jen’s Genealogy Pages
Canadian genealogy, Individual family history

• St. John, Coulman, Fee, Hunter – and other associated families (including Davey, Summerville, Lusty, Salter, Thomas, Ansted, Burton, Doan and Oakley)...Ontario and Quebec in the 1800s...England, Ireland and Palatine Germany in the 1800s and earlier.

Jones Family Matters
Individual family history

• Jones, Ryan, von der Heide, Cronin, Probert, Dailey, Wainright, Reed and Hellmann.

Marilyn’s Family History News
California genealogy, Genealogy industry

Murmurd’s Franco-American and Quebec Genealogy
Canadian genealogy, French-Canadian genealogy

NGS Family History Conference Blog
Genealogy conference blog, Genealogical society blog

• Hello and welcome to the home of the NGS 2011 official conference blog. We are thrilled that you will be joining us in Charleston, South Carolina and hope to make this an interactive and fun experience leading up to the event... Stay tuned for updates on presenters, vendors, sponsors, registration, accommodations, local sites, and much more.

Our Family Quilt
Individual family history

Peter’s Family History Blog
Genealogy education

Pursuits of a Desperate Genie
Individual family history

• Brookyn, NY is exploding with history and the passion I have for preserving our heritage has overwhelmed my life. My family and friends have had their fair share of “Did you know…!” I love researching, googling for hours, visiting cemeteries, learning new technology and connecting with others to share stories and information. Whenever I hit roadblocks I start quizzing the next person I’m with and before you know it I am writing out their family tree!

Roots and Stones: A Canadian Girl’s Genealogy Diary
Canadian genealogy, Individual family history

• A 6th-generation Canadian, who has been hunting for her roots for the past decade-ish.

Seattle Genealogical Society
Genealogical society, Washington genealogy

• Welcome to the SGS President’s blog.

Smiddy Family Genealogy
Surname blog

Tattered Past
Individual family history

The Bowdens of Popes Creek
African-American genealogy, Individual family history, Virginia genealogy

• Four generations of (Mulatto) Indentured Servants to the Monroe & Washington Family.

The Historian’s Family
Individual family history,

• The author is an instructor at a community college in the Midwest, who completed a PhD in history at the University of Glasgow with a specialization in Scottish migration; also interested in the bridging the gap between academic and “armchair” historians.

They Came to Montana
Individual family history, Montana genealogy

TMG Sydney
Australian genealogy, Genealogical society blog, Technology blog

• This blog is authored by Carole Riley, whom I met on my trip to Australia last spring.

Virtual Tombstone Biographer
Cemetery blogs

Yesterday’s Girl
Individual family history (Engand, Ireand, Newfoundand, Boston)

For more information, see Thomas' original post (link above) or click on each blog.

Miami: Sharing two life stories, Dec, 5

There are always two sides of a story.

The next program of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Greater Miami - on Sunday, December 5 - will demonstrate this old adage.

The meeting begins at 10am at the Greater Miami Jewish Federation, 4200 Biscayne Boulevard. There is free, secure parking.

Speaker Dr. Bernd Wolschlaeger's autobiography, "A German Life," demonstrates his two life stories and how history can both impact and devastate a family.

His first story tells of his life as the Christian son of a WWII German highly decorated tank commander who fought in Poland, France, and Russia and who received the Iron Cross personally from Adolf Hitler.

His second story is of becoming an officer in the Israeli Defense Forces, converting to Judaism, moving to Israel, marrying a Jewish woman and having two children.

In his quest to find answers to questions about his parents and his nation's past, Bernd set out to find the truth and, in doing so, found a new life.

His attraction to Judaism created a turmoil within him that centered somewhere between personal guilt for what had taken place and a true sense of belonging to a people and their beliefs. When his children began asking about his parents and his past, he made the decision to tell them the truth about his family and his upbringing. He wanted them to understand what so dramatically changed his life, to give them a sense of knowing their family history in a way that was different from his own experience.

Sharing with them in this way caused him to explore his relationship with his father, and how that relationship was overshadowed by the Holocaust and everything associated with it.

Today, he is a family physician in North Miami Beach, Florida, and was past president of the Dade County Medical Association. A question and answer session will follow.

The society's annual Hanukah celebration and gift exchange follows. Guests and friends are always welcome. There is no admission fee.

For more information, see the JGS Greater Miami website.

Food: 2,000 years of Jewish cooking in France

Where do our family's foods come from? And where exactly is that?

Head's-up on a new cookbook by famed author Joan Nathan covering 2,000 years of Jewish cooking in France.

"Quiches, Kugels, and Couscous: My Search for Jewish Cooking in France" ($40, Knopf) should be out in November 2010.

According to Publishers Weekly:

This well-researched, fascinating cookbook encapsulates 2,000 years of Jewish history in France. Nathan, the James Beard Award–winning doyenne of Jewish cooking (Jewish Cooking in America), applies her culinary detective skills to sniffing out the Jewish influence on French cuisine, and vice versa.


Her rich subject matter yields both vast diversity and unexpected commonalities. Friday night Sabbath dinners alone can range from the Alsatian pot-au-feu to Moroccan adafina (meat stew with chickpeas and rice). The Germanic Alsatian specialties like potato kugel will be familiar to many Jewish Americans, while the North African dishes like brik with tuna and cilantro and m'soki (a Passover spring vegetable ragout originating in Tunisia) reflect Sephardic customs.


Nathan also explores cross-cultural concoctions such as Provençal brassados (a precursor to the bagel), brandade potato latkes, and a Bordeaux haroset by way of Portugal, all of which embody both the complicated migratory paths and acculturation of the Jewish people.


This being France, though, there are lovely renditions of native dishes, too--chestnut cream gâteau, braised endive, cassoulet. Nathan's multi­layered, narrative approach makes this treasury of tempting flavors an entertaining and compelling read.

There are more reviews at Nathan's site, such as this one.

Sounds like an excellent read, regadless of where your family hails from, so look for it at your favorite bookstore. It's on my wish list.

Germany: Worms' Jewish history

Worms, Germany has an ancient Jewish history, and was one of three major Jewish centers of learning and religion. Speyer, Worms and Mainz were known collectively as the ShUM.

OffbeatTravel.com offered a look at Worms, following a guided tour, by Neala Schwartzberg.

The community built its first synagogue in 1034, although the oldest known tombstone (Jacob Bahur) is dated 1076. The First Crusade followed in a few decades, and between the first and the second crusade, there was an episode of the plague - the Black Death - and accusations that Jews caused it. The Jewish quarter - the Judengasse - was often destroyed and rebuilt.

Not until 1801 were Jews free to live anywhere; by 1945, the community was completely destroyed, leaving only the cemetery.

For a sense of the often tragic history, start with the Judengasse. The charm of this popular and reconstructed area belies its sad history. But the willingness of the city to recreate and honor the memory of the community makes the area a place of hope as well as remembrance.

The cemetery was the final home of many Middle Age scholars, with one section named Valley of the Rabbis.

One well-known story concerns Rabbi Meir ben Baruch (the Maharam of Rothenburg) who was imprisoned by the Emperor at the end of the 13th century. He expected the Jews to pay the ransom to release the rabbi, but the Maharam would not permit it an died seven years later, still imprisoned. The Emperor refused to release the body for burial. Some 14 years later, Alexander ben Salomon Wimpfen paid the ransom with the condition that he be buried next to the rabbi. Today the two tombstones sit side by side.

Their are two levels to the cemetery. The oldest is from the 11th century to circa 1700; the newer section dates from 1700-1938, when it was filled, and a new cemetery was built outside the town.

Famed rabbinical scholar Rashi taught in Worms, and the building where he supposedly taught was named Rashi House. It later was a community center, dance and wedding hall and was damagted and collapsed during the war.

The Worms government wanted to remove it but the citizens wanted to reconstruct it and make it a museum. Today, it is the city archives and the Jewish museum, documenting the history of Jewish community in the city.

The synagogue has been rebuilt and rededicated although there are few Jews living there. It is owned by the Mainz Jewish community and is used for services. The building includes a men's and a smaller women's synagogue, a study room known as the Rashi Chapel, and a medieval mikveh dating from 1186.

There's more to the article with links to other sources of information about Worms.

Click here for more information: Jewish sites in Worms, Germany, Jewish Dresden: The Old (Cemetery) and the New (Synagogue), Exploring Jewish History and Future in Berlin, Germany, Jewish Museum in Berlin: Exploring Jewish History and Culture

Southern California: "Ost meets West," Oct. 4

"Ost meets West: Immigrant Film Moguls, Émigré Directors and the Rise of Film Noir" is the program for the fifth anniversary meeting of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Conejo Valley, on Monday, October 4.

The program runs from 7-9pm at Temple Adat Elohim, 2420 E. Hillcrest Drive, Thousand Oaks. This is a different day and time than usual.

A group of Eastern European Jews, who headed most major American film studios, founded the Hollywood film industry. Another influx of German/Austrian Jewish film directors were driven, in the 1930s, to the US by the Nazis. A number of them, such as Fritz Lang, Billy Wilder, Otto Preminger and Edward G. Ulmer would play a determining role in the rise of what was called film noir.

The Hollywood film noir genre ranged from the early 1940s-late 1950s, and is associated with a black-and-white style with roots in German Expressionist cinematography.

Speaker Vincent Brook will examine the ethnic origins of the two groups and how their different backgrounds enabled their considerable contributions to the cinema, and in particular film noir.

Brook holds a PhD (film and television, UCLA) and teaches media studies at UCLA, USC, Cal-State LA, and Pierce College. He is the author of "Something Ain’t Kosher Here: The Rise of the 'Jewish' Sitcom," and dozens of journal articles, essays and reviews. His book, “Driven to Darkness: Jewish Émigré Directors and the Rise of Film Noir "will be available for purchase ($20, cash/check) at the meeting

The free meeting is co-sponsored with Temple Adat Elohim. For more information, see the JGSCV website.

Oregon: Searching for Mrs. Buchholz, Sept. 21

Margot Perry will detail her search for Mrs. Buchholz, a distantly-related housekeeper who lived with her family at the next Jewish Genealogical Society of Oregon meeting on Tuesday, September 21.

The program begins at 7pm, at Congregation Ahavath Achim, 3225 SW Barbur Blvd., Portland.

While growing up, Perry did not ask questions about Buchholz, a refugee from Nazi Germany. Recently, Perry decided to use her research skills to learn more about the woman.

Learn why she conducted the search and her successful methodology.

A former investigator for the Oregon Bureau of Labor, Civil Rights Division as an investigator of complaints alleging discrimination in employment, housing and public accommodations, Perry is interested in history, genealogy and archeology.

Avotaynu recently published an article about Perry's Buchholz search.

Fee: JGSO members, free; others, $5. For more information, click here.

New York: Ancestral home memories, Sept. 19

A panel of presenters will discuss post-Holocaust life in ancestral towns, personal experiences, impressions and stories, at the next meeting of the Jewish Genealogical Society of New York, on Sunday, September 19.

The meeting begins at 2pm, at Center for Jewish History, 15 West 16th Street

The panel includes Professors Mihai Grunfeld, Mimi Schwartz, Marianne Hirsch and Leo Spitzer, with moderator Renee Steinig.

A Vassar College professor of Spanish and Latin American literature, Mihai Grunfeld ("Leaving, Memories of Romania") offers a rich and stimulating account of growing up in post-war Romania, haunted by the Holocaust his parents do not speak about. At age 18, he and his brother travel to Czechoslovakia and escape to Austria, Their journey takes them through several countries and finally the US where he settles.

Mimi Schwartz ("Good Neighbors, Bad Times, Echoes of My Father’s German Village") grew up in America, hearing her father’s boyhood stories about his German village. Only when she heard about the remarkable story of the Torah being rescued by Christians on Kristallnacht, did she begin to understand what these stories mean. For 12 years, she traveled seeking answers, collecting stories, checking historical records. She is the author of five books and numerous essays, and is a professor emerita at Richard Stockton College (New Jersey) where she teaches workshops in memoir and creative nonfiction.

Marianne Hirsch and Leo Spitzer (husband-and-wife co-authors, "Ghosts of Home, The Afterlife of Czernowitz in Jewish Memory") will narrate an exciting multilayered tour of Czernowitz, through story-telling, part history and part memoir, that includes voices of parents, survivors, and witnesses. It is also a delicate and moving story of how individuals connect to each other, giving us back the richness and frailty of the past. Hirsch, the daughter of Czernowitz Holocaust survivors, is a Columbia University Professor of English and Comparative Literature and director of the Institute for Research on Women and Gender. She is the author of many books. Spitzer, a historian, Kathe Tappe Vernon professor of History Emeritus at Dartmouth College and has authored many books, most recently "Hotel Bolivia: A Culture of Memory in a Refuge from Nazism."

The CJH Ackman & Ziff Family Genealogy Institute will open at 11am for networking with other researchers and access to research materials and computers.

For more information, click here.

North Carolina: Shtetls and camps, Aug. 25

The daughter of Holocaust survivors - who has been researching her family history and looking for surviving relatives for more than 50 years - traveled to ancestral villages in Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Germany.

Deborah Long will speak about her research trip on Wednesday, August 25. The dessert-and-discussion event, from 7.30-9.30pm, will be in a private home and is for the Durham-Chapel Hill Jewish Federation.

Long will recount her shocking 2009 unearthing of family artifacts that compelled her to visit ancestral villages in Slovakia, Poland and Hungary, and also to northern Germany to understand her parents' Holocaust history.

The presentation includes her methodology, her trip through shtetls and concentration camps and joyful discovery upon returning home.

A professional educator, Long has written more than 20 books, including a memoir about growing up as a child of survivors.

Those who donate $118 or more to the Durham-Chapel Hill Jewish Federation will receive a free copy of her book.

For more information, send an email or click here.

Seattle: What's in a name?

Marlene Schiffman of Yeshiva University provided an interesting session at the Association of Jewish Libraries conference on the historical impact of modern governments on Jewish names.

Focusing on Ashkenazi names, she covered the concept of "legibility," (a better term might be "visibility") or the identifying of a person, essential to the modern state. The phrase "name it - organize it" summed up the concept.

In 1843 Paris, other modern organizational tools were also used, involving language, uniform codes, registration, surnames, legal issues and taxes. "The object was to enumerate, register or conscript," said Schiffman, who stressed that this was not so much for personal identity but for state control. Thus, Personal surnames became important.

In Austria, Jews were given more freedom in the late 18th century and were also subject to the draft. They were required to obtain surnames from a list of German names, and even to choose given names from a list. While this was hailed by secular Jews, others considered it a conspiracy. Jews were integrated into the population.

In 1804, in multicultural Russia, a surname law was passed, even though Russian Jews tried to remain invisible to avoid the draft. As many genealogists are aware, many brothers in the same family often adopted different family names as another way of remaining "illegible."

In 1836, the Crown Rabbinate began keeping registers. In my own experience, the seven microfilm rolls of registers kept by the Mogilev (Belarus) crown rabbi have been invaluable research tools. Crown rabbis were later replaced with state rabbis, and by the 1850s, Jews and others were no longer invisible.

According to Alexander Beider, she added, there is no extant direct testimony of this or lists of surnames, there are evident naming patterns with Jews. For example, in Belarus, many names end in -in (Sorkin, Dvorkin, Belkin), deriving from female names (Sora, Dvora, Bella).

In 1857 Russia, Jews couldn't change their surnames. After they had finished their term of army service, they could take their godfather's name if they converted.

In Poland, Jews were assigned surnames at various times from 1787-1807. In 1821, when Poland was under Russian control, they handed out "certificates of names," which had to be carried and used for all civil or legal transactions. By 1824, most Jews had names.

In 1808, Napoleon forbid toponyms (those indicating a geographical location). Names from a list were adopted unless the name in question had already been used for a long time.

In Austria and Galicia, many names were pejorative or negative, with stories describing blackmail and bribes for a better name. The King of Poland decreed that each family was to have "a unique name" - unfortunately, it meant that six brothers may have required six different surnames. In 1787, names selected had to be approved.

Governments believed that standardized, permanent surnames would lead to greater interaction, would be more useful and help administration, track criminals and refugees. It was easy to identify Jewish names.

In Prussia and Germany, 1821 saw the acquiring of permanent names and citizenship for Jews. But by 1938, they could no longer adopt "Aryan" names. They couldn't change their surnames, had to return to non-German names, and also were required to add Sara or Israel to their given names, as identifiers.

Jewish names, said Schiffman, became Jewish "branding" in 1941, with the introduction of the yellow patch and tattooed numbers.

In the US, it was very easy to change a surname. Many immigrants did that as soon as they left Ellis Island, thus obscuring their origins.

The session conclusion was that modern governments needed to accelerate the control of population assets. When the naming process was complete, the government could see a specific group as a whole.

An interesting session, to be sure.

Kentucky: From Daniel Boone to the Shapiras

Keeping with today's Southern theme, here's a glimpse of Jewish life in Louisville, Kentucky.

The story in the Jewish Exponent covers whiskey, the Kentucky Derby and MOTs.

The small community numbers about 8,500 and features the oldest and largest congregation in the state - Congregation Adath Israel Brith Sholom (AKA The Temple), chartered in 1843, as the sixth Reform congregation in the US.

Established in 1843 as K.K. Adas Israel, The Temple was a founding member of Reform Judaism's Union of American Hebrew Congregations (now Union for Reform Judaism) and an early proponent of Reform in American Jewish life. When Reform Judaism began in 1873, the congregation was the second largest congregation in the movement. Brith Sholom was founded by the next group of newcomers who did not want Orthodox rites but who wanted services in their native German (Adath Israel's services were in English). Eventually the two merged.

The Temple's archives are extensive and hold historic materials "chronicling the significant people, places and events of the past century and a half, since the establishment of our congregation by charter in January 1843." Items include Temple artifacts, books, records dating to the early days of both congregations and more than 80 oral histories. A personal video history project is currently underway.

Here are some additional tidbits:

-- Daniel Boone was hired by the Virginia company of Cohen and Isaacs to check out their lands in Kentucky. The Gratz family of Philadelphia set up Ohio River trading posts and joined the founders of Lexington.

-- Distiller and philanthropist Isaac Wolfe Bernheim modeled the Bernheim Arboretum and Research Forest after his German childhood home.

-- Louisville was the birthplace of late Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis.

The article also has information on the area's American Bourbon and Whiskey Trail, particularly Heaven Hill Distillery, reopened following Prohibition by Shapira family members.

1934 -- Heaven Hill Distilleries, Inc., originally known as "Old Heavenhill Springs" distillery, is founded by a group of Bardstown-area investors and the five Shapira brothers, David, Ed, Gary, George and Mose. ...

According to the distillery's communications director and Temple congregation member Larry Kass, its current status as a beverage industry leader is due to second-generation owners Max and Harry Shapira.

The congregation decided to dedicate the 2010 annual fundraiser to Max Shapira, but he wasn't interested in the spotlight, so the family and local rabbis expanded the theme into a week-long celebration of the role local Jewish immigrants played in the spirits industry and regional growth.

The event is titled "The Chosen Spirit Archival Exhibition and Tribute."

Kass worked with Rabbis Joe Rooks-Rapport and Gaylia R. Rooks to research archiva materials to demonstrate the family's legacy. from the archives to demonstrate the Shapira family legacy.

Learn about early American Jewish history by clicking the websites for Heaven Hill and for the congregation.

JewishGen: Worldwide burial registry updated

The JewishGen Online Worldwide Burial Registry (JOWBR) database has been updated with more than 108,000 new records and some 13,000 additional photos.

There are 170 new cemeteries with updates to another 155 cemeteries in 19 countries. The database now holds more than 1.4 million records from some 2,700 cemeteries or sections in 46 countries.

View JOWBR here. New users should click here for information.

Here are some of the new additions:

-- Iasi, Romania: nearly 32,000 added; database now 65,000.

-- Lodz, Poland: Organization of Former Residents of Lodz in
Israel has given permission to add their burial register names to both JOWBR and JRI-Poland, totalling some 70,000-75,000 records. This update offers the first 12,000 records.

--Lodz, Poland: More than 2,000 burials recorded by the IDF and the Yad LeZehava Holocaust Research Institute in three sections of the Lodz cemetery; database now has 3,400 burials.

-- Louisville, Kentucky: Herman Meyer & Son Funeral Home has compiled extensive information on burials from seven Jewish cemeteries in the city; database totals nearly 11,500 records. Additional information on Kentucky resources and headstone photos.

-- Baltimore, Maryland: Jewish Museum of Maryland and Deb Weiner for 9,900 records from the Belair Road and Berrymans Lane Baltimore Hebrew Cemeteries.

-- Maine: Harris Gleckman of Project Shammas - "Documenting Maine Jewry" - for nearly 6,500 records from 16 Maine cemeteries and sections.

-- American Jewish Archives (AJA): US and Caribbean cemetery records from The Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives (AJA), Cincinnati, Ohio; more than 6,000 records from 36 cemeteries.

-- Pennsauken, New Jersey: Rabbi Gary Gans submitted 6,000 records from the Crescent Memorial Park.

-- Liepaja, Latvia: 3,600 records from the town of Liepaja,
Latvia.

-- Bathurst Lawn Memorial Park and Pardes Shalom Cemetery, Ontario: JGS of Canada-Toronto; more than 3,200 records from 122 updated and new sections of these Canadian cemeteries.

-- South Carolina Cemeteries: Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina; 2,200 burial records and 365 photos from five South Carolina cemeteries.

-- Petach Tikvah, Israel: TSegulah Cemetery; some 2,200 additional photos.

-- Sacramento, California: 2,200 records from the Home of Peace Cemetery.

-- Various US States: More than 2,100 records from 25 cemeteries in nine states, by Julian Preisler.

-- Colma, California: San Francisco Bay Area Jewish Genealogical Society, nearly 2,100 records from the second book of burial records from Home of
Peace Cemetery & Emanu-El Mausoleum.

-- New Jersey: Jewish Historical Society of North Jersey; more than 1,000 records from
five cemeteries.

-- Bavarian Cemeteries: JewishGen and the Bavarian State Ministry of Science, Research and Arts/Center of Bavarian History. ; nearly 700 translations from seven cemeteries, and other civil document data.

-- German Cemeteries: 650 records from 21 small German cemeteries.

-- South Africa: 450 records and 550 photos from 13 cemeteries. For more information, click here.

Many donors - individuals and societies - have submitted information. To see how you can help, visit JOWBR at JewishGen.

Spain: Anti-Jewish riots began today in 1391

On this day, June 6, in 1391, anti-Jewish riots began in Seville, instigated by Ferrand Martiniz, and soon spread across the country, decimating the Jewish populations of major communities and resulting in mass forced conversions to Catholicism and massacres of those who refused.

Some 10,000 Jews are estimated to have been murdered, many more forcibly converted. Some communities were complete destroyed, such as the 400-year-old Barcelona community, others were re-established in some way. While thousands of individuals went underground and maintained secret Jewish lives, other families and individuals left for other geographic areas.

This was a precursor to the later Inquisition and the 1492 exile.

Click here to learn what else happened this day in Jewish history. Here are some important facts - the list goes through 2010!

1242: Two dozen wagonloads of Talmudic volumes and 200 other rabbinic manuscripts were burned at Paris.1247: Pope Innocent IV contacts the king of Navarre. In a dispatch he requested the king compel Christian debtors to pay off their debt to Jewish lenders.

1506: Birthdate of King John III of Portugal. Persecution of Marranos and Conversos intensified during his reign with the arrival of the Inquisition. On the other hand he met with David Reubeini in 1525 and the two negotiated over the possibility of the King supplying this adventurer with as many as eight ships to use in a fight against the Moslem leader, Selim I. Since much of the life of Reubeni is shrouded in myth and half truths, we cannot be sure as to the reason the negotiations failed.1539: The Inquisition was introduced into Mexico.

1808: Birthdate of Jacob Raphael De Cordova, Texas land agent and colonizer. A native of Jamaica, he settled in Philadelphia in the 1820’s with his father before moving to Texas in 1839. Jacob and his brother Phineas De Cordova operated one of the largest land agencies in Texas. Jacob was one of three men who helped lay out Waco in 1848. He passed away in 1868.

1855: Isaac Kaatz, Gottlieb Milhelm and Anton First were arrested today on charges of having been involved in the theft of eight cows from a farm belong to Colonel Lewis Morris. The three carcasses found in the possession of the accused all bore a mark indicating that they were Kosher.

1859: In Australia, Queensland is established as a separate colony from New South Wales. By 1865, there were enough Jews living in the Queensland city of Brisbane that a congregation was formed that held services in a local Masonic hall until 1886 when a sanctuary with a seating capacity of 400. In 1879, the Jews of Toowoomba, Queensland, built a synagogue which, as the community shrunk in size, was only used on the High Holidays.

1875: Birthdate of Novelist Thomas Mann. Mann was not Jewish but in 1905 he married Katia Pringsheim, daughter of prominent family of Jewish intellectuals. They had six children. Mann left Nazi German in 1933, four years after having won the Nobel Prize for Literature. He lived in the United States for many years. He died in Switzerland in 1955, never having lived in his native land again.

1894: Governor Davis H. Waite ordered the Colorado state militia to protect and support the miners engaged in the Cripple Creek miners' strike. Famed financier Bernard Baruch was one of those who got his start in the “strike it rich” world of Cripple Creek. Arriving from the east, Baruch bought shares of stock in the San Francisco mine. During the day he worked as a “mucker” and at night he played at the roulette wheel in a local gambling joint where he was so successful that he was barred by the owners. Baruch took his winnings and headed back to New York where he gained fame and fortune. Sam Butcher, a Hungarian Jew, was one of the few Jews who actually made money in industrial mining in Cripple Creek. Because many of his fellow miners were blatant anti-Semites, Butcher “took pains to conceal his identity” until he had gained financial success. Sam and Bertha Flax were one of the first, if not the first Jewish couple to marry in Cripple Creek. They tied the knot in 1909. Sam was not much of a miner but he would prove be a successful restaurant owner in Denver, Colorado.

For more, visit This Day in Jewish History.

France: Revue du Cercle de Généalogie Juive, new issue

The Cercle de Genealogie Juive (Paris, France) has published the new edition of its journal, Revue du Cercle de Genealogie Juive.

Issue 101 (January-March 2010) includes:

-- Jews in Hungary: History and Genealogy, by Georges Graner, who covers Hungarian and Jewish history from the 14th century through the Holocaust, and provides steps to obtain information on searching Jewish ancestors in Hungary.

-- Jews in Ensisheim (Alsace) in the 18th century, by Denis Ingold, who describes how Jews returned to the town after Hapsburg possessions in Alsace were returned to the King of France following the Thirty Years' War (1648). Later, Jews migrated again to more attractive and welcoming cities like Breisach and Metz.

--Salomon Schueler (1870-1938), prominent rabbi: from Hegenheim to Saint-Louis (Alsace), by Lea Rogg, offers the life and times of the first rabbi of Saint-Louis (Upper Rhine, near the Swiss border). Educated at Berlin's orthodox Hildesheimer Yeshiva, he contributed to the community as the city became more modern.

-- Current state of Jewish genealogy in Germany, by Ernest Kallman. The article provides information on the pre-1800 period when vital records recording did not exist, on the Jewish population of the country and attitudes towards the Jews since 1945, the appearance of researchers and their work, and a case study on a step-by-step search for Dilsheimer ancestors (which was in the journal's previous issue). it also attempts to show what is necessary for successful research particularly when the researcher is linguistically-challenged.

For more information, send an email or view here The site is in French, but Google Translate offers a reasonable alternative.

New York: Center for Jewish History expands hours

The Center for Jewish History in Manhattan holds excellent resources and books for family history researchers.

From Sunday, June 6, access will be even better as the Lillian Goldman Reading Room and the Ackman & Ziff Family Genealogy Institute will be open six days a week enabling more people to use it. Sunday hours will be from 11am-4pm and all electronic resources and reference collections will be available.

The center is at 15 West 16th Street, New York City.

CJH also holds the archival and library collections of American Jewish Historical Society, American Sephardi Federation, Leo Baeck Institute and the library of YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. These resources will be available on Sundays upon request.

To request Sunday access, apply by 5pm on the prior Thursday. Click here to learn more or become a registered user. Search for the materials to request; click the "Reserve" link (left side of record item). Fill out the fields and the request will be processed. If you have a problem in regard to materials or a request, send an email or call 212-294-8301.

The CJH is also open Mondays, 9.30am-7.30pm; Tuesdays-Thursdays, 9.30am-5.30pm; and Fridays, 9.30am-1.30pm. YIVO archival collections are available Monday-Thursday, 9.30am-5pm.

For more information, click here.

Doing the happy dance!

We all like to read about genealogy "happy dance" moments!

From my dear friend Rosanne Leeson (Los Altos, California), comes this delightful email. She wants everyone to be as happy as she is now after watching the Matthew Broderick episode of "Who Do You Think You Are?" and following a clue on the show to the solution to a Civil War family mystery.

Her family arrived very early in the USA (pre-Civil War) and she is an experienced and seasoned researcher of her Jewish family.

Wow! I am sitting here with tears in my eyes!

I have just had my first benefit from watching the "Who Do You Think You Are?" show!

Saw the last one with Matthew Broderick, when he finds his great-great's grave in the Marietta GA National Cemetery. I never even knew that such a cemetery existed, or that they had moved Union dead there from Atlanta.

I had been hoping for ages to find out what ever happened to my great-grandmother's youngest brother, who she had brought over to the US from Bavaria in the early 1860's. I had gotten his record from NARA, knew when and where he had died (in a hospital in Atlanta of miliary fever).

Had asked someone in Atlanta to try to find out what had happened to his body. The only answer I got was that they had probably thrown his remains into a common or pauper's grave. NICE!

He had only been in the US a short time, spoke very little English, but signed up to fight for the Union cause in NY, where my great-grandparents were living. He was 20 years old when he died. I always felt so sad that there was no closure for any of the family descendants.

Then I learned about the Marietta National Cemetery. Got online and found not only history of it, but a list of those buried there. BINGO! Great-Grand-uncle found!

I just called the cemetery and the gentleman was wonderful. They are sending out someone to see if he had a stone and, if so, to photograph it for me, and send in a week. He said that he thought there might be a stone or his name would not have been on the list. If not, I will order one. No fee for a picture! Their duty and pleasure to add closure after nearly 150 years!

WOW!

Rosanne, a semi-retired librarian, is a consummate genealogist, specializing in Romania (RomSIG) and Alsace (has translated many records and visited over the years). She's also vice president of the San Francisco Bay Area Jewish Genealogical Society.

What this points up is that even very experienced researchers can learn something every day!

We never know when a ray of sunshine will illuminate that lost record that has eluded us for decades. We never know when a resource may provide a missing link.

I'm sure all Tracing the Tribe readers join me in congratulating Rosanne on her achievement, and congratulating WDYTYA on providing the clue.

Our well-known colleague Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak noted this post in her most recent Huffington Post article. Thanks, Megan.

Obermayer Awards: The honorees' stories

The 10th annual Obermayer German Jewish History Awards were given in Berlin on January 25, 2010.

The winners and their towns were:

-- Angelika Brosig (Schopfloch)
-- Helmut Gabeli (Haigerloch)
-- Barbara Greve (Gilserberg)
-- Heidemarie Kugler-Weiemann (Lübeck)
-- Walter Ott (Muensingen-Buttenhausen)

To read the complete profiles of the honorees, click here.

This year marks the tenth annual presentation of awards that were created to honor the past and enrich the future. German life was once filled with contributions made by Jewish scholars, writers and artists. Music, science, literature and architecture were often collaborative efforts that brought diverse talents together. The collective history of Germans and Jews was profoundly connected and served to benefit the world. The Nazi regime and its obliteration of the German Jewish community ended a long period of collaboration and mutual trust.

However, many German citizens, ranging from academics to those working in business and professions, did not let go of their interest and commitment to Jewish history and culture. Many worked at great personal cost to preserve and reconstruct aspects of Jewish life, which had contributed to the cultural richness of their lives and the lives of their respectivecommunities. These individuals have researched, reconstructed, written about and rebuilt an appreciation of Jewish culture that will enrich life today and in the future.

Diverse individuals, without thought of reward, have helped raise awareness about a once vibrant community. Their ongoing efforts pay tribute to the importance of Jewish subject matter and its value to German society as a whole.

Many volunteers have devoted years of effort to such projects, but few have been recognized or honored for their efforts. The German Jewish Community History Council and its cosponsors believe it is particularly important for Jews from other parts of the world to be aware of this ongoing work. The annual Obermayer German Jewish History Awards provide an opportunity for the Jewish community worldwide to acknowledge German citizens who have rekindled the spark of Jewish thought that once existed in Germany. The award winners have dedicated themselves to rebuilding destroyed institutions and ideals. Their achievements reflect a personal connection to Jewish history and a willingness to repair a small corner of the world.

-- Angelika Brosig launched a Web site to document her town's Jewish cemetery and to help finance its restoration. Her town is Schopfloch.

“My friend wanted to see the Jewish cemetery,” Brosig recalls, “and when we went and saw the conditions there, she started to cry. She said ‘It’s terrible, the stones aren’t readable, the plants and trees are all overgrown.’ I was surprised because it seemed natural for a cemetery to decay. But she said, ‘No, it’s not good for the descendants,’ and this was my start.” ...

-- Helmut Gabeli

The lawyer Helmut Gabeli moved to the small Swabian town of Haigerloch, on the edge of the Black Forest, when his wife was hired there as a teacher in 1968. Shortly after, the couple discovered that the town market where they bought their food was once a synagogue, and they instantly stopped shopping there.

“My wife and I said ‘No, we will not buy there in the future,’” Gabeli remembers. “I had respect for the Jewish religion. My moral standards told me it was not possible to buy from a building where the Jews once prayed.”

Twenty years later, on the 50th anniversary of Kristallnacht, Gabeli helped form the Gesprächkreis Ehemaliger Synagogue Haigerloch (Discussion Circle for the Former Haigerloch Synagogue). ...

-- Barbara Greve

Ask Barbara Greve what motivates her to unearth the Jewish past around theKreis Ziegenhain region of Hessen, and you get a not-so-German response.

“It may not be the right way to say it, but I think of it as a kind of mitzvah,” she says. “It’s a moral duty. I’m giving people back their history.”

Indeed, for Greve, a primary school teacher who has become a crusader dedicated to rescuing 400 forgotten years of Jewish history in her area, much of her passion stems from the desire for local residents to get their facts straight. ...

-- Heidemarie Kugler-Weiemann

For nearly two decades, Heidemarie Kugler-Weiemann has been wrestling with her city’s Holocaust history through research, teaching, tours, exhibitions, forums, memorials, articles and books. Not only has she made an impact on her community, but she has developed very strong personal relationships with survivors as well.

When she thinks how it all began, her memory returns to her grandmother’s nervous eye. Born in Lübeck in 1951, Kugler-Weiemann recalls that “the war was very present for me as a child” because of the strong memories lingering in her family, and one in particular: the day the Gestapo came and arrested her grandfather for listening to the BBC. Though her grandfather was eventually released, her grandmother’s eye never stopped twitching after that. ...

-- Walter Ott

It was in 1973, when the castle outside Buttenhausen was being renovated, that Walter Ott’s home became a temporary storage place for chests and boxes belonging to the city— some of which, he discovered, contained eye-opening documents like a letter from Baron von Liebenstein, inaugurating the town’s 200-year-old Jewish history.

“I was impressed with that history. It was taboo,” says Ott, who was born in 1928 near Stuttgart and spent most of his life working as a farmer. “The subject wasn’t talked about in Buttenhausen; it was new to me. So I asked people, ‘Why don’t you speak any more about the Jewish community?’ and they answered, ‘Oh, it was so long ago.’ This is a small village and no one wanted to talk, but the truth is that three-fourths of the citizens here were Nazis.”

With the material he found in the boxes, and later in the town archives, Ott sorted and catalogued Buttenhausen’s history into a first-ever Jewish archive—from 1787, when the first 25 Jewish families were granted the right to settle in Buttenhausen, to the residents’ deportations to Theresienstadt, Auschwitz and other concentration camps in the final years of the war. (Located in a remote part of the Swabian Alps, Buttenhausen was used as a collection point for Jews deported from across Germany, before their shipment to the camps).

Read these inspiring full-page stories for each honorees at the link above, and view the links to their projects.

Bad Arolsen: Post-war digitization complete

The International Tracing Service (ITS) in Bad Arolsen, Germany has completed the digitizing of documents on displaced persons and emigration after WWII.

See the press release at International Tracing Service (ITS).

“This part of the ITS archives has hardly been explored so far,” said Udo Jost, Head of the Archive Division. “It offers excellent insights into life after survival, as well as the wave of migration which resulted from the war.”

This week, ITS forwarded copies of the documents to its partner organisations in Israel, the US, Poland, Luxembourg and Belgium.

The documents provide information on the fate of those who were rescued from concentration camps, forced labour and, in some cases, war captivity. This inventory specifically comprises documents from German, Austrian, Italian and British camps for displaced persons, as well as emigration lists, files and dossiers from refugee organisations such as the UNHCR, and lists of Holocaust survivors compiled by Jewish organisations.

Among the preserved DP camp documents are 350,000 CM1 questionnaires issued by the Allies. The forms documented what the people had experienced and the reasons for their desire to emigrate.

The digitization of the entire inventory of post-war documents took 18 months and can be viewed and searched on-site in Bad Arolsen.

This week, ITS forwarded copies of some.3 million images of documents from refugee organisations and Austrian, Italian and British DP Camps to Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, the US Holocaust Memorial Museum (Washington, DC), the Institute of National Remembrance (Warsaw), the Documentation and Research Centre on the Resistance (Luxembourg) and the National Archives of Belgium (Brussels).

For more information, click here.

Maryland: University to drop Yiddish

Yiddish is on the budget chopping block at the University of Maryland.

For those who may be unfamiliar with the language, Yiddish dates to the 11th century and those Jews who settled along the Rhine River. It is written with Hebrew characters, uses German grammar and structure and its vocabulary incorporates German, Hebrew, Aramaic and Slavic.

While the 1,000-year-old language of Ashkenazi Jews has survived the likes of Hitler and Stalin, the switch to Hebrew in modern Israel and the assimilation of immigrants to America, there are few universities that offer it (Brandeis, Harvard, Columbia and a few others).

Not to get too far off track, but Tracing the Tribe believes it is even harder to find a Ladino course - anywhere - for today's generation of Sephardic students. No matter the language - Yiddish or Ladino - it is a shame to lose any part of one's heritage!

But in Maryland, funding is the problem.

I'm sad that our family lost both Yiddish and Russian in 1905, when my great-grandmother proclaimed to her children that they were now Americans and must speak English. While Yiddish remained the family's "house" (and community) language and my grandmother and her siblings were fluent, my mother was fluent as a child but gradually - through disuse - lost her ability to speak it. She understood it, but answered questions in English. Our generation knows even less and is familiar only with a relatively small number of words that we use correctly.

I've had the opportunity to take an elementary Yiddish class and also a beginning Russian class, so perhaps I recognize more than most, but nothing near the level I'd like to have achieved.

Growing up in New York City, of course, many Yiddish words are part of New York-speak, and many immigrants of other ethnicities don't know the origin of words they may use every day.

This Baltimore Sun story by Matthew Hay Brown covers the University of Maryland situation.

At the University of Maryland, which has stood alongside Harvard and Columbia as one of the nation's few schools to consistently offer instruction in the Germanic tongue, the recent announcement that the Joseph and Rebecca Meyerhoff Center for Jewish Studies would be dropping it in the fall shocked area enthusiasts.

"U- Maryland has had the biggest commitment to Yiddish as a language anywhere in a hundred-mile radius," says Harvey Spiro, president of Yiddish of Greater Washington, which organized a letter-writing campaign. "We're not a particularly political organization, but this kicked us in the gut."

The center now has cobbled together the money to pay its longtime instructor through the next academic year. But after that, director Hayim Lapin says, it is unlikely to continue funding a full-time faculty member dedicated to the language.

Said Lapin, it isn't about the language but about the budget crisis resulting in fewer visiting faculty, less Bible, less history and less or no Yiddish.

Born in postwar Germany where Yiddish was her first language, Professor Miriam Isaacs has taught elementary and intermediate Yiddish at Maryland for 15 years:

"We're at a critical point in that the generation of Holocaust survivors, my parents, they're not around anymore," she says. "Or if they're around, they can't do a lot of translating. So if nobody learns it, you know, the Holocaust Museum archive is full of Yiddish materials. The University of Maryland has been acquiring Yiddish books galore. Who is going to read them? Who is going to be able to have access to them?"

And what about those Yiddishisms currently in use in English? Spiro says that because so many comedians used the words, people believe the language is funny or for dirty jokes, while he says, that isn't his Yiddish:

"The Yiddish that I read and the Yiddish I speak is a language for everyday communication. I read novels in Yiddish. I read the Yiddish newspaper."

Yiddish culture incorporated an active press, popular theater and literature - it wasn't just the world of Borscht Belt comedians. World War II decimated Yiddish speakers. Prior to the Holocaust, there were some 11 million speakers. Half were killed, others lost in pogroms and immigration. Today fewer than 2 million live in mainly Orthodox communities in a few cities.

However, in some communities, it is considered a way for today's generation to connect with their heritage. In Poland, the US and in Israel, there are language programs and summer institutes to help them learn.

Isaacs says that, at Maryland, mostly Jewish students register. These include students who have Yiddish-speaking relatives and want to see it remain alive. She says the intensive elementary fall course fills, but a much smaller number continue with the spring intermediate class.

The language has fallen victim to budget problems derived from lower returns on endowments. The center is trying to at least schedule the classes on a per-course basis for those interested. According to experts quoted in the story, Hebrew is required in a serious Jewish studies program, although Yiddish isn't, but should be.

On the other hand, for Sephardim, it is even harder to find a Ladino course than for Ashkenazi to find Yiddish courses.

Read the complete story at the link above.

Germany: DP camps film premieres

It has been 61 years since three Jewish Displaced Persons camps in Germany (Schlachtensee, Tempelhof and Wittenau) were closed, but filmmaker Gabriel Heim has produced a 52-minute documentary on those who passed through these camps.

“Jewish Transit Berlin: From Hell to Hope” premiered Monday at the Berlin Jewish Museum. It relates the unusual albeit brief history of the DP camps set up in postwar Berlin, according to the JTA story.

The Swiss-born filmmaker calls them “the last Jewish shtetls on German soil," and found individuals (all aged 80 or more) to share their stories.

Rich with archival footage and contemporary interviews, the film goes a long way toward painting a picture of their odyssey, which begins with the migration of some 350,000 exhausted Jewish refugees and survivors from Eastern Europe. About 100,000 made their way to bombed-out Berlin, according to Heim. Most landed in other German cities and later emigrated.

“There were thousands of people who were liberated and were displaced in Berlin,” said Rabbi Andreas Nachama, a historian who directs the Topography of Terror archive and heads the Department of Holocaust Studies at Touro College in Berlin. “You had Jews and non-Jews, slave workers and those who were repatriated.”

There were some 6,000 Jews (2,300 were children) still homeless in Berlin by January 1946, according to the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, resulting in the three camps for survivors.

Heim said that Gen. Dwight Eisenhower (the US Army chief of staff) decided to create the camps for Jews following clashes in other camps populated by both survivors and non-Jews recognized as murderers.

“It was a magnificent rebirth, a re-creation of people who were so down and came to life,” recalled Rachel Abramowitz, 81, whose father had been deported by Stalin to Siberia from Poland before the war. Afterward, with no one left in Poland, her family made its way to Germany.

They arrived by truck in Berlin in the middle of the night. As children jumped out of the truck, they were met by a U.S. Army chaplain, Rabbi Mayer Abramowitz, who also had arrived in Berlin that day.

Rachel and the rabbi later married on November 23, 1947, in Berlin. They live in Florida and have three children, 11 grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.

The rabbi created a school and summer camp for the 2,300 children, and the Jewish DP camps also featured Yiddish newspapers, radio stations and theaters, while there were also many marriages and many babies.

The camps closed in 1948, and most Jews had left by June, flown out on the same airlifts that had unloaded emergency food and supplies during the Soviet blockade of Berlin. Most went to the US, Israel, Canada or South Africa, although about 500 stayed in Berlin.

The film was co-produced by ARD and Yad Vashem, and co-directed by Ronnie Golz.

Read the complete story at the link above.