Contest: AARP 'Discover Your Roots'

There's a family history sweepstakes contest for the 45-and-over crowd, sponsored jointly by AARP and professional genealogist Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak.

The grand prize - aimed at helping readers uncover the mysteries of your family's history - includes

•  Five hours of private consultation via phone with Megan, an internationally-renowned professional genealogist.

•  Signed copies of Megan’s books: “Who Do You Think You Are?” and “Trace Your Roots with DNA.”

•  One-time DNA ancestry testing through FamilyTreeDNA.com

•  A one-year subscription to Ancestry.com

•  $1,000 gift card

The grand prize value is $2,500.

The sweepstakes began May 24 and runs through August 15, ending at 11.59pm ET.

To enter, click here. Follow the links and instructions to complete and submit the free registration form. It is open to legal residents of the 50 US states and the District of Columbia who are at least 45 years old at time of entry.

Each entrant automatically receives one entry into the sweepstakes. Each entrant may enter only one time. Note that the rules preclude using methods to enter multiple times.

There's free registration, nothing to buy, and you just might win, so why not enter?

Ancestry.com: Demise of 'Expert Connect'

Ancestry.com has just informed the genealogy community that its Expert Connect service will be "disconnected" as of March 18.

Here is the announcement:

Over a year ago Ancestry.com created Expert Connect as a way to expand its service offerings and provide additional assistance for members through an elite group of professional genealogists and researchers. Through this service, customers were given the opportunity to hire genealogists to retrieve records, perform research or simply acquire expert advice.

Though this service has been a positive experience, Ancestry.com has decided to focus on other business priorities, so as of March 18, 2011, Expert Connect will no longer be a service that Ancestry.com will offer to its members.

Both experts and members currently involved in Expert Connect have been notified of this update. We encourage members to finish out existing projects with experts they have located through the Expert Connect service and if needed, continue relationships for future projects they may have.

At the time Expert Connect was created, there was some controversy, on which numerous genealogy bloggers commented.

Washington DC: JGSGW celebrates 30th anniversary, Oct. 17

The Jewish Genealogy Society of Greater Washington (DC)  will celebrate its 30th anniversary on Sunday, October 17.

Russian and Central European specialist researcher Boris Feldblyum (a JGSGW member) will present "Archival Research: Challenges and Strategies for Success."

He will share some tips and tricks he uses when researching for private clients. Learn how to get the most for your effort.

Doors open at 1pm, with the program at 1.30pm, at Har Shalom, 11510 Falls Road, Potomac, Maryland.

The event includes hors d'oeuvres, snacks and punch, door prizes.

Fee: JGSGW members, free; others, $5. For more information and directions, click the JGSGW website here.

The JGSGW is the host of the 31st IAJGS International Conference on Jewish Genealogy (14-19 August 2011) at the Grand Hyatt in Washington DC. Click here for all conference information.

Boston: NEHGS new visitor tour, Oct. 6

The New England Historical Genealogical Society will offer a new visitor and welcome tour on Wednesday, October 6.

Learn all about the NEHGS and its resources at a free lecture for members and others, from 10-11:30am, at 99-101 Newbury St., Boston.

Starting your family genealogy can seem a little daunting at first. There is so much information found in a variety of locations. Let NEHGS help you make sense of it all by attending this FREE lecture for both members and non-members. This talk introduces you to the NEHGS research library.

Founded in 1845, it is the country’s oldest and largest non-profit genealogy library and archive. With more than 15 million artifacts, books, manuscripts, microfilms, journals, photographs, records, and other items, NEHGS can provide researchers of every level some of the most important sources of information.

Participants will be able to describe research interests to a staff genealogist, who will provide advice. The session begins with a half-hour intro talk, followed by a tour of the library and its holdings.

For more information, visit AmericanAncestors.org.

Orlando FL: Collect, save, organize memories, Sept. 28

"How to collect, save and organize your precious memories," with Tom Hirsch, is the next program of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Greater Orlando on Tuesday, September 28.

The program begins at 1pm; the meeting is free and open to the public, in the Goldman Social Hall, Congregation of Reform Judaism, Orland.

JCSCO member Tom Hirsch will sponsor an "on-line" demo:

-- To demonstrate some websites, bookmarking, and organizing the websites in your web browser; organizing, and saving files, and backing up those files.

-- Provide information on doing serious research.

-- Demonstrate digitally photographing items to include in family history, and photostitching to combine photos into a single photo or record.

-- Available Freeware

For more information, click here.

Morocco: Jewish documents to be digitalized

An Oregon anthropologist has received a grant to digitize Jewish Moroccan documents.

In Rabat, Morocco, on a 2005 Fulbright research grant, Lewis & Clark University assistant professor of anthropology Oren Kosansky worked with community leaders and discovered a genizah (photo left) - a room or depository found in synagogues, where old religious documents no longer needed are kept and then periodically buried.

Tracing the Tribe reminds readers that such collections are often rich resources for family information and provide details not available elsewhere, which will surely benefit genealogists and family history researchers looking for information on Jewish families in Rabat.

Kosansky has now won a $50,000 grant from the National Endowment of the Humanities (NEH) to develop a digital archive of Jewish Moroccan documents from the 18th-20th centuries. The online archive will enable open access to international researchers interested in North African Jewish culture and allow them to share ideas and information. The project will also offer a new model for intercultural and international collaboration in the creation of technological resources to share historical information.

What is a genizah and what may be found in one? The most famous of course, is the Cairo Genizah.

“In Judaic tradition, documents containing references to God are forbidden from being destroyed,” Kosansky explained. “Most obviously books and papers on religious topics such as the Torah are deemed sacred and treated in a ceremonious fashion, but any item with religious or legal references—such as a wedding announcement or business contract—would also be kept.

“In this case, I found literally thousands of books and documents pertaining to virtually all facets of Jewish life in Morocco, especially as it was transformed during the 20th century. My first thought was, ‘How can I save these materials from burial, so that they can be consulted by community members and scholars.’”

The Rabat community once had thousands of residents, but decreased to less than 100 following major emigration to Israel, France and elsewhere. The research materials remained in Rabat.

“Written materials are very important in Judaism,” Kosansky explained. “It is a very textual culture. These documents offer great insight into a culture and a community of people that once thrived here. They offer an opportunity to investigate elements of a society that has not been fully explored by those of us in the academic field. For the Jewish community, it represents something perhaps even more valuable—an opportunity to reflect on how their traditions have been shaped by modern life, colonialism, technological change, and global networks of migration, communication, and commerce.”

The community leaders allowed Kosansky to go through hundreds of sacks containing thousands of documents to determine which documents were appropriate for burial and which represented significant historical texts suitable for preservation. They gave him the documents for preservation and he donated them to the Jewish Museum in Casablanca. The collection includes handwritten letters, unpublished manuscripts, community records, as well as published materials in Judeo-Arabic, Hebrew and French.

The project raised questions on how to build such a specialized archive, and how to respect legal, ethical and social differences across societies:

“There are so many issues up for consideration,” Kosansky said. “For example, what, if any, are the copyright issues for such old documents? And what are the copyright laws in Morocco? Are their private documents we shouldn’t digitized out of respect for some individuals or the Jewish community? Who should be consulted on such ethical considerations?”

He will begin the project when he directs the university's first overseas program in Morocco in spring 2011. While there, he'll be locating experts in the US and in Morocco in digital archives, information access, intellectual property law and Jewish history to address the legal issues, begin digitization and build the website.

Read the complete article at the link above for more information.

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.

JewishGen: ShtetLinks, recent updates

JewishGen's ShtetLinks Project provides a way for genealogists and family historians to memorialize the communities of our ancestors, and provide resources for others who discover their roots.

Here are the newest ones as provided by Susana Leistner Bloch, who is in charge of the project.

-- Berehove (Beregszasz), Ukraine
-- Dzikow Stary (Dzikhev)
-- Kamennyy Brod, Ukraine
-- Klykoliai (Klikol), Lithuania
-- Philippson JCA Colony (Itaara), Brazil
-- Raducaneni, Romania
-- Szczercow (Shtchertzov, Stertzev)
-- Velke Kapusany (Nagykapos), Slovakia

Some pages were started by individuals who can no longer maintain them. One page in this category has now been adopted:

-- Leova, Moldova

Orphaned webpages available for adoption:

-- Borisov, Belarus
-- Krnov (Jaegerndorf), Czech Republic
-- Lask, Poland
-- Rozdol, Ukraine

ShtetLinks webpages recently updated:

-- Raducaneni, Romania
-- Tarnobrzeg, Poland

If you would like to create a webpage for your ancestral shtetl or adopt an orphaned page, send an email to Susana Leistner Bloch. Volunteers are available to help you create your page.

Alien resident A-Files released for public access

According to a National Archives press release, more than 300,000 case files on US alien residents are now open to the public at the National Archives branch in Kansas City, Missouri.

While you can search for your names of interest online, you may only see the files in person or order copies. Click here to search for names in the Archival Research Catalog. Not all the hits returned are for A-Files, some are for armed forces service and other documents.

I found A-Files for TOLLIN, BANK, FINK and others of interest. The first screen after a search lists the names. Click on a name of interest and learn more about the file in general terms. Click on the "Scope & Content" tab for an A-File and learn the individual's birthdate and country of origin. For David Tollin: "This file consists of an alien case file for David Tollin. Date of birth is listed as 07/20/1898. Country is listed as Russia."

The press release indicated that these files are for those born prior to - and including - 1909.

Known as A-Files, they were transferred to the Archives from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS). They are only a small portion of millions of files that will eventually be transferred and opened to public access.

“The A-files are a key to unlocking the fascinating stories of millions of people who traveled to the United States in search of opportunity, including my own grandfather” said Archivist of the United States David S. Ferriero. “They include information such as photographs, personal correspondence, birth certificates, health records, interview transcripts, visas, applications and other information on all non-naturalized alien residents, both legal and illegal. The snapshot of American life that develops from each file can, in some cases, serve as a one-stop-shopping for researchers.”

The INS - predecessor to the USCIS - began issuing Alien Registration numbers in 1940, and began creating A-files in 1944. According to the agency, the files document the famous, the infamous, the anonymous and the well-known, and are an historical and genealogical goldmine. They hold numerous relatively modern documents in one file for a rich source of biographical information.

The files are subject to the 100-year rule, meaning they can can be transferred to the NA after 100 years from the birth date of a file's subject.

The Kansas City branch will hold all A-Files except from San Francisco, Honolulu, Reno, and Guam, which will be held at the San Francisco branch. Those files are being prepared for transfer.

Unfortunately, they are not online. They may be viewed in person by appointment at Kansas City or copies of files may be ordered for a fee. Click here to learn more about requesting A-Files.

Planning a trip to KC? The branch is open Tuesday-Saturday, 8am-4pm for research.

Read the complete press release at the first link above.

Chicago: Success session, August 29

Jewish Genealogical Society of Illinois members will report on their family history research successes on Sunday, August 29.

Researchers will also share how they discovered their "finds," and the Ask the Experts panel will also chime in. Attendees are encouraged to bring a success story to share.

The program begins at 2pm at Temple Beth Israel, Skokie, although doors open at 12.30pm for library access, assistance and networking.

For more information, see the JGSI website.

The Galitzianer: Call for articles

Gesher Galicia's journal - The Galitzianer - has issued a call for submissions for the November 2010 issue.

According to managing editor Janice Sellers of San Francisco, submissions may be articles and/or graphics, original or previously published, and relevant to Galician genealogical research.

These may include articles on recent trips to Galicia, reports on your own research, historical and recent pictures relevant to Galicia.

Electronic submissions are preferred, but not required and may be from Gesher Galicia members or others.

Contact Janice for more information. The deadline for the November issue is October 15.

Miracles do happen: Family history found

Miracles do happen.

Here's the story of a family history discovered in the backseat of a junkyard car.

Now, if someone out there could only find the 300-year-old TALALAY family history that was lost in the 1950s when the man - who brought it to the US from Belarus - died. It disappeared during the clearing out of his Florida apartment.

The Progress-Index.com (Petersburg, Virginia) story was a feel-good, warm-fuzzies recounting of a prayer answered.

The two-century history turned up after owner John Jarratt loaned the book to someone who worked for the city about 2 1/2 years ago. He didn't remember who or what happened to it since then. But this summer it came home. The photo (left above) shows details of one page.

His grandfather, also named John, organized the book, which includes documents related to the family history in Petersburg, including tax receipts, deeds and more from the early 1800s. In 1815, Jarratt paid $2.18 in tax on a piece of land.

The family traces its roots to three brothers - Alexander, Richard and John - who lived and worked on Pocahontas Island as free blacks.

"I'm the fourth John," Jarratt said with a laugh. He went on to say that his ancestors were doing well for the time period. "They were free, they owned a business, and they owned a house." The house they built is the only two-story and only brick structure on Pocahontas Island and it stands there still to this day.

Anna Jarratt said the house was even used as part of the Underground Railroad.

John Jarratt said that the records in the book even indicate that at times, the Jarratts owned slaves themselves.

In July, he was returning from North Carolina and told his sister-in-law he had been praying about the book. By the end of the next week he received a phone call from a Richmond woman who said that she had found something important in a junkyard in Charlottesville. She said he might want to have it back, and he was reunited with the book soon after.

The woman who found it said she knew it was special.

"The first time I saw it in the car, I just thought it was a photo album," Sumner said. But something drew her back to looking at the book. When she took a look inside she realized it was much more important. "I looked inside and realized it was pretty special."

She found the Jarratts and contacted them.

Read the complete story, see the photograph and the video at the link above.

Great story! Have you experienced anything like this? We all need encouragement that our lost histories may be returned in one way or another.

Israel: Important new database projects

At the recent IAJGS conference in Los Angeles, the 2010 Stern Grant was awarded to the Israel Genealogical Society.

The grant will make possible the database of name changes as published, beginning in 1949, in the Yalkut Hapirsumim of the Israeli Government.

As data is extracted from each volume, it will be added to a database - open to public access - on the IGS website, and will provide help to those facing brick walls in Israeli research.

In another development, the IGS has launched the online beta site for the "19th Century Montefiore Censuses of the Jewish Population of Eretz Israel, Alexandria, Beirut and Sidon (Saida)."

It is particularly useful for those researching Sephardic families as records are difficult to find. A search for "Iran" produced 34 families. In contrast, a search for "Belarus" received 527 hits, with 40 listing Mogilev and 31 listing Mahilyow (current spelling) as place of birth. Some names seem familiar from my TALALAI research and I will check the names of wives and children in my own records. Perhaps some of my own "missing links" might be in this database!

According to the Montefiore Endowment:

The Montefiore Endowment commissioned the Israel Genealogical Society to transliterate the censuses into modern Hebrew and English scripts and to translate them.

Details include personal and family information, occupations and countries of origin. Less than 1% of the Jewish inhabitants at the time refused to participate on religious grounds, so the censuses are quite detailed. Other residents may not have been included for other reasons, such as personal or political. Read more about these censuses here at IGS.

The manuscripts are the property of the Montefiore Endowment and are in London,. Researchers may view them by appointment. Details are recorded in Hebrew in diverse scripts, many are very difficult to read, there is no index, and tracking of individuals is difficult.

The methodology of the project included:

-- Scanning the original manuscript pages and converting old but still usable microfiche images to PDF format
-- Transcribing the data into spreadsheets
-- Proof-reading and correcting
-- Pasting the different sections into a single spreadsheet for each census
-- Translating and/or transliterating the original Hebrew into the English/Latin alphabet
-- Final proof-reading
-- Converting the spreadsheet into a searchable database.

Since 2008, the IGS and its dedicated volunteers have been working on transcribing the censuses into a modern Hebrew font, to transliterate names and details into English

For the first time, the documents are now in the process of being made available in Hebrew and English with a dual-language search engine to help track individuals and families. Extended families are linked, and there are links to the digitized page.

The project includes five censuses of Eretz Israel (including Beirut and Sidon) and one of Alexandria. Currently, the 1839, 1840 (Alexandria) and 1855 are now online here

The 1849 census will be available in a few months.

Washington DC: 'DC resources' newest edition

Happy 30th anniversary to the Jewish Genealogy Society of Greater Washington!

The society has pubished the new updated and expanded fifth edition of “Capital Collections: Resources for Jewish Genealogical Research in the Washington, DC Area.”

Planning a trip to the nation's capitol? Researching the area or live there? This 116-page guide is essential in so many ways.

Resources, phone numbers, websites and security information is updated; new sites are added. There's even a section on public transport, including a DC Metro system map.

The 31st IAJGS International Conference on Jewish Genealogy will be in Washington DC in August 2011, and this guide will be invaluable for those planning research in conjunction with that event.

Contents include:

-- ARCHIVES I
-- ARCHIVES II
-- NATIONAL RECORDS CENTER (WNRC) New!
-- THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
-- U. S. HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL MUSEUM
-- NATIONAL MUSEUM OF AMERICAN JEWISH MILITARY HISTORY
-- DAUGHTERS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION (DAR) LIBRARY
-- FAMILY HISTORY CENTERS
-- NATIONAL LIBRARY OF MEDICINE
-- HOUSE OF THE TEMPLE LIBRARY
-- U. S. NAVY MEMORIAL AND HERITAGE CENTER New!
-- THE NAVAL HISTORICAL CENTER New!
-- MARYLAND including: Annapolis, Baltimore City, Baltimore County Eastern Shore, Frederick County, Montgomery County, and Prince George's County
-- VIRGINIA including Northern Virginia and Richmond
-- SYNAGOGUES & CHAVUROT
-- CEMETERIES IN THE WASHINGTON AREA
-- CEMETERIES IN THE BALTIMORE AREA

Spiral-bound, it lies flat for easy use, and would be very useful for genealogy libraries. Price per copy: $25 (including shipping/handling in the US); or, for JGSGW members only, $15 (includes shipping/handling in the US).

To order, send a check, payable to the JGS of Greater Washington Inc., to:

The Jewish Genealogy Society of Greater Washington, Inc.
P.O. Box 1614
Rockville, Maryland 20849
Att: Capital Collections

For shipment outside the US or more questions, contact the JGSGW.

Pennsylvania Dutch: Ashkenazi, German encounters

Matt Singer has an interesting idea.

He's writing an independent project on the encounter between Ashkenazi Jews and Pennsylvania Germans in Pennsylvania Dutch Country as a material culture analysis.

A Penn State American studies doctoral student, his project should be of interest to Tracing the Tribe's readers. Matt was happy to share additional information with me.

He plans to document and analyze material culture reflecting the encounter between Pennsylvania Germans and Yiddish- and German-speaking (Ashkenazi) Jews from Central and Eastern Europe who settled in the so-called Pennsylvania Dutch Country from the 18th through early-20th centuries. The area is centered in Lancaster, Lebanon, and Berks counties but encompasses most of southeastern and central Pennsylvania.

While Pennsylvania Germans and American Jews have both been the subjects of extensive scholarly research, this particular history - which focuses on the interaction and influence between two Germanic people whose separate diasporas brought them to Southeastern and Central Pennsylvania - has not been studied, he says.

Matt also plans to incorporate and focus on fraktur (example left), a text-based Pennsylvania-German art-form, as part of this study.

Fraktur (example left) is the decoration of paper with calligraphic texts and related designs, figures and symbols, using pen and ink and/or watercolors. Click here (a gallery of examples and many other articles) or here for another article. The first link has many examples of this vibrant folk-art that was used for many types of documents.

Says Matt, a small but significant number of Jews worked as itinerant fraktur artists and scriveners. They functioned much like countless Jews who - typically in their earliest years in the US - earned their livelihoods as peddlers. However, traveling fraktur artists and scriveners, unlike most peddlers, left surviving evidence of their work.

A Google search for "jewish fraktur" turned up a mention in Irwin Richman's book "the Pennsylvania Dutch Country." Pages 57-58 offer information on this variety and mentions two artists, Martin Wetzler who drew a Star of David on his creations and signed his name in Hebrew, as well as Justus I.H. Epstein who lived and worked in Reading.

Fraktur incorporating Hebrew words and phrases was created by Christian Hebraists, and at least one example was made by a Pennsylvania German artist for a Jewish patron.

Finally, through the examination of fraktur in relation to traditional Ashkenazi-Jewish forms such as the ketubah (marriage contract), wimpel (Torah binder), illustrated prayer-books, and mizrachim (a wall-hanging that indicates the direction for prayer - East, mizrach), Matt will search for artistic motifs, approaches, and intentions shared (or not shared) by Pennsylvania Germans and Ashkenazi Jews and their continuity (or discontinuity) as the two distinct yet geographically and culturally related groups established new lives, communities, and cultures in the New World.

Matt, like many of us first became interested in genealogy after watching "Roots" in 1977, as a young teenager. Later, the emergence of JewishGen in the 1990s "turned this interest into a passion."

His paternal SINGER line was from the Ponevezh (Panevezys) area in Kovno Gubernia, Lithuania.

Says Matt, according to a distant cousin (now deceased) who was equally obsessed with genealogy and family history, the family moved from East Prussia to Lithuania around 1840.

"Such a migration pattern is slightly counterintuitive," he says, "and I’ve never been able to document it.

What I do know is that my great-grandfather David Singer immigrated from Neustadt Ponevezh, Lithuania, in 1886 and seemed to have moved directly to Middletown, Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, a small Pennsylvania-German town outside of Harrisburg (where much of the family eventually settled).

His primary maternal line - the KLEINMAN/N) - were from the Kurland/Courland region (now southwestern Latvia) which, though absorbed by Russia in the Partition of Poland in 1795, was German in language and culture and not part of (although not far from) the Pale of Settlement.

My great-great-grandfather Abraham Kleinman immigrated from Friedrichstadt (now Jaunjelgava), Kurland, in 1887 and first settled in Lancaster, the heart of “Pennsylvania Dutch Country,” and later lived in several smaller towns in the region before ultimately settling in Harrisburg.

Counting my older brother’s children, five generations of my Jewish family (I’m also one-quarter Austrian and German Catholic by descent) have been born in “Pennsylvania Dutch Country,” and seven have lived in it (my great-great-great grandparents Elias and Sarah Rachel Kleinman—Abraham’s parents—followed their son, immigrating here in 1891).

All of Matt's Jewish ancestors were Litvaks, although he adds:

The Kleinmans represented a sort of German-Litvak hybrid, as did the Singers, I suppose, if they really did move from East Prussia to Lithuania ), as seems to be the norm in the vicinity of Harrisburg (of course, the Litvaks were preceded by Jews from southern Germany ). I believe the same is true of all of Pennsylvania Dutch Country—but that’s a matter for research far from completed!

Matt's geographical locations and names of interest include East Prussia, Singer; Courland, Kleinman, Toor, Tuch, Singer; and Lithuania, Singer, Tuch, Gerber, Garonzik, Ringer and Blau.

Do you have any written memoirs inherited from immigrant ancestors who settled in the area?

Would you share them with Matt? Readers are welcome to contact him.

Florida: The right place, the right time

Historic preservationist Josh Wilks was in the right place at the right time when he saw a suitcase in a trash pile outside the Finkelstein home in Pensacola, Florida.

The owners gave permission for him to take it, and thus began the story of its contents - handwritten trans-Atlantic Holocaust-era correspondence in English and Yiddish - as Wilks, 31, tracked down generations of Fuchs and Finkelsteins.

In the Pensacola News Journal, the story, by Louis Cooper, covers a tragic era, refugees, immigration, Prague, London, a Jewish community's help and more. There are also images of the original letters.

In 1939, Eugene Fuchs and his family, from Prague, wrote to his cousin Katie Finkelstein in Florida, asking for help so that they could come to America because of the worsening situation. Through Finkelstein's years of effort and eventual sponsorship, Fuchs, his wife Ester, and children, Klara — now Claire — and Harry, arrived in America in 1948 and changed their name to Fox.

With the family's permission, Wilks researched the letters and searched for the people mentioned in them - and their descendants, checking records, manifests and cold-calling Fuchses and Foxes around the country.

"I was hit with an overpowering feeling of awe that one person, Katie Finkelstein, a housewife in 1939 Milton, Florida, was trying everything she could to help this family she had never met. She was their only link outside of Europe — to survival — and she knew that."

Wilks found Fuchs' daughter, Claire Perskie, who was 5 when she fled Prague with her mother and brother. All she knew was that they only had her mother's knapsak when they left at night, traveled by train and boat to Holland and England. where they rejoined Fuchs. The little girl was sent to foster care while her parents and brother went to a Czech refugee camp. Meanwhile, they were trying to get to the US.

She had never known how Finkelstein had helped until she saw the letters.

Read the story of how Finkelstein organized a group to help the family, including the Department of State, Temple Beth El, a local attorney and a congressman who was later governor.

Wilks wants the primary source letters to be used to focus the impact of the Holocaust on a local family. He's working with the family, the University of West Florida, the Library of Congress, local historians and others to decide the best way.

Read the complete story and view letter images at the link above.

JGSLA 2010: Calling all Litvaks!

If your family is from Lithuania, here are some excellent reasons to attend the 30th International Conference on Jewish Genealogy, July 11-16, in Los Angeles.

LitvakSIG is is one of the largest Special Interest Groups (SIGs) and country-specific programs, given by SIG officers and other experts are set for Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of the conference week. In addition to these programs, conference-goers will be networking to share information and meet other researchers looking for information on common names and geographical locations.

For speakers, bios and all conference details, click JGSLA 2010.

Monday, July 12

8am: Rokiskis-Kupiskis Shtetl Birds-of-a-Feather (BOF).

A gathering for those with relatives from Kupiskis and Rokiskis in Lithuania, or researchers interested in learning more about this area. Also see presentation and panel discussion on organizing and integrating data from multiple sources in the “Beyond ShtetLinks to Interactive Groups” session at 2.15pm Wednesday.

1.50pm: How Helping our Cousins Emigrate from the USSR Uncovered the Colorful 250 Year History of a Litvak Family:

The Rostov-on-Don Cousins group organized 500 descendants of a Lithuanian-Russian family to help newly-discovered cousins emigrate from the USSR, following a reunion in Moscow featured in Billy Crystal’s HBO Emmy winning special “Midnight Train to Moscow.” Representatives of seven branches met monthly, raised funds for the new immigrants, produced a Family Newsletter/History Journal, held reunions, created a 50-foot Photo Family Tree, and in the process, re-created the family’s first immigration experience that began 125 years ago. Research on the 250-year history of the family included Interviews, autobiographies, diaries, Yiddish stories, newspaper articles, archival research in Lithuania and Rostov-on-Don. Dramatic stories include a shipwreck in the English Channel, escaping from Russia during the Revolution, founding organizations in New York and Los Angeles, brothers in top-secret positions on both sides of the Iron Curtain, and more. This research led to forming the Ariogala Shtetl Group, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania Project, and the co-founding of LitvakSIG.

5pm: Litvak Seek - Finding Your One in a Million (Searching the ALD Successfully) (Computer Lab - fee).

A hands-on computer class to learn how to successfully navigate the LitvakSIG website with a focus on the All Lithuania Database (ALD) and other LitvakSIG-created databases to research your Litvak ancestors. Students will learn how to effectively search, analyze search results, acquire copies of the databased records and use the website to enhance knowledge and family histories. Basic understanding of Russian Empire history and geography, naming and spelling conventions, basic personal family history knowledge will prove helpful.

Wednesday, July 14

9.45am: The Development of Zionism in Lithuania (1906-1940):

From its beginning, the Zionist movement in Lithuania was an integral part of the World Zionist movement, but even with its international character, its development was necessarily different than in Poland, Germany or Russia. However the success of Zionism was not guaranteed by its specifically Litvak character. Lithuania never became a place where the Zionist ideas were inspired. Zionist organizations in Lithuania, while keeping the common ideology and political line, attempted to realize the ideals of the movement in their practical work, as well as trying to cover all spheres of Jewish daily life. Zionist leaders tried to provide answers to all questions that arose over time and changes of the geopolitical situation. The main focus of the presentation is on the underlying ideas and practices of Lithuanian Zionism, the means taken by Zionist leaders of the organization to improve Jewish life in Lithuania and repatriation to Palestine.

11:15: Researching Your Litvak Roots Using the LitvakSIG Website: An Overview of the Special Interest Group, Research Projects and Websites and 1 million Record All-Lithuanian-Database.

This presentation will provide a comprehensive tour through the LitvakSIG website and the many ways it serves as "home" to Litvak researchers. This will include the LitvakSIG All Lithuania Database (ALD), with nearly 1 million records, other databases to Litvak research; an overview of the LitvakSIG record translation projects currently underway, and the structure of LitvakSIG -- how researchers can help get the records from their towns translated.

12.45pm: Where is our Home? Lithuanian Forced Migrations Before and After WW I - LitvakSIG luncheon (fee).

The Jewish areas of settlement had been limited to the Pale of Settlement since the final partition of Poland in 1795 and later regulations in the 19th century Russian Empire. In May 1915, at the beginning of WW I, the Russian Army ordered the mass expulsion of Jews from most of Kovno Gubernia. Most Jews were settled in Yekaterinoslav (Southern Russia), Poltava, Mogilev and other provinces in the depths of the Russian empire. The long way back started right after the World War I and it was different from any other: Jews decided to return home of their own will, while their Homeland was divided into several newly independent states (including Vilna and other areas under Polish control). The paper describes the difficulties faced by the Jews who decided to return to the newly independent Lithuania after WWI, including arranging for permission to enter the country, getting permanent documents and once back in Lithuania, proving their rights of citizenship.

2:15pm: Town-Wide Research: Beyond ShtetLinks to Interactive Groups.

Coordinators of Jewish Community (shtetl) groups will discuss how they organized to obtain town-wide records, working with existing landsmanshaften, and focusing on the town and on the relationships between families who lived in the town. The panel will describe the sources they used to obtain many types of records including: archives, museums, national and local libraries, and cemeteries - in Lithuania - and in the countries Litvaks emigrated to (US, South Africa. Israel, Argentina, and others. Records include 18th, 19th, 20th century censuses, memoirs, the Eishishok photograph collection (USHMM), family stories, Yizkor books and the Interwar Community YIVO records; Yad Vashem’s Pages of Testimony, vital records, property, tax, rabbi electors and conscription lists; farmer’s applications, Internal Passports, court records, and stories in the Yiddish press and periodical literature. They will explain how they have cooperated with SIGs, and have stimulated group-interaction, using reunions, Birds-of-a-Feather gatherings at annual conferences, Internet groups. They will explain how they encouraged group interaction and the sharing and preservation of the history and family stories of their towns. These will be presented as models which others interested in focusing on entire ancestral towns, can follow.

3.45pm: Lithuanian research - past, present, and future.

Records that have been acquired, those in the pipeline, and what can be expected in the future. Court records, police records, foreign passport records, Teacher and Student School records, records of Jewish Prisoners in Lithuanian Prisons, etc. What are the possibilities of records that are presently unknown or have we reached the end of the line? Supporting a group effort to obtain records or just concentrating on acquiring records on your own? Using a private researcher or going through the archives? Doing your own research in the Lithuanian Archives. The advantages and disadvantages of each course of action. Archives outside of Lithuania that contain Lithuanian records such as those in Moscow and St. Petersburg: what do they contain and how accessible are they? The latest trends in LitvakSIG’s efforts to educate its members about records.

5.15pm: LitvakSIG Annual Meeting.

Board elections, past year achievements and reports on projects, translations, database search and overview and new content.

Thursday, July 15

7am: Breakfast With the Experts: A Baltic Road Map - Travel & Research in Lithuania and Latvia.

Hit the road with Howard Margol, Bruce Dumes and Aldona Sudeikiene (a teacher residing in Vilnius) to find out the current state of travel to - and research in - Lithuania and Latvia.

Friday, July 16

11.15am: The Dramatic Expulsion of Jews from NW Lithuania in 1915.

The year is 1915, the second year of World War I. Kaiser Wilhelm II decides to turn his troops eastwards to Russia. His English cousin, King George V, is overjoyed by this diversion. But his Russian cousin, Tsar Nicholas II, is dismayed: The Germans would be using the same route as Napoleon - across the NW corner of Lithuania, river Neiman, Kovno Gubernia. The Jews living in this part of the Pale were believed to be hostile to their Russian masters, and perceived as likely to support the advancing Germans, whom many Jews regarded as kith and kin. (There were upwards of 100,000 Jewish soldiers in the German armies, including Generals and Field Marshalls.) Jews were given 24 hours or less to evacuate: pots and pans, grannies, babies, bundled onto carts and headed to railway stations to travel thousands of miles east to new lives in Ukraine and Crimea. Who were they? From which shtetls? What records exist of their names? How many died? How many were born? How did they settle in their new homes? Why did so many of the successful ones return home in 1921-22?

For all conference details, programs, speakers, and registration, click JGSLA 2010.

New Jersey: Sephardic Jews and Holocaust, June 6

Devin E. Naar will speak on "Sephardic Jews in America and the Holocaust" at Rider University (Lawrenceville, New Jersey) on Sunday, June 6.

The 10th Dorothy Koppelman Memorial Holocaust Lecture, of the Koppelman Holocaust/Genocide Resource Center, will begin at 1pm, in the Luedeke Student Center.

Devin is a Stanford University doctoral candidate in history. His surname also figures prominently in Caribbean Sephardic life.

His talk will focus on the responses of Sephardic Jews in the US to the destruction of their native communities in Greece and the Balkans during the Second World War - a theme previously unexplored by scholars.

He will draw on a variety of textual and visual sources, including Ladino (Judeo-Spanish) newspapers, institutional records, private correspondence, memoirs, poetry and photographs.

Devin is one of the few scholars who have mastered solitreo, handwritten Ladino. He has specialized in the Jewish history of Salonika in the 20th century with emphasis on the effects of the 1917 Great Fire , which left some 50,000 Salonika Jews homeless. Naar’s great grandfather was a rabbi in Salonika.

For a truly fascinating and very detailed journey through Devin's own genealogy, "Tracing the Origins of the Naars of New Jersey: A Personal Odyssey," click here for the article at the Jewish Historical Society of Central Jersey website.

His ancestral Jewish community of Salonika, with a pre-war population of some 60,000, was destroyed during the Nazi occupation; 95% of the city's Jews were killed in Auschwitz in 1943.

Readers interested in attending should send an email to the Holocaust Center administrator.

Salt Lake City: East European conference, July 29-31

The 16th Federation of East European Family History Societies conference will be held in Salt Lake City, July 29-31.

Venues are the Family History Library and the Plaza Hotel (just around the corner from the FHL). For more details, view the FEEFHS site.

This year's theme - "Ancestors Found: Success through Assistance" - will be explored by well-known speakers covering

Part of the event's scope for registered attendees are research consultations with the attending specialists. A Saturday recognition luncheon is also scheduled.

Lecture topics cover handwriting and ethnic documents (Latin, Cyrillic, Gothic, German), using the FHL, gazetteers, maps, geographical research (Polish, Russian Empire, Austrian Empire, German, Balkan, Hungarian Empire, Baltic), Russian Orthodox customs, using US sources to cross the ocean and more.

Speakers include Barbara Bell, Thomas K. Edlund, Marek Koblanski,  Kahlile B. Mehr, Dave Obee, Sylvie Pysnak and Dee Semon.

There are two lectures at each of three time slots each day (8.30am, 9.45am, 11am), with assisted research from 2-5pm each day at the FHL.

Afternoon consultations may include questions concerning any of the countries between the Alps and the Urals, between the Baltic and the Black Seas (Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia).

Registration is $100 (before July 3) and includes the syllabus, luncheon and research assistance. The special Plaza Hotel rate is $82.

For more details, click here.

Florida: Orlando's Online Forum II, May 25

The Jewish Genealogical Society of Greater Orlando will present its Online Research Forum II on Tuesday, May 25.

The program starts at 1pm, in the social hall of the Congregation of Reform Judaism, Orlando.

Building on the good results of the recent Research Forum I, "Sharing Successes in Genealogical Research" will emphasize brick wall solutions with Joanie Schirm and Shirley Michael.

The moderators will be Herb Adler, Irwin Feldman, Larry Morrell, Joel Nierenerg and Jose Valle.

The program will include Tom Hirsch's preview of the June 22 meeting, "Interesting Tips for Researching Ancestors and How To Organize Your Data."
 
For more information, click here.