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?

Holocaust: Wisconsin survivors speak

The Wisconsin Historical Society has posted interviews with Holocaust survivors who settled in that state.

Of some 140,000 survivors who came to the US, more than 1,000 settled in Wisconsin.

Six million European Jews were systematically murdered by the Nazis and their allies during the 1930s and 1940s. As Nazi tyranny spread, millions of other people were also killed by the Third Reich.

Wisconsin Historical Society archivists interviewed 22 Holocaust survivors and two American witnesses between 1974 and 1981. These oral histories are now available digitally and in their entirety for the first time, uncensored and unfiltered.

The collection includes 156 hours of audio and 3,400 transcribed pages. Each interview is on a testimony page with a biography, summary of the interview, audio players for each tape side and download options for the audio, transcript and photographs. Each interview has been transcribed (available as a PDF). Each tape side produced some 10 transcript pages; full transcripts run from 30-190 pages.

As is the case in such projects, transcripts show gaps due to recording conditions and linguistic complexity, along with background noise, strong accents and lapses into native languages.

More than 15 different languages appear on the audiotapes. Footnotes and editorial insertions help identify place names, and translate German, Polish, Yiddish and other foreign expressions.

Each cassette tape was converted to mp3 digital format. Stream or download any tape side from the links in the Audio and Transcript Information section. Most mp3 files are about 15 MB (25 minutes). With a broadband connection, they will download in about 30 seconds at 64 kps.

Survivors donated more than 200 photographs available for viewing; most are post-war.

In these interviews, men and women recall Berlin during the rise of the Third Reich, Kristallnacht and other anti-Semitic violence, the Warsaw and Lodz ghettoes, and conditions at Auschwitz, Dachau, Bergen-Belsen, and other less-famous concentration camps.

They describe the fates of their families, starting life over again in postwar Europe, and emigrating to the U.S. and Israel. They also discuss being new American immigrants and life in Wisconsin's Jewish communities between 1945 and 1980.

The survivors lived across Europe: Poland, Greece, the Netherlands, Ukraine. Their families were middle-class, wealthy and working class; some were devoutly observant while others were secular. The youngest person interviewed was a toddler during this period, the oldest was in his 30s, while most were teens.

One American witness was a US Army captain who liberated concentration camps; the other was a United Nations administrator who helped resettle survivors.

Choose from 24 full testimonies or listen to brief excerpts.

Among the interviews:

-- A teenager's Gentile friends turn against him- Fred Platner
-- A rabbi recalls Kristallnacht in Berlin- Rabbi Manfred Swarsensky
-- Rescued from death's door at Bergen-Belsen- Magda Herzberger
-- A survivor's kindergartener comes home in tears- Cyla Stundel

There are activities and lesson plans for teachers and readers may learn more about the project.

There is an excellent caveat for teachers who may plan to use this material.

We have not censored or suppressed any survivor's recollections. Many interviews contain passages with vivid eyewitness descriptions of horrifying cruelty, which may not be suitable for younger readers and listeners.

Teachers and parents should understand that recollections of life in ghettoes and concentration camps could shock and frighten children who have never before imagined such brutality.

Hearing these anecdotes through the actual voice of the person who survived them can be very distressing, especially when the speaker becomes audibly upset.

If an oral history contains highly sensitive passages, we have noted it in the interview summary. It's possible that oral histories without a notice contain distressing information for some listeners.

Educators of older students may find interviews with sensitive content to be particularly effective teaching tools. Most speakers were teenagers when they lived through these terrible events. Teachers of younger students should personally review audio and transcript passages before introducing them to children.

This digital collection was created through the generous support of the Helen Bader Foundation of Milwaukee and private donors.

Thanks to Sally Jacobs, the Practical Archivist, for the tip to this resource. At her day job, she helped to create this free online digital collection.

Wisconsin: Land of milk, Houdini and Jewish heritage

Remember this classic New Yorker magazine cover (March 29, 1976) where Saul Steinberg's "View of the World from 9th Avenue" demonstrated a view of the country? There was New York, something on the West Coast, and some other places in the middle.

One of those something-in-the-middle states is wholesome Wisconsin, where Jews have lived since 1793.

Andrew Muchin has written a great story on the Wisconsin Jewish story here.

To learn about Swiss immigrants to Wisconsin, visit New Glarus. For the Welsh, it’s Mineral Point. Cedar Grove is the town for Dutch heritage. Belgians, not surprisingly, are remembered in the hamlet of Brussels.

To fully experience Wisconsin Jewish history, however, you must plan a statewide road trip. The Dairyland-scape is dotted with former synagogues large and small, all with intriguing histories. Jews are remembered in dedicated museums in Milwaukee and Stevens Point, at an apartment building near Hurley’s former red-light district and in business districts from Ashland to Beloit.

In the years since 1793, Jews have lived in more than 300 Wisconsin communities as hardy settlers, ubiquitous main-street merchants, dedicated public servants, your occasional felon and drinkers of their fair share of milk, though not necessarily with their meat meals.

The state’s oldest Jewish community is Green Bay. British and French fur traders were already there when Jacob Franks arrived in 1792/3 as a Montreal fur company rep. He formed his own business in 1797 and his nephew John Lawe, also of Montreal, came out to help him.

In Heritage Hill State Historical Park, the living-history museum has a fur trader's cabin built c1800 on land near Lawe's. Inside, the home and trading post has shelves displaying jewelry, alcohol jugs and tools that traders would have given for pelts.

In the Green Bay Packers Hall of Fame, are photos of Nate Abrams, Charlie Sauber and a Milwaukee MOT, Charles Goldenberg.

From Jacob Franks and his nephew, the state's Jewish population increased to some 40,000 prior to WWII and to today's estimated 26,000. Milwaukee's fledgling community began with a few German Jews arriving in 1842 and it eventually became the largest in the state.

Some 2,000 German and Hungarian Jews arrived during 1840-70, founding the state's first communities in Milwaukee, Madison, La Crosse, Appleton and Wausau.About 15,000 Russian and Eastern Jews arrived 1881-1924, and eventually founded congregations in 23 localities.

Milwaukee's history is on display at the Milwaukee Jewish Museum. The article mentions congregations in Madison, Appleton (home to both author Edna Ferber and Erich Weiss AKA Harry Houdini), Stevens Point and Hurley.

In Hurley, a far north city, which Muchin calls "bordello central for the miners and loggers of northern Wisconsin and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula by 1890." Some 200 Jews lived there and worked mainly as merchants in the early 20th century. They worshipped in Sharey Zedek (1895-1940). The building is a short walk from the old Silver Street bordellos. A plaque marks it as Iron County's only synagogue, and the house next door was the mikvah site. The local Iron County Historical Society displays religious items from the synagogue.

Some 20 communities have at least one Jewish cemetery. "Most hold more Jews than currently live in the city," writes Muchin, who also mentions additional communities with other attractions.
Muchin is a freelance writer and programming director for the Goldring/Woldenberg Institute of Southern Jewish Life in Jackson, Mississippi.

Wisconsin: Genealogy 101 at Jewish Museum

The Jewish Museum Milwaukee is offering a getting-started five-session workshop series in "Genealogy 101: How to get started."

Sessions are offered on Tuesdays, July 7-August 4, at 11.40am.

Wisconsin Jewish Genealogical Society members Penny Deshur and Marilyn Lane will lead the classes.

Fee: $10, members museum/genealogy society; $25, for others.

For more information or to register, see the museum site, or email Kathie Bernstein.

Wisconsin: Jewish life documentary

Although Andrew Muchin believed he would find that Jews have lived in some 100 Wisconsin communities, the local historian was surprised by evidence of Jews in more than 300 state villages, town and cities.

This story in the Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle describes a documentary on small town Jewish life in that state.

Most of the 300 towns have no Jews left, said Muchin, director of the Wisconsin Society for Jewish Learning’s Wisconsin Small Jewish Communities History Project.

“There are Jews, that I know of, in fewer than 100 communities right now and where there were synagogues in maybe 21 or 22 communities at the peak, outside of Milwaukee and Madison, I think it’s 11 now that have synagogues and some of them are, frankly, fading — synagogues in aging communities.”

Muchin’s research has resulted in a soon-to-be-released documentary film, “Chosen Towns: The Story of Jews in Wisconsin’s Small Communities,” made in collaboration with docUWM.

The one-hour film will be aired statewide on Wednesday, Oct. 15, at 7 p.m. on both Wisconsin Public Television and Milwaukee Public Television.

The state's small town Jews included merchants, farmers, cattle brokers, and fur and scrap metal wholesalers, who lived in communities such as Arpin, Sheboygan, LaCrosse and Appleton.

WSJL was founded in the 1950s to research Wisconsin Jewish history, but in 2001, then-president Dan Weber restarted the project and Muchin was hired to direct the project.

The film idea developed in 2005, when the WSJL contacted Milwaukee documentary maker Brad Lichtenstein, founder/director of docUWM at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Peck School of the Arts Film Department. He had just launched the media center to teach undergrad and grad film students how to make documentaries from community projects.

Funding included a two-year grant of $125,000 from the Helen Bader Foundation and support from the LE Phillips Family Foundation and the Lucky and Jack Rosenberg Philanthropic Fund.

Eight students - none Jewish - began the project in fall 2006, using Muchin's resources.

Future plans are to raise more funds to create a small Jewish communities curriculum for public and Jewish schools, a museum-quality exhibit to travel the state, and perhaps a book.

Free public screenings of the film in eight cities prior to the TV screening wll feature Q&As with student filmmakers and local experts:

7pm Thursday, September 18, Discovery World, Milwaukee
2pm Sunday, September 21, Mt. Sinai Congregation, Wausau
7.30pm Tuesday, September 23, UW-Madison, Madison
7pm Thursday, September 25, Moses Montefiore Synagogue, Appleton
7pm Sunday, September 28, Congregation Sons of Abraham, LaCrosse
7pm Thursday, October 2, Beth Hillel Temple, Kenosha
1pm Monday, October 6, Jewish Museum, Milwaukee.
noon Sunday, October 12, Congregation Beth El, Sheboygan.

Muchin and Lichtenstein will speak at the Milwaukee screenings. For more information, read the complete article at the link above.

A slower pace of travel

We arrived in Chicago a few hours ago after a two-day trip from Seattle on Amtrak's Empire Builder, train number 8, which crossed Washington, Montana, North Dakota, Wisconsin and Illinois.

Lyn Blyden - president of the JGS of Washington State - and I left Seattle at 4.30pm Wednesday and arrived here Friday around 5pm, just about an hour late. Here are some notes written on this kicked-back mode of transportation.

We enjoyed this voluntary email vacation - she's trying to finish "Lost" by Daniel Mendelsohn up in the observation lounge, while I have a stack of computer magazines.

We've shared dining room tables with interesting fellow travelers and discussing each others' reasons for taking the train to our destinations. As we mention we're on our way to a genealogy conference, most chime in with their own or relatives' experiences. Genealogy is always a great ice breaker!

We learned about how apples are stored from a Yakima couple who were a bit disparaging of Wenatchee, which calls itself the apple capital of the world, as we went through the town.

We enjoyed two meals with a couple who used to teach at the American school in the Philippines and now were going to the North Dakota wedding of a grandson of friends they've known for 40 years.

We had breakfast with a woman who weaves and her young nephew, a 4-H-er and learned interesting facts about the Nubian goats he raises for milk and exhibits at state fairs.

We learned that the only two lower-48 states that Amtrak doesn't cover are South Dakota and another one I promptly forgot. If we'd known that before the trip, we could have won a bottle of wine. We also learned that very few people can recite the names of all seven dwarves from Sleeping Beauty. Can you? Hint: The seventh one is not Irving!

A lot of Upper Midwest phrases pepper the conversations we hear, such as "You betcha!" that I've only heard on television programs and films like "Fargo," which was one of our stops.

While I knew I wouldn't have email - Amtrak has not yet caught up with the 21st century - I hadn't realized that the open expanses of Montana's Big Sky Country and North Dakota would also produce "no service available" or "emergency calls only" screens on my newish cell phone. Somehow the lack of cell service was more disturbing than lack of internet. We have grown so dependent on instant electronic communication, some might say too dependent.

There were about 10 minutes of rain, followed by a magnificent rainbow, which was worth the entire trip. We tried to watch for the Perseid meteor showers the first night out, and think we saw two, but the swaying motion of the train put us to sleep.

At every stop with a few minutes' wait, passengers ran out on platforms trying to communicate on iPhones, BlackBerrys and ordinary old cells - no one had service but it was fun watching them try - shaking their phones and wondering what was wrong, finding it hard to believe that there really was a place in America with NO cell tower.

So now - along with the open fields, corn fields, far-away herds of cattle and horses, bales of hay, clouds so close you can touch them - I'm also dreading the hundreds of emails I'll find when we get to Chicago. I finally got some cell service as we approached Milwaukee and connected with some people.

It was a great trip through beautiful countryside and natural scenery, from open fields to ancient forests, reminiscent of "Jurassic Park." Mountains, rivers, skirting some national parks - all were part of this ride.

It's good to kickback once in a while.

Amazingly, although we had been out of touch with the world for almost two days, the world was still there and nothing much had happened, except for a lot of medals won at the Olympics.

Hilary Henkin (formerly of Atlanta, now Los Angeles) is our third roomie at the conference and she's bringing along a special device that should work in the room, so all of us can be online and wireless at the same time.

I'm hoping to meet some Talalay relatives in Chicago on Saturday afternoon. This will be a first-ever reunion with this particular branch with origins in Novgorod Severskiy, Chernigov gubernia (and Mogilev, Belarus before). I have previously met Arkadiy's daughter Rina and her family who used to live in Israel and now in New Jersey, and Zhanna's son and his family in Israel.

On Saturday morning, some of us are going to services at Rabbi Caper Funnye's the Ethiopian Beth Shalom southside synagogue. In the evening, a group of DNA people are getting together to see Second City, for a Sunday city boat ride, and a Monday night dinner. It should be fun.

The remainder of the week will be non-stop conference activities from early morning to late at night.

After registering and unpacking, we went for dinner and ran into Judy Simon, who had just arrived from New York. As we walked into the Italian restaurant across from the hotel, we saw Catherine Youngren, president of the Jewish Genealogical Institute (Vancouver BC Canada), and she joined our table. We had a far-ranging discussion and went over our respective years. One of the nicest things about these conferences is meeting friends from all over and re-connecting.

Jeff Malka, a pioneer Sephardic researcher - who also has the www. SephardicGen.com site, asked Judy and I to help out during the Sephardic Special Interest Group meeting. Judy is presenting a fascinating talk for the Sephardic SIG meeting from 9.45-11am on Tuesday, focused on the IberianAshkenaz Project, which Judy and I co-administer at Family Tree DNA. It is for Eastern European Ashkenazim who carry Sephardic surnames, or a Sephardic genetic condition, or have a strong oral history of Sephardic roots. I'll be relating some other information.

Every day more people join; about two-thirds of these ostensible Ashkenazim are genetic matches with Converso/Hispanic families in the US or elsewhere. We've had some very interesting matches recently and participants have upgraded tests to get a better handle on their most recent common ancestors.

We are always happy to help Jeff and to convey more Sephardic research information.

The importance of the IberianAshkenaz project is to encourage researchers to record family stories, no matter how strange or silly they seem, and to attempt to find the kernel of truth, illustrated by genetic matches.

It also points up that we don't always know who we really are, how we got here (wherever "here" is) , or where we've been for centuries. And it underlines the bottom line that researchers should always be prepared for what testing might discover or uncover.

I'll be posting as much as possible about the different sessions I attend over this coming week.

And, if you weren't able to make it to Chicago this year, enjoy Tracing the Tribe's postings and remember that 2009 will be in Philadelphia, from August 2-7. Think ahead and plan for that one as soon as the announcements are made.

Wisconsin: Steven's Point Jewish community

Old synagogues may be a state's tourist attraction, such as Newport, Rhode Island's Touro Synagogue. In central Wisconsin, there is the Beth Israel Synagogue Museum in Steven's Point, which opened June 15.

The Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle's Andrew Muchin wrote this story about the history and the museum which preserves the congregation's complete bimah, along with artifacts, documents and photos of local Jewish commercial, civic and religious life. The Portage County Historical Society created the exhibit.

Stevens Point Jews commissioned the plain, white wooden synagogue with its sloped metal roof in 1905. Typical of small-town traditional synagogues, the sanctuary fills 90 percent of the ground floor, with a small classroom adjacent to the entry hall. Atypical was the lack of a balcony in back for women.

Two remaining wooden pews and two pairs of the theater chairs that supplemented the seating face the raised bimah. A congregant bought the pews second-hand from a Baptist church in 1906, according to Mark Seiler, volunteer curator and author of the new book, “The Jewish Community of Stevens Point” (see sidebar).

The reader's table with a purple velvet cloth faces the glass-enclosed ark with two Torah scrolls. Shelves hold Torah ornaments, menorahs and a silver plate donated in 1934. The ark's curtain is embellished with a golden lion and the Ten Commandments. The ner tamid - eternal light - is behind a window in the wall above the ark, and memorial plaques hang on the east wall.

The south wall displays a homemade chuppah (marriage canopy) - two large prayer shawls sewn together with corner pockets for poles. Other displays are a wooden Ten Commandments tablet, WWII banner and photos of local Jews who served in the war ... a gold-painted wooden box full of faded kippahs ... five small nurse dolls and the 1950 Hadassah chapter charter ... A 1940 congregational seder photo ... old prayer books and children's books.

About 140 Jewish business operated in the town from 1871-2000; on display are reproductions of advertisements and artifacts from some: a 1945 calendar, a produce crate and a soda bottle. The town's Holiday Inn, built in 1967, was owned by a Jewish couple and the collection includes 80 playbills of entertainers who appeared every weekend.

The synagogue was in use until 1985, when it closed. The building and land were deeded to the Portage County Historical Society. Post-WWII, there were 40 families; today, about 10 Jews remain.

The society maintained the building and grounds, placed the building on the national Register of Historic Places and used it for a museum of county religious life. Following research conducted for the Register, the society was convinced to change the museum's emphasis after discovering evidence of the vibrant Jewish community.

Author Muchin is director of the Wisconsin Small Jewish Communities History Project, a program of the Wisconsin Society for Jewish Learning, Inc.

Do read the complete article at the link above.

Chicago 2008: Chicago, Midwest program details

Chicago and Midwest Jewish genealogy research will be one focus of programming at the 28th IAJGS International Conference on Jewish Genealogy (Chicago, August 17-22).

If you are searching ancestors who lived in the area, these programs will provide information on many sources:

• The Musical 'Chicago' and All That Genealogical Jazz: Ron Arons and Mike Karsen collected standard genealogical documents to piece together the lives of two women and related them to Chicago history.
• Resources for Jewish Genealogy in Chicagoland: Mike Karsen will highlight major sources for tracing Jewish roots in Chicago, including key cemeteries, vital records, census records and immigration records, newspapers and synagogue records.
• Q&A Breakfast on Chicago Research Resources: Mike Karsen will answer questions.
• Clerk of the Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois Genealogical Records: Phillip Costello will demonstrate how filed pleadings, judges orders and naturalization, divorce, or probate case files provide unintended secondary value to historians and genealogists.
• Polished Gems: Property Records Cook County, Illinois: Jeanne Larzalere Bloom, CG(SM) discusses real estate records held by the Cook County Recorder's Office.
• But ... It's Not Where It Is Supposed to Be! Unpolished Gems: Jeanne Larzalere Bloom, CG(SM) highlights additional records, such as Affidavits (Dates of Death Marriages and Marital Status; Kinship and Family Relationships); Petitions (Change of Surnames); Certificates (Naturalization); Agreements; and Military Discharge Papers.
• How I Almost Didn't Find Doda Channa from Tshikago (Chicago?): Rony Golan tells the story of how he reunited his Holocaust survivor mother with her Chicago family.
• Genealogy Research in Indiana: Autumn Gonzalez and Diane Sharp. Genealogy librarians from the Indiana State Library will assist Resource Room visitors.
• Midwestern Resources for Jewish Genealogy: Gayle Sweetwine Saini will demonstrate synagogue and community archives, Jewish federations and Jewish genealogical and historical societies, Jewish newspapers, community histories, university and historical libraries.
• Researching at Chicago's Newberry Library: Jack Simpson, curator of Local and Family History, will demonstrate how to use the library, emphasizing Jewish research.
• Genealogical Resources of Milwaukee and Southeastern Wisconsin: Manning Bookstaff will demonstrate Wisconsin Jewish and general genealogical resources, such as libraries map collections, historical societies and libraries and more.
• The Jewish Agriculturalists' Aid Society: Philanthropy and Jewish Farm Settlement in the Heartland: Sandy Rikoon focus on the JAAS (1888-1910) which provided loans and other support to more than 425 Jewish families living on heartland homesteads and farms.
• Research in the Genealogy Center of Allen County Public Library, Fort Wayne, IN: Curt B. Witcher will highlight the center's Jewish genealogical research resources, including the Yizkor collection, periodical collection, online databases, local history material from across North America, and share technological enhancements benefiting researchers in the newly expanded facility.
  
  To learn more about the program, speakers' bios, registration and other details, click here
  
  The conference is co-hosted by the Jewish Genealogical Society of Illinois, the Illiana Jewish Genealogical Society and the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies (IAJGS).