Family reunion contest: Winners named

When you read about contests, what do you do? Do you think you'll never win and forget about it?

What if the grand prize is a free family reunion?

For one lucky winner, her entry means she will soon meet with a cousin from Denmark, while two runners-up also received recognition for connections to family in South Africa and Norway.

MyHeritage.com and Family Tree Magazine partnered for the free family reunion contest in June.

Winners were recently named in a post on the Family Tree Magazine blog.

Patricia Skubis was the grand prize winner of the free family reunion. Her long-lost Danish relative Tage will travel to the United States so they can meet in person for the first time.

She will also receive a year-long VIP membership to Family Tree Magazine and a three-year Premium-Plus subscription with MyHeritage.com.

Skubis' Danish family immigrated to the US in 1888, while another branch had settled in Australia in 1873. Skubis made contact nearly three decades ago with someone from the down-under branch, but they couldn't find the connection.

 However, that was then, and today we have the power of technology.

There will be more detailed coverage in a future issue of the magazine, but here's some of it.

In March 2011, a Danish family researching THYGESEN posted information on MyHeritage.com and Skubis received a Smart Match notice. She wasn't sure about it because the parents' names were the same, but not the children. She asked for more details and was then able to confirm the match.

I went online to the Danish Church Records [on the Danish archives’ website] and found Tyge Jørgensen’s children between Neils Madsen Thygesen, born in 1794, and my great-great-grandfather Martin, born in 1805. What a great surprise I received when I found that the next son after Neils was Peder Andersen Thygesen, the great-great-grandfather of Alison Rogers.

Tage and I are fourth cousins once removed. Our great-great-grandfathers, along with Alison’s, were brothers.

Runners-up were Linda Mehlinger and Pam Ingermanson, who will each receive a digital subscription to Family Tree Magazine and a three-year Premium-plus subscription on MyHeritage.com. Read some details at the link above about a Zulu warrior pulling five schoolgirls in a rickshaw and Norwegians in Idaho and Ohio.

According to Diane Haddad of Family Tree Magazine:

Thank you to everyone who entered this contest. Both our team at Family Tree Magazine and our contest partners MyHeritage.com were touched by your stories of reconnecting with family, and we're impressed by your diligent research. You’re truly an inspiration to your fellow family historians!

The next time you read about a family reunion contest, what will YOU do?

MyHeritage: Win a reunion with a long-lost relative!

Have you discovered a long-lost relative - who may live anywhere in the world - but you haven't met him or her yet? Don't you want to meet them in person, share your research and reconnect your family?

MyHeritage.com has organized an online contest with Family Tree Magazine that will allow you and your relative to meet - IF YOU WIN.

The grand prize winner will receive a free, expenses-paid reunion with them, a year-long VIP subscription membership with Family Tree Magazine and a three-year Premium-Plus subscription with leading family history site MyHeritage.com. Two runners-up will also receive subscriptions to Family Tree Magazine and MyHeritage.com.

While entrants must live in the US, the long-lost relative may reside anywhere in the world.

Remember: You can't win if you don't enter - so read on for the details

What better time to announce such a great opportunity than just in time for the Southern California Genealogical Society's Jamboree 2012?

Here's the MyHeritage Blog post, with entry guidelines and rules:

Participate in the contest and win a free family reunion! We're very excited to launch a joint contest with Family Tree Magazine, the leading family history magazine in the USA, to celebrate long-lost relative discoveries! Lots of amazing prizes to be won! Read on…

Ever discovered a long-lost relative through your family history research?

 

Share your “long-lost relative discovery” with us and enter a contest to win a free, expenses-paid reunion with them, a year-long VIP subscription membership with Family Tree Magazine and a three-year Premium-Plus subscription with leading family history site MyHeritage.com (among other prizes - a digital subscription to Family Tree Magazine and a 3-year Premium-plus subscription on MyHeritage.com for the two runners-up!).

It takes just a few moments to write a sentence or two about your discovery of a long-lost relative and what this meant to you- either in the comments section below this blog post, on the MyHeritage.com Facebook page or the Family Tree Magazine Facebook page.

This is all you need to do to enter the contest and win a chance to meet your long-lost relative for the first time!

A few tips regarding your entry:

• What relation is your long-lost relative?
• Did you actively search for them or find them by chance? Or did they find you?
• When was the discovery made?
• Describe the personal impact of this discovery. Did it change you or cast new light on your family's legacy?
• What would it mean to you to be able to meet your long-lost relative?

We'd love to hear from all of you - regardless of your location. Sharing family history discoveries and personal stories provides a great source of inspiration for others researching their own families. However, to enter the contest, there are a few rules:

• No purchase necessary.
• Each entrant takes responsibility for any third-party consent.
• Winners will be chosen randomly by Family Tree Magazine - although Facebook likes will be taken into account.
• Odds of winning are directly related to how many people enter the contest.
• One winner will be chosen to win the grand prize. Two will be chosen to win the secondary prize.
• The timing of the reunion trip will be scheduled during summer 2011.
• Restrictions apply to the paid-for reunion: Paid expenses include a round-trip economy flight ticket for one person to meet with the long-lost relative in the US (or alternatively, if the long-lost relative resides outside the US, an international return flight for the relative to the US), a two-night stay at a selected hotel and $300 personal expenses.
• Only those with no prior meeting with the long-lost relative are eligible for the grand prize – and must be willing to participate in a family reunion.
• The winning entry and long-lost relative (s) are required to participate in any related media opportunities/interviews.
• The contest begins at 12AM ET June 8, 2011, and ends at 12AM ET June 15, 2011.
• The entrant is responsible for anything in regard to the legality of entering a contest in the area in which the entrant lives.
• Rules may be updated at any time without notice.
• Winners will be notified via their provided contact information the week following the end of the contest.
• Winners have seven days to claim their prize.
• One entry per person.
• To be eligible to win, the entrant must live in the United States. There are no restrictions on the residential location of the “long-lost relative.”

There'll be three lucky winners (one grand prize winner and two runners-up)! If you have a favorite tell us by either commenting below (at the MyHeritage Blog post) or clicking on the “like” button on entries on the two Facebook pages: MyHeritage.com Facebook page or Family Tree Magazine Facebook page. 

Good luck!

Hmmmm. There are those Talalay cousins in Germany who found me on Facebook, and my scientist cousin who lives in Siberia.

The possibilities are endless, but the contest is only running from June 8-15!

Whom do YOU want to meet? How would it impact your family history?

MyHeritage: SmartMatching upgrade

MyHeritage.com today announced an upgrade to its Smart Matching technology, providing family history researchers with new collaborative tools to find new relatives.

One of the important messages in the press release is that the company reinforces the concept that family trees on MyHeritage.com are safe and secure, as mutually confirmed Smart Matches will hyperlink trees - but not merge them. A tree creator (the owner) maintains complete control of his or her tree. Additionally, tree creators may always export or delete that tree. These features are not found elsewhere.

Readers who have not yet tried MyHeritage.com's Family Tree Builder software or set up an online family site may find these features a strong incentive to do so and enjoy the upgrade.

Here's the press release:

London, England & Tel Aviv, Israel – January 24, 2011 - MyHeritage.com, the most popular family network on the web, today released a major update of its flagship Smart Matching™ technology. A suite of new collaboration features significantly enhances one of the most advanced systems for automatic people discovery in the family history market, evolving Smart Matching™ into a community platform.


Smart Matching™ is a unique technology that matches between the people in a user’s family tree and more than 680 million people in 17 million other family trees on MyHeritage.com. The matching technology is sophisticated and bridges across differences in spelling, phonetics and relationships that may exist between the trees. The technology, available for free, has helped hundreds of thousands of people discover ancestors and locate long-lost relatives, reuniting families whose ties have been broken by time and fate. Several dozen of these success stories are described in interviews on the MyHeritage Blog.


The latest improvements include a complete overhaul of the presentation of Smart Matches™, and a range of new premium features for organizing and reviewing matches more efficiently.


The new Consensus Page, one of the first of its kind available to family historians, aggregates data from all Smart Matches™, presenting the big picture for each person. The Consensus lets users skip numerous one-on-one comparisons with individual family trees, and helps them fill in missing information about relatives more quickly and with more confidence. It conveniently displays a summary of the different names, birth and death dates and places, marriage info, etc., for any particular relative, indicating the number of times each piece of information has been used in other family trees. Users can then copy the most commonly used data as they see fit directly into their own family tree, complete with photos of their choice, and can also add a source citation on the copied data linking back to the original family tree.


The enhanced Smart Matching™ allows users to confirm or reject any match, and the platform distinguishes between matches that were confirmed or rejected by each respective tree owner. Users also have the ability to start discussions about matches, encouraging dialogue between researchers and family members about discoveries and the exchange of noteworthy information on mutual relatives.


“Tracing back the family history as far as possible into the past, and finding new living relatives in the present, are key drivers of the rising trend in online family history that we are witnessing”, said Gilad Japhet, Founder and CEO of MyHeritage.com.

“Our Smart Matching™ technology is instrumental in achieving these goals, by harnessing the vast collective knowledge of the 54 million registered users on MyHeritage.com. Successfully matching between family trees requires cutting-edge technology and a huge family tree data set, and MyHeritage.com has established itself as a world leader in both these areas. We’re committed to creating an environment that nurtures genealogy as a community experience – to be enjoyed and shared by the whole family. The new update adds a layer of collaboration and transforms our powerful technology into a community platform.”


Smart Matching™ works in real time as users enter new information into their trees, as well as offline for deeper and more accurate comparisons. Users are notified by email of new discoveries made by the system. They are then presented with a list of suggested Smart Matches™ for common relatives between two or more family trees – complete with matching criteria and quality scores. Matches can be viewed by individual or by matching tree. The site’s huge global reach and support of 36 languages helps users find and reunite with family members around the world more effectively. Mutually confirmed Smart Matches™ cause family trees to be hyperlinked, not merged, so that tree owners retain complete control of their tree and can always export or delete it – important qualities not available in other family history platforms.


In order to get Smart Matches™ for free, go to MyHeritage.com and start a new family tree, or import an existing tree by uploading a GEDCOM file.

Daniel Horowitz of MyHeritage.com will also be speaking about the new features at upcoming conferences and local speaking dates.

MyHeritage.com: Reuniting a family after 70 years

Here's a great story of Jewish family connections linking branches in Russia and the US some 70 years after all communication had ended.

It gives hope to all families impacted by history

David Greenberg and Grigori Yafet/Jafet were reconnected using the MyHeritage.com Smart Match feature. Ancestral towns mentioned are Kaunas (Kovno), Kedainai (Kedain), families are RUBENSHTEYN, RELKIN, GREENBERG, JAFET/YAFET,

David Greenberg has been researching his family history for nearly 40 years, all this time believing that a large part of his family had perished during the Holocaust. So you can imagine how David was ‘‘flat out speechless’’ to discover otherwise, thanks to a Smart Match on MyHeritage.com.

This is a tale of how fate divided a family, and how MyHeritage helped reunite it.

Read the complete story here and see some wonderful photographs.

A reunion is planned in March in Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Geneabloggers: New blogs

So many new blogs! So little time to catch up with them!

Thomas MacEntee of Geneabloggers.com frequently posts lists of newly discovered gen blogs. Here's the recent roundup of his discoveries. Find out more about each here.

These new ones focus on personal family history, Australia, surnames, New York, write family history, New Zealand, Midwest, Minnesota, New England and family reunions.

An American Dynasty: The Story of a Dakota Family
Individual family history

Blog, blog, blog
Australian genealogy, Individual family history

Davis Genealogy Project (Fitz-Henry Family History)
Surname blog

• Part of a one-name study and is a collaborative project with individuals in the US, UK and Australia.

From the Shadows to the Page
Writing Your Family History blog

• To share and connect with those interested in writing from life, recording their personal histories, writing a memoir for publication and/or personal use, and all things related to writing one’s story.

Hempstead Family – Bklyn, NY
Individual family history, New York genealogy

Inside History Magazine
Australian genealogy, New Zealand genealogy

Jack and Pauline
Individual family history (SIULINSKI and ALBERT)

Lewisville, Minnesota
Individual family history, Midwest genealogy, Minnesota genealogy

Martha Carrier’s Family
Family reunion blog, Individual family history, New England genealogy

• Accused witch Martha Carrier was hanged in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692.

My Mouse Is Broken
Individual family history

To learn more about this batch of new blogs, click here.

Boston: Finding lost families, Dec. 12

Tracing the Tribe has - over the years - discovered Talalay relatives in St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Mogilev, Moscow, as well as those in the US, Germany and Israel.

It is always an interesting experience to reconnect with "lost" relatives, who each provide details previously unknown.

Finding and reconnecting lost relatives in the FSU and Russian Empire is the focus of the next meeting of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Greater Boston, on Sunday, December 12.

The program, featuring a panel of experts, begins at 1.30pm at Temple Emanuel, Newton Centre. There is no admission fee.

US descendants of immigrants from the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union report on finding relatives from the Former Soviet Union (FSU) and a recent Soviet émigré reports on finding descendants of his family who came to the US in the earlier waves of immigration.

Speakers include:

-- Aaron Ginsburg: A first-generation American; founder and president of The Friends of Jewish Dokshitsy. He spearheaded an international effort to help the local government of Dokshitsy, Belarus restore and re-dedicate the town’s Jewish cemetery. He recently organized a Dokshitsy reunion in Rhode Island (documented at Tracing the Tribe). He has been involved with cemetery restoration, shtetl and family history since 1995.

-- Yefim Kogan: Born in Kishinev, Moldova; emigrated from Moscow in 1989. Since then, his extensive genealogical research has enabled him to trace part of his family to the mid-18th century and to find relatives in the US who left Russia in 1906. Currently a graduate student at Hebrew College with a focus in Eastern European Jewish cultural history, he has presented on Jewish history in Bessarabia and genealogy at IAJGS conferences. He is a volunteer JewishGen coordinator.

-- Carol Clingan: A third-generation American, her grandparents came from Belarus and Ukraine. Over nearly 20 years of research, she has traced family back to the early-19th century and discovered relatives still living in the FSU. She is JGSGB vice-president and Program Committee co-chair.

For directions, click here.

Boston-area readers should mark this upcoming date:
-- January 16: Robert Weinberg, "DNA of the Jewish People, Similarities and Differences."

For more information on JGSGB programs, click here.

The National Genealogical Society blog - UpFront - had two interesting posts with pointers to an article on family reunions, and another on a researcher's book recounting her journey as she gathered family information.

UpFront listed Jim Matthews' account in the San Bernardo Sun on the value of family vacations as he attended his wife's family reunion.

The new book launch - today in Truckee, California - included an ice cream party, book reading and signing, to celebrate Buzzy Jackson's new book, "Shaking the Family Tree…Blue Bloods, Black Sheep and Other Obsessions of an Accidental Genealogist."

Ellen Shindelman, JGS of Colorado president, informed Tracing the Tribe that Jackson is a member of the JGSCo, and that Jackson included a discussion of Ukrainian Jewish resources with Kahlile Mehr, a member of the IAJGS Board of Directors, in the book.

The story encompasses 250 years of family history, according to the blog post:

In her new book, Jackson investigates her roots and dives headfirst into her family gene pool: flying cross-country to locate an ancient family graveyard, embarking on a week-long genealogy Caribbean cruise, trekking to the Family History Library in Salt Lake City and even submitting her DNA for testing to try and find her Jacksons. Through her research, she connects with distant relatives, traces her roots back more than 250 years and in the process comes to discover -genetically, historically and emotionally - the true meaning of "family” for herself.

Inspiration is found in many places. Here's hoping these two items will persuade more people to write about their journeys on discovery road.

Click the NGS link above to read these two posts and more.

Reunion: Dokshitsy diaspora, August 20-22

Are you a descendant of Dokshitsy?

Your destination this summer should be the Dokshitsy Diaspora Reunion, August 20-22, in Warwick, Rhode Island.

Aaron Ginsburg has been planning this for some time, and people are coming from Louisiana, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York.

It's a chance to meet other descendants.

Speakers will include Eva Fogelman, who will speak on the psychology of remembering your Dokshitsy roots. A National Archives speaker is anticipated.

Also coming will be Joel Alpert. He created the Dokshity website and coordinated placing the Yizkor book English translation online. Another participant was born in the town.

The reunion will be held at the Radisson Providence Airport Hotel, with special rates for Dokshitsy descendants.

Visit the Dokshitsy Facebook Page here for more information or visit JewishDokshitsy.org for much more, including gravestone photos.

Roots Travel: A London success story

Afraid of reaching out via a cold phone call or email to a long-lost cousin in a distant location?

That "cold" call or tentative email just might result in a wonderful reunion and provide a memorable experience for all involved. It can also bring together family branches long separated for reasons unknown.

When Tracing the Tribe visited our TALALAY/TOLLIN cousins in Springfield, Massachusetts, many years ago, my visit prompted the reunion of several area branches who had not spoken for so long that no one knew why. They lived not far from each other and didn't know they were related, although they had the same rare surname.

We learned that the split had occured because an uncle's wife did not like the wives of her husband's two nephews. Although the branches did not attend the same weddings and bnai mitzvahs, they did attend the funerals.

When the International Conference on Jewish Genealogy was in Toronto awhile back, it was the perfect opportunity to meet my now-late cousin Victor Talalay, with whom I had worked long-distance for a long time on the family history. Victor even attended the conference, and it allowed attendees to see that there really was more than one TALALAY in the world! I later met Victor's brother Michael and family in London, and their uncle, Dr. Paul Talalay, in Baltimore.

My good friend Daniel Horowitz had a similar experience when he traveled to London to represent MyHeritage.com, where he is genealogy and translation manager, at the Who Do You Think You Are? LIVE family history fair in February.

Thanks to his visit (and those tentative emails and phone calls), several SINGER branches were able to meet once again. His SINGERs are from Czernovitz (was Austro-Hungary->Ukraine.

Born and raised in Caracas, Venezuela and now living in Israel, Daniel knew there were London branches but didn't know much about them, except that they didn't talk to each other. When Daniel's father's cousin Renee visited them in Israel, they talked about the family and Daniel's then-upcoming trip to the UK.

"Renee asked if I knew about our London cousins and, of course, I knew about our late uncle Lothar," says Daniel, who adds that "about 25% of my current family tree is due to Lothar's work in the early 1970s, when he compiled a complete tree for my father's mother's family."

However, Daniel didn't know about his sons and other descendants. He had once tried to contact Lothar's wife, but she wasn't very interested.

Renee reminded him about their other cousins in London, including the sons of Dorica (Lothar's cousin) and said she had met them when they visited the family in Israel a few times.

His information on the London relatives was limited to their names and a few dates, he says, but by the end of Renee's visit, he knew much more, including children and previous family contacts.

The critical information was that the two branches in London simply didn't talk to each other because of a problem their parents had experienced.

To genealogists, the opportunity to meet and bring together family is always a call to action! As Daniel told me, "This was the perfect trigger for a genealogy quest."

Renee provided the cousins' contact information. Daniel began contacting them, explaining why he was coming to London and that he really wanted to meet them.

Daniel said they were all cordial and, to his surprise, they agreed to a small family meeting. it took many emails and phone calls to schedule the meeting with as many cousins as possible at very short notice and with a hectic business schedule.

"The first thing I asked them was to bring as many old photos or documents they could find," said Daniel. "I gave them access to my MyHeritage.com family site, so they could see what I already had for them and they could add new information."

They did.

One cousin couldn't make the planned get-together, so Daniel met him a few nights earlier. Over dinner, they talked about their families, and updated each other with information covering 50 years.

"We had each heard the names before, but now I knew exactly what questions to ask. He told me about his father and the pre-WWII stories he had heard: How his father had been in the Russian Army and later with the partisans, how he had been involved in illegal immigration to Israel where he later moved, and how he got to London.

"My cousin found, in his parents' home, many photos with inscriptions on the reverse, along with a completely new family tree of which neither of us was aware. This was new information for me, and what you might call a moment of serendipity! It was the perfect preparation for our family meeting a few days from then."

The other cousins met at a Piccadilly Circus restaurant, and three were already there when Daniel arrived, and another arrived shortly after.

"I introduced myself and explained how we were related. They had brought photos and we began sharing information about our parents and grandparents.

These were cousins who had always lived in the same city and had lost contact for more than 20 years. Now reunited, they were beginning to recall their memories, sharing and comparing photos with each other. And I was there to hear all the stories."

In addition to learning about their childhoods, their visits to Israel and Brazil (that was a new lead for him!), there was also all the gossip and family secrets buried in their collective memory.

"Not everything was revealed that afternoon and, of course, nobody knew exactly why their parents had stopped the contact between them, but it wasn't really important any more.

"I now have contact with family of which I hadn't been aware, and this is just the beginning, thanks to my cousins in London."

When will you visit your family in other places?

Let me know about similar experiences you have had.

Belarus: Dokshitsy Diaspora Reunion, August 20-22

Tracing the Tribe reported earlier on the planned Dokshitsy (Belarus) Diaspora Reunion.

Aaron Ginsburg of Natick, Massachusetts has provided more information on the reunion which will take place in a suburban Boston hotel, from Friday-Sunday, August 20-22. See Tracing the Tribe's earlier post for additional details.

There's also a tentative program which may also help other researchers attempting to plan such a reunion for their own ancestral villages.

Aaron's message is doubly important at this time of the year:

Passover is a time when we are called on to remember our shared past.

We remember Sinai because we know that our ancestors were there; we remember Dokshitsy because our ancestors were there.

The road from Sinai to today runs through shtetlach like Dokshitsy where so many of our parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents began their lives.

The lost Jewish communities of Eastern Europe, including Dokshitsy, are part of a past that continues to unite us no matter where we live.

Aaron reminds Dokshitsy descendants that volunteers are needed to help out, families to create presentations and talks about their family histories from the shtetl to the Diaspora.

Descendants who wish to participate and help in planning should contact Aaron through the group's website or Facebook page (Jewish Dokshitsy).

Tentative Schedule:

Friday, August 20
5-8pm: Sign in, cocktails, light snacks, introductions, and networking.
7.30-8.20pm: Services, followed by dinner (Kosher option).

Saturday, August 21
7-9am: Services
8.15-9am: Breakfast
9am: Organizers' welcome and introductions
9.30am: Dokshitsy– a vanished world
10.45am: The Dokshitzers who left – how a small shtetl gave rise to the Dokshitsy Diaspora
Noon: Lunch
1pm: Dokshitzers who stayed – the Holocaust in Dokshitsy; the Dokshitsy Cemetery Restoration Project; future remembrance projects
2:15-4pm: Family Presentations
4-7pm: Break
7pm: Pre-dinner presentation; slide show; photographs
8-11pm: Dinner, informal sharing experiences, family stories

Sunday, August 22
8-11am: Light breakfast and goodbyes

When will YOU plan a reunion for your ancestral shtetl's descendants?

Melbourne: Meeting the family - at last!

Thirty years ago, Alexander Katsnelson, his wife Jenny and toddler Nelly arrived in Melbourne from Bobruisk, Belarus.

Later on, his father and brother Leon arrived from Bobruisk. Alex and Leon's mother was a TALALAI whose family was from Mogilev.

In the photo below are (from left) Leon, Schelly and Alex.

About seven years ago, members of the Australian Jewish Genealogical Society - notably the late Les Oberman - located Alex and Jenny after information from new-found Moscow cousins indicated they might be in Melbourne.

We communicated for awhile until I experienced a major computer malfunction and lost much data (including emails). Yes, I know. Tracing the Tribe always advocates backing up, backing up, backing up. I goofed and thus our family lost years during which we could have been in contact.

However, as soon as I landed in Melbourne, I told my hostess, Ziva Fain, that we needed to find them. Fortunately, we found L. Katsnelson in the online phone book (cousin Leonid), who gave me Alex's number.

Today was cousin day.

Alex and Jenny came to take me to their home - which is very close to Ziva's - where Alex's younger brother Leon, their older daughter Nelly and granddaughter Miliana, 2, were waiting. Later that day I also met Nelly's son Jordan, 5, and Nelly's sister Fleur.

Nelly has a degree in journalism - is it genetic? - while Fleur is an attorney. Our daughter is Liana, Nelly's is Miliana.

We went over family charts and photographs. Leon told us many anecdotes from his childhood. As the younger brother, he was closer to his grandmother and he remembered a large photo on the wall of his mother's family in Mogilev.

When Alex and Jenny left, they could not take any family photos with them. When Leon left, he took many small photos, but was not permitted to take other family memorabilia. His mother's sister went to Brooklyn later on and took other items, including the photo. She has since died; no one knows where the large photo of the Mogilev family is now, but Alex and Leon said they will try to find who has it (and many other photos) and have them scanned.

After lunch, Jenny showed me a Russian-language site that translates as "classmates" - sort of a Russian Facebook. We checked for TALALAI and were amazed to find so many, although some I knew. This could be a very valuable resource for genealogists. Names can be typed in English, but everything else seems to be in Cyrillic.

I showed Jenny and Nelly how to use both Ancestry and JewishGen. Everyone was surprised to see how many FamilyFinder entries for KATSNELSON from Bobruisk were listed. A few years ago, Leon had been contacted by a US researcher who sent him information and charts but they couldn't see how they were related; he did not hear from that researcher again.

Many of the KATSNELSON researchers in the Family Finder are either deceased or have not logged in since 2004.

Jenny is also looking for her HEIMAN (sometimes written KHAYMAN) family of Bobroisk. Her grandmother lived in Bobruisk, but her family had moved to Riga, Latvia, where she grew up and attended school. How and why they moved to Riga is a story in itself.

Jenny and I later went to dinner and we didn't stop talking all evening. There was an instant connection, as if we had known each other for a lifetime.

There will be more to tell. And this time we won't lose the connection!

Boston: Dokshitsy shtetl reunion, August 20-22

Are your roots in Dokshitsy, Belarus? Aaron Ginsburg is planning a shtetl reunion weekend in the Boston area, August 20-22. More than 50 people have already indicated they will attend.

He writes:

The reunion will give us a chance to meet in person with our extended families - both the families we know, and the families with whom we are interrelated. It will give us a chance to share family stories, to learn about recent and not-so-recent trips to Dokshitsy and work recently performed at the cemetery and Holocaust sites. It will give us a chance to learn about the lives our Dokshitsy families built in the safer, greener pastures they found after they left. And it will give us a chance to connect in person with the friends we have made since this project began.

To plan properly for the Dokshitsy Reunion Weekend, Aaron needs to know who will be attending. He also needs volunteers to help with all reunion aspects, such as programming, organizing and communicating with other individuals in the Dokshitsy Diaspora.

Aaron stresses that you don't have to attend to volunteer to help. For more information, send an email. Indicate your name and contact details, who will accompany you to the reunion, ages of children who may attend and whether you would like to help plan the event

For more information on Dokshitsy, click here.

UK: Meeting the family in Israel

Tracing the Tribe loves family reunions. The Jewish Chronicle covered the recent get-together of the Sugarman family in Israel.

The story was written by one of the attendees - Gita Conn - making it very personal, indeed.

Thirty-six people from the Conn branch of Manchester were among the more than 200 people - including 80 children - at the reunion in LaRomme Hall, in Rehovot. Some were meeting for the first time and some were there in utero, born after the historic event.

The attendees were all descendants of Manchester quilt-blanket manufacturer Chaim Sugerman, born in Vaslui, Romania, and his wife Rosa. Some 80 years ago, in 1929, the couple brought five of their eight children to Palestine.

According to the story, the group was a real mix:

The dairy farmer from Meggido met the financial director from Paris; the radical feminist from Haifa chatted to the head of a yeshivah; the UK’s leading legal pensions expert hung on the words of the retired Ashkelon health inspector, fascinated to hear that, after service in the British Army from 1938, he departed Manchester in ’48 to serve the Hagganah and, at the age of 91, still spoke fluent English “with a Mancunian accent which only exists abroad”.

Secular and Charedi, professionals and blue-collar, kibbutzniks and city dwellers ate, drank and mingled joyfully as they celebrated a Jewish family saga with a rare theme of happily-ever-after… at least so far. We had made it. Grandchildren and spouses, great-grandchildren, great-great and one great-great-great descendant of just one couple — Chaim and Rosa Sugarman, who took five of their eight children from Manchester to Palestine 80 years ago.

Planning a similar reunion?

There are tips in this story for you including badges, activities, recording the historic event, an historic photo display, family tree books, entertaining the children at such an event, displaying memorabilia and much more.

Read the complete story at the link above.

Florida: Finding family success

Toby Levin's recent family reunion in Israel was the main event at the recent meeting of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Greater Miami.

This society provides excellent programming and Tracing the Tribe always carries its meeting announcements. We hope the following story will encourage you to attend the meetings of your own local society.

Levin's father came to the US in 1910, leaving his family in Austria, in a town that changed from Austria to Poland to Ukraine. In 1955, when her father died unexpectedly after surgery, she knew nearly nothing about her paternal family, except for her father's birthplace.

The branches of her family tree were bare for 50 years.

The Miami Herald covered the story of how retired freelance journalist Levin, 77, found her cousin Shalom Rosenblatt, 82, in Israel through Yad Vashem's Pages of Testimony, and how the The American Society of Yad Vashem's southern regional director Aaron Bernstein personally called Shalom.

This past August, Levin was inspired by a few events, including listening to a success story at a JGS meeting. She began a dedicated quest, worked all August and made her discovery in September.

Levin typed in her father's last name and his birthplace on Yad Vashem's Internet site. To her surprise, a screen popped up with a Page of Testimony. She had discovered two cousins; one had survived, one had perished in the Holocaust.

"My heart literally stopped,'' Levin said, describing her emotions when she saw a scanned document, hand-written by someone she immediately identified as her cousin.

The entry was for Rosenblatt's younger brother, murdered at 14 in then-Poland.

The Page of Testimony indicated that her only living paternal relative, Shalom Rosenblatt, had moved to Israel. Levin called her brother Jack and told him they were going to Israel.

If you've ever attended a meeting where someone has described such a discovery, you'll know that audience reaction is mixed. Some applaud while others cry. It was the same in Miami, when Levin shared her story.

Following her online discovery, she learned that The American Society for Yad Vashem had opened an Aventura branch a few months earlier. She called and told her story to regional director Aaron Bernstein.

"Within a half an hour, he called me back and said that he had spoken with my cousin in Israel and that he's a very nice man,'' she said, still with a look of disbelief on her face.

She then called Rosenblatt herself. And then her brother.

In October, there was a three-generation reunion near Jerusalem.

The Pages of Testimony at Yad Vashem have helped many family history researchers reconnect with family they thought was lost.

So many of us just don't know what happened to the family left behind after our relatives arrived in the US.

If you ever needed a reason to join a local Jewish genealogical society, this may be it. Hearing a first-hand amazing discovery may encourage you to look for your own. If you are in Southern Florida, why not check out the Jewish Genealogical Society of Greater Miami?

Read the complete story at the link above.

Miami: Reunion story, Nov. 1

The Jewish Genealogical Society of Greater Miami has a heartwarming reunion story to share at its Sunday, November 1 meeting. Success is always great, and it inspires others to never give up!

It all begins at 10am, Sunday, November 1, at the Greater Miami Jewish Federation, 4200 Biscayne Boulevard. NOTE: There is now extra security for the free parking (see below). Bring ID with you.

The speakers are Aaron Bernstein, the American Society for Yad Vashem's Southern Region director, and JGSMiami member Toby Leven. Bernstein helped Leven locate a missing cousin in Israel.

Toby Leven says:

For years, my brothers and I tried to find out what happened to my father's family in Europe during the Holocaust. We joined the JGS and they helped identify the town they came from. That was the first and most important step. We tried many websites for years, but in September I went to the Yad Vashem website and typed in the name of my father and the town. Thankfully, a page of testimony had been submitted by the only survivor of the family. I now had the name and address of my cousin in Israel. I learned there was a local Yad Vashem office in Aventura and Aaron Bernstein made the first contact. When I spoke to my cousin, Shalom Rosenblatt, I told him my brothers and I were coming to Israel to meet him. We had a marvelous reunion October 1, 2009.

In May 2009, Bernstein - a Florida native raised in Israel who served in the Israel Air Force - joined the American Society for Yad Vashem as director of the new Southern Region (Florida, Georgia, North and South Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama and as far as Texas).

An active speaker - as an Israel Hasbara team member - on Israeli culture, business, and politics, he is past chair of the Atlanta-Ra'anana Sister City Committee and is involved in numerous civic causes.

Join the meeting on Sunday to hear the full story. Arrive early and join the Early Bird shmooze session at 9.30am. Guests are always welcome, according to JGS president Joan Parker.

Security Note: The gate is now permanently closed and there is a yellow security box on the left side. Press #001 for Security. Announce you are there for the JGS meeting, the gate will slide open and close after you have gone through.

New Jersey: Oldest family circle to meet

Do you remember family circle meetings?

Our FINK family in New York had an active one that my grandparents and parents would attend, but I only remember some life cycle events, such as bar mitzvahs and some weddings.

The family was also active in the Suchostawer Benevolent Association (Suchostaw, Galicia, now Ukraine) and some film has come down to us of their events, with my grandparents and then-teenage mother figuring prominently in the footage.

The New Jersey Jewish Standard reports on an October 18 reunion of a very special family circle group. More than 200 people from Israel, Canada, South America and all over the US will celebrate the anniversary of the United State's longest continuously functioning family circle.

In 1909, the David Kantrowitz Family Benevolent Association (DKFBA) was formed; the common ancestor of today's 500 members was Mirke Becker, born 1776 in a Russian shtetl.

Benevolent associations originally functioned as self-help groups to assist relatives with housing, jobs and loans. Such groups were formed by families as well as by immigrants from a specific town in the old country.

According to Sylvia Goldstein of Teaneck:

“The members are more than our relatives, they are our friends,” she said. “We look forward to getting together with them on a regular basis. We reconnect with family. It’s a nice thing to be close with your fourth or fifth cousins.”

Goldstein says that they have a lot of fun, a kosher Chinese dinner, speakers, musicians and entertainers. Every meeting is different and the group is alive. "We're not just a family tree."

Each month, about 40 of them meet in the tri-state area. Many don't know their exact genealogical relationship, but it is enough to know they are family.

Goldstein is active in the group because her parents were. Now her children are doing the same.

Some things have changed: Meetings are in English, not Yiddish. They meet at members' homes, not at Manhattan hotels, and most live outside of Manhattan, spanning the tri-state area, Florida, Israel and the world. Instead of card games, they go to barbecues and baseball games, have an orchestra and a website.

Although there have been changes in the way they interact, Goldstein's son, David, says the ancestors would have recognized the "spirit, love, and warmth that abound at all our gatherings."

Read the complete article at the link above.

Miami: Havana Jewish HS 1959 reunion

A very special high school reunion was held Saturday in Miami Beach, when the 1959 class of the Centro de Israelita de Cuba held its 50th reunion. This was Havana's first and only Jewish high school.

The Miami Herald carried the story here.

''Our school is our pride . . . our Yiddish school should live eternally,'' sang the first graduating class of Havana's first and only Jewish high school. The year: 1959.

Fifty years later, they were singing the same song again -- only this time in Miami Beach. Many students from the Centro Israelita de Cuba graduating class have known each other since kindergarten and have experienced life milestones together -- about five attend the same temple in Miami Beach and two are sisters-in-law. Their closeness matches the tight-knit bond forged by many Cuban-Jewish immigrants.

''I have friends that I've known for more than 60 years. We are like family in a way,'' said Rosa Zipper, 67. ``We still hug and kiss.''

The venue was the Cuban Hebrew Congregation. Ten class members and some 100 others attended. Following a Shabbat morning service, the class sang its Yiddish alma mater, written by Zipper's father.

In 1960, many of the graduates left for the U.S., and Castro shut down the school in 1961. One grad said "it wasn't the ending of our education, but the beginning of a lifetime of friendships."

Centro Israelita had been a grammar school for nearly three decades before school leaders built a high school on the second floor around 1956. Previously, classes were held in nearby buildings.

The curriculum included Israel, Jewish values, Jewish history, Yiddish, as well as psychology and science.

Mario Chizyk, class valedictorian, even delivered his graduation speech in Yiddish. ''I'm a little apprehensive about seeing people I haven't seen for a long time,'' Chizyk, 67, said.``We've stayed close, but some I haven't seen for a while.'' But he said he wasn't worried about recognizing his former classmates because each name tag included a senior yearbook photo.

The only yearbook ever published was in 1959, and the class photo shows boys in white tuxedos and girls in white gowns.

From 1953-1960, the Havana community built the high school and three synagogues - they expected to be there a long time. Unfortunately, Fidel Castro had other plans, and many left with just a suitcase - most came to Miami.

Before the Cuban revolution, some 15,000 Jews lived there; today there are fewer than 1,000. The last school reunion was a formal occasion held in 1988 in Miami.

Said one attendee, "''We have to celebrate right now. We're all walking. Who knows what will happen in five years?''

Read the complete story at the link above.

Rivlin family traces 450 years, 50,000 descendants

The Rivlin family, which traces more than 450 years of history, just welcomed its 50,000th member in Jerusalem on March 23, according to the Jerusalem Post. Some 35,000 of the baby's ancestors either previously or currently reside in Israel.

The family has its own website and its genealogy documents 22 generations. The first known family ancestor, Rabbi Yosef of Ovan, lived in Vienna around 1550 and was exiled to Prague.

Among prominent members: the Vilna Gaon (Rabbi Eliyahu of Vilna); Yosef Yoel Rivlin, the author of the first Hebrew-edition Koran; the first female mayor of Israel; several actresses, political figures and TV presenters; and former Knesset speakers Avraham Burg and Reuven Rivlin.

The family also activated its application to the Guinness World Records and hopes to set the record for the world's largest tribe.

In October, the main family event will take place in Jerusalem, when some 5,000 Rivlin relatives will gather to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the family's immigration to Israel in 1809, encouraged by the Vilna Gaon.

The family's first genealogical project was created and maintained by Eliezer Rivlin, who died in 1940.

Family member Reuven Rivlin said:

"Family history is very important to me, and I was brought up knowing the origins of my family. They were the real Zionists at the beginning of the 19th century. I am a Rivlin from my mother and father's side, as they are seventh-generation cousins. My father is a descendent of the Gaon and the mitnagdim [opponents of Hassidism], and my mother is a descendent of the cousin of the Gaon, who was considered to have betrayed the Gaon."

The family continues its genealogical heritage commitment, and the website says.

"It is said that a people who are not acquainted with their past will not have a future. Our family's past history is an impressive one, and it is hoped that its future will be just as great and will not constitute a disappointment to its past."

Read the complete article at the link above.

Boston: Two dramatic stories, Dec. 7

Two dramatic stories of digging into lost histories and reuniting long separated families will be featured by the Jewish Genealogical Society of Greater Boston (JGSGB) at its December 7 meeting at Temple Emanuel in Newton.

The stories are Stephen Denker's "documenting business history in Cuba," and Alexander Woodle's "reuniting family divided by 250 years."

Denker reports on seven years of research, worldwide travel and internet chats. By tracing his American family’s manufacturing business and life in Cuba early in the 20th century, he unraveled a genealogical history and reconnects cousins separated for more than 70 years. In summer 2007, Denker spent two weeks in Havana completing his research and visiting the family home and factory.

Woodle reports on re-tying a genealogical thread after 250 years. His quest started with discovering a familiar surname in Austria and Romania in a search of international telephone directories. JewishGen and Familysearch database resources provided evidence of relationship. He then contacted a family in Romania, and utilizing the latest tool of genea-technology, dispatched a DNA kit. Last May, Woodle traveled to Central Europe to visit his distant cousins.

Both presentations exhibit an additional important facet of genealogical research: historical context. Denker describes the circumstances of Jewish immigration to Cuba. Woodle’s review of Jewish history in Central Europe yields clues to the dispersal of his family from 18th century Bohemia to Banat (now partially in Romania) in the southern reaches of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Join the group from 1.30-4.30pm, Sunday, December 7, at Temple Emanuel, 385 Ward St., Newton. JGSGB members: free; others: $5. For directions and additional details, click here.

New York: Hidden legacy of two families, Sept. 14

She found the Polish family that hid her mother from the Nazis, and thought she’d created a made-for-TV-reunion.

In a special presentation for the New York Jewish Genealogical Society, Erin Einhorn will share "The Pages In Between: Unearthing the Hidden Legacy of Two Families, One Home," at 2pm Sunday, September 14, in room 710 of the Conference Center at the UJA-Federation Building, 130 E. 59th Street (Lexington/Park).

When reporter Erin Einhorn found the family in Poland that hid her mother from the Nazis during World War II, she thought she’d created a made-for-TV-reunion for two families thrown together by history. A man who knew her mother as a child threw his arms around her and – tears streaming down his face – told her the little girl had been a sister to him. But when Erin is asked to fulfill a decades-old promise involving the house that her family still owned, she must search through centuries of dusty records, maneuver an outdated, convoluted legal system, and prove the death of a great-grandfather born in 1868 to right the wrongs of the past.

In this special presentation to the Jewish Genealogical Society, she tells what she discovered in ghetto records, property and social service agency archives, and in troves of birth, marriage and death records that had been harboring family secrets for decades. In a year spent living in the country where her mother was born, she found the only known photo of her grandmother and shocking news about how she may have died. She learned that her mother’s only memory of Poland was provably false. And she discovered, as with most family stories, that memory is not always the same as truth.

For more information, click here.

Erin Einhorn is the author of "The Pages In Between" (Simon & Schuster, September 2008) and a reporter for the New York Daily News, covering the New York City public school system and education-related issues. She has written for the Philadelphia Daily News, The Philadelphia Inquirer and Fortune and is a contributor to public radio’s This American Life.