Yad Vashem: Reconnecting a family

My annual summer trips provide many opportunities to interact with genealogists and family historians, while meeting with old friends and new.

On Sunday, I attended a board meeting of the San Francisco Bay Area Jewish Genealogical Society. Held at the home of my hosts and good friends, Rosanne and Dan Leeson, it was great to see so many old friends.

One new person was Israeli businessman Avner Yonai, who has been Yad Vashem's area volunteer coordinator for the Shoah Victims' Names Recovery Project Pages of Testimony. Avner also attended the group's brick wall session on Tuesday night (see separate blog post on this event).

The new Yad Vashem blog has detailed the story of Avner's successful discovery and reconnection to a living descendant of his aunt Bluma, murdered in the Holocaust.

The reunion was faciitated through Avner's research in the Pages of Testimony and the Central Database of Shoah Victims' Names database.

In a tale spanning across Poland, Belarus, Israel and the US, Avner Yonai (38) a native Israeli businessman living in California, recently connected with a lost relative after discovering Pages of Testimony submitted by his grandfather in memory of family members who were murdered in the Shoah.

His maternal grandfather, David Rybak, was born in Gora Kalwaria (Ger), Poland, and Avner recently found David's travel and aliyah documents.

David had emigrated to Mandate Palestine in 1935, before the Nazi invasion of Poland. A brother, Beryl, stayed in Poland and was murdered in 1942 with his wife Bluma (Goldhecht) in Treblinka. Her brother Yaacov survived, moved to Israel and submitted a Page of Testimony (PoT) for her in Israel in the 1950's.

Avner discovered that David had also submitted a PoT for Bluma.

Yaacov and David were both from Ger, and were members of the town's Mandolin Orchestra (photo above), conducted by David's brother, Beryl. The group performed during the 1920s-1930s; most were killed in the Holocaust.

The group is remembered in the Gora Kalwaria Yizkor Book, where Yaacov wrote:

“A unique orchestra directed by Beryl Ryback …who knows? Under different circumstances Beryl could well have gone on to become a world-renowned conductor."

This all exists only in the memories of the survivors of Ger, in all the countries of the world where they have been scattered…from time to time they feel a longing for this beautiful romantic past, that belongs to a past that is dead and buried… The Jews of Ger died the deaths of martyrs by the hands of the vile Nazi murders!”

Avner used the PoT contact information given by Yaakov to trace his family and found Yaakov's grandson Giora. The two branches were reunited at the Goldhechts' home in Israel.

Neither Avner's mother nor his uncle knew their father had submitted the PoTs.

Avner has recently launched a Facebook page dedicated to The Mandolin Orchestra of Ger, as well as efforts to stage a reviva concert of the group.

For more, and to see photos, click the link above.

Tracing the Tribe always advises searching the Pages of Testimony at the link above. Remember that additional pages are added all the time, so even if you've checked in the past and found nothing, there may now be new pages of interest.

Military Jews: 39th Royal Fusileers

My grandfather, Sidney (born Szja) Fink (left) lied about his age and joined the 39th Royal Fusileers, which fought with the British against the Turks in Palestine in 1918.

Steve Lasky of the online Museum of Family History has a link to a great 1919 article from the New York Daily Tribune about the experiences of Reuben Bushmitz, who perhaps knew my grandfather as they served in the same battalion.

Grampa's experiences are displayed at Bet Hagdudim in Avichail, near Netanya, Israel, where there is a museum dedicated to these young men. Some of them did not return to the US after their service, settled in Avichail, and created the museum.

This story about Bushmitz answered many questions I had about Grampa's experiences.

One story Grampa told was that during one battle, a voice called out from across the trenches - from the Turkish side - asking "Szja, is that you? This is your cousin David." I never understood how that was possible. Two Jews from Suchostaw in Galizia (Austro-Hungary at the time), each fighting on opposite sides?

Bushmitz's story explained about Jews impressed by the Turks to fight in their army. So Grampa's cousin, who had obviously arrived much earlier in Palestine, was in the Turkish army and fighting the Brits.

Here's just a bit of the long story:

From the East Side to Jerusalem and Return: Wearers of the "Mogen David" Enlisted in a British Contingent to Fight the Turks

Reuben Bushmitz, of Flat No. 9, 135 Eldridge Street, late private of the 39th Battalion, Royal Fusileers, is going back to cutting knee pants next week. He expects to be a bit rusty at it, because he has been crusading in the Holy Land and against the Turk for considerably more than a year.

Part of the crusading, the last part, wasn’t so interesting, he said. It consisted merely of feeding and exercising a compound full of formerly Terrible Turks who had run themselves ragged for several months up to October, 1918.

More than three hundred crusaders like ex-Private Bushmitz have come back from Turk-taming in the last ten days and will resume knee plants cutting, or delicatessen store keeping, or shipping clerking, just where they left off when some voice which had been silent a couple of thousand years or more called to them to come and free the Holy Land.

The voice was penetrating. It was heard even above the sweatiest of sweatshop machines, and above the assorted whimperings of a dozen children of the noisiest family which ever crowded into three rooms. Young men whose shoulders were on a lateral line with the backs of their heads and whose only exercise had been some footwork on a pants sewing machine, got up, straightened their spines in a tentative style and went out to fight.

The British Canadian Recruiting Mission, then situated at 220 West Forty-second Street, became the objective for these young men who wanted to win back from the infidel the land sacred to Abraham and Isaac and David. ...

Do read the entire story.

Thank you, Steve, for this story which explains so much.

US, Canadian archivists help Israel, Palestinians

US and Canadian archivists have launched a project to help Israel and the Palestinians preserve their archives, according to this JTA newsbrief.

Archivist of the United States Allen Weinstein and his Canadian counterpart, Ian Wilson, met earlier this year with officials of both the Israel State Archives and the Palestine National Archives.

"The purpose of these meetings was to discuss projects that would assist in the digitization of paper records of both Israel and Palestine that would ultimately document the joint heritage of people in the region," said a statement released Thursday.

"They are also working with both institutions to develop archival training programs for their staff, and have received enthusiastic support from" U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice "and the State Department for these projects."

A joint US-Canada exhibit is being launched on the 1783 Treaty of Paris, ending the Revolutionary War and dividing North America into the US and those British colonies which would become Canada.