Australia: "These are the names"

Members of international Jewish genealogical societies can offer amazing local resources and help on the ground. It always pays to contact JGSs in the places your ancestors lived or immigrated from. Members of these groups know all the ins-and-outs of research in specialized archives and are truly expert in local matters.

Les Oberman of Melbourne is president of the Australian Jewish Genealogical Society (Vic), which publishes the quarterly journal Jewish Genealogy Downunder. He's always been a great source of help. On a personal note, he located and contacted Talalay relatives who moved there from Bobruisk, Belarus nearly 20 years ago.

I've just received my copy of the Melbourne journal and also receive The Kosher Koala, the newsletter of the Sydney society.

Your local Jewish genealogical society likely receives the newsletters and journals of societies around the world, and it always worth a visit to your society's library. Find a list of all member societies of the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies here. While these publications carry general announcements of interest to all genealogists worldwide, they also carry informative articles focusing on local interests, history and resources.

The first article in Downunder focuses on Rabbi John Levi's new book These are the Names: Jewish Lives in Australia 1788-1850, an 873-page book published last year; it sold out soon after its release.

His previous book (1976) was The Forefathers: A Dictionary of Biography of the Jews of Australia 1788-1830. The new book includes all information in Forefathers and extends the research range another 20 years, providing information on some 1,500 Jews who had arrived up until 1850.

The article is an account of the problems Levi faced in researching these individuals and how some research was easier now because of Internet accessible resources, such as the UK's Old Bailey Court records which hold transport information on Jewish convicts.

Another interesting article is on the Jewish community of Penang (Malaysia) by Margot Bailey, president of the Jewish Genealogical and History Society of South Australia (Adelaide).

On a 1995 visit, she received a book, Streets of George Town Penang, a guide to the city's streets and historic buildings. She found the following interesting entry:

Yahudi Road, Jewish Cemetery Penang had a small community of Jews whom the locals called orang Yahudi. Like the Armenians they came from India along the trade route. The Jewish Cemetery, which has over 100 graves from the 19th and early 20th centuries is well maintained.

Bailey follows up with an account of her later visit with her husband in 1998, and contact with the lone Jew in Penang, David Mordechai. She relates that Mordechai said the first burial was in 1835 and a photo of the stone appears to be that of a person with the family name Sassoon-Levi, dated July 9, 1835. The 1971 Encyclopedia Judaica, according to Bailey, records that "A few Jews settled in Penang, of whom the first was Ezekiel Menassah of Baghdad in 1895.

Most society journals and newsletters also print family inquiries asking about possible relatives, and Jewish Genealogy Downunder prints eight in this issue.

The society also has a discussion group where you may receive even more assistance; for information, click here.

Las Vegas: Jewish Film Festival

The 8th Las Vegas Jewish Film Festival runs through January 27.

Among the films is the genealogically relevent production of Pedro Banchik, a Buenos Aires chemical engineer, whose family-reunion video project, "De Bassarabia a Entre Rios" (From Bessarabia to Entre Rios) is an international success.

There's a local connection to the film. Banchik's cousin Carlos Banchik is vice president of Midbar Kodesh Temple in the Green Valley Ranch area of Henderson, adjacent to Las Vegas.

Carlos attended the family reunion in Argentina which marked the centennial anniversary of the family's flight from persecution in Eastern European (Bessarabia; today Moldova) to a new life in South America.

Pedro intended to make a five-minute video, but instead produced a full-length documentary.

"I didn't have any idea how to make the film," Banchik acknowledges in a telephone interview from his Buenos Aires home. "But when I started to do it, it was like an addiction."

The project - his gift to the family - drew such a strong response that he received emails and phone calls from around the world, including Tel Aviv's Beth Hatefutsoth (Museum of the Jewish Diaspora), which requested a copy for its visual archives.

It was nice to see Midbar Kodesh mentioned, as it was our synagogue when we lived there, and the very first permanent synagogue in Henderson. The Conservative congregation, which celebrates its 13th year in March, began with six families meeting in a public school, graduating to rented space and then constructing a beautiful facility in Green Valley Ranch.

I've suggested the film's inclusion in the third Jewish Genealogy Film Festival, to be held during the 28th IAJGS International Conference on Jewish Genealogy, August 17-22 in Chicago.

Other films at the Vegas festival:

Naked Among Wolves (1963, East Germany) - Based on a true story, Buchenwald concentration camp prisoners risk their lives to hide a small Jewish boy from their Nazi captors. German, English subtitles.

My Father My Lord (2007, Israel) - An ultra-Orthodox rabbi (Assi Dayan) confronts irreconcilable demands of faith and family in a contemporary version of the biblical story of Isaac inspired by director David Volach's upbringing. Winner, 2007 Tribeca Film Festival's top prize. Hebrew, English subtitles.

Nina's Home (2005, France) - As World War II ends, the director (Anges Jaoui) of a children's shelter in France helps young concentration camp survivors. French, English subtitles.

Yippee: A Journey to Jewish Joy (2006, USA) - Award-winning writer/director/actor Paul Mazursky ("Down and Out in Beverly Hills," "An Unmarried Woman") chronicles his whirlwind journey to a small Ukrainian town where thousands of Hasidic Jews gather annually to sing, dance and pray at a revered rabbi's grave site.

Aviva My Love (2006, Israel) - When a famous novelist takes a hard-working mother with a secret talent for writing under his wing, brutal ambition and family obligations complicate her pursuit of a dream. Winner, six Israeli Academy Awards, including best picture. Hebrew, English subtitles.

Sweet Mud (2006, Israel) - A 12-year-old boy, caught between an emotionally unstable mother and the rigid equality values of their 1970s kibbutz, inspires a coming-of-age tale. Awards, Sundance and Berlin film festivals; six Israeli Academy Awards, including best picture. Hebrew, English subtitles.

Yiddish Theater: A Love Story (2006, USA) - An 80-something actress and Holocaust survivor struggles to maintain a 1,000-year-old culture through Folksbiene, America's longest-running Yiddish theater. English and Yiddish, English subtitles.

De Bassarabia A Entre Ríos (2006, Argentina) - This documentary focuses on Jewish families from the eastern European region of Bessarabia (today Moldova) who settled in early 20th-century Argentina. Spanish, English subtitles.

Rape of Europa (2006, USA) - Short-listed for an Academy Award, this documentary explores how the Nazis plundered Europe's art treasures from galleries, museums and the residences of condemned Jews - and how art patrons and ordinary citizens tried to save prized artworks.

Read more here

San Francisco: Jewish American history, Jan. 27

Jewish history and American history meet in San Francisco, when a Bay Area author and historian presents "A Whirlwind Tour of Jewish American History," on Sunday, January 27, at Congregation Beth Israel-Judea. The program runs from 10am-noon.

Ken Blady will present little known facts about Jewish immigration to America, and traces the Jewish immigrant experience from 1492 to the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, the Gold Rush and the major immigration waves of the early 20th century.

Blady's own immigration story begins in Paris with his Yiddish-speaking Hassidic family which settled in Brooklyn, NY, where he grew up. Although he attended yeshiva and a rabbinical seminary, he became a writer, educator and Yiddish translator. His books include "The Jewish Boxers' Hall of Fame," "Jewish Communities in Exotic Places," and translation of "The Journeys of David Toback."

The event is co-presented by the Judah L. Magnes Museum - Western Jewish History Center of Berkeley and the San Francisco Bay Area Jewish Genealogical Society. Members of these groups will be available for Q&A during the after-program reception.

For directions and more information, click here.

Read more here.

Florida: Italian Americans, Jewish Roots

Jewish family history is filled with tragic historical periods that impacted Jewish continuity and identity.

In some places, there is renewed interest among those not Jewish today who feel their roots might be Jewish. Clues might be certain family customs, vocabulary, names and the most advanced tool so far, DNA testing.

The Italian Jewish Cultural Center of Calabria (IJCCC) will hold a two-day Italian Jewish Roots conference, "I'm Italian. Could I be Jewish?" from 11am-6pm, Monday and Tuesday, February 25-26, in Sarasota, Florida. the focus is for Italian-Americans to connect with their Jewish roots.

The event features Rabbi Barbara Aiello, an Italian-American who currently lives and works in Calabria, as the first woman and first Progressive (Reform, US) rabbi in Italy and director of the IjCCC.

“Deep down in the ‘toe of the boot, there is a rich but nearly forgotten Jewish history,” says Aiello. In fact, modern historians now believe that prior to the Spanish Inquisition that reached into Sicily and Calabria, nearly 50 per cent of the population of the entire region was Jewish.”

Rabbi Aiello will share the discovery of her own Jewish roots, experiences and help conference participants being their search for Jewish documentation. Other speakers include Jewish genealogist Kim Sheintal (president, Jewish Genealogical Society of Southwest Florida) and Rabbi Frank Tamburello (a former prist who discovered his Jewish roots, converted to Judaism and was ordained a rabbi).

Participants will also hear from Southern Italian history experts and those who have experienced specialized Italian-Jewish study that has led to full participation in Jewish cultural and synagogue life.

Rabbi Aiello understands how difficult it can be within a family when one or two open the door to the family's Jewish past.

According to the press release:

Rabbi Aiello explains, “I have family members whose ancestry dates back to the time of the marranos, when Jews were forced to accept Christian conversion. As a result many of my cousins are practicing Catholics, so I know what it’s like to have a mix of Jews and Christians in the same family!”

“For Italian Americans who have heard family stories and have felt the subtle tug to explore Jewish tradition, the IjCCC conference will bring them into contact with others who have had similar experiences. The IjCCC, located as it is in southern Italy, has uncovered dozens of towns, villages and surnames, all of which are steeped in Jewish heritage dating back not only to Inquisition times but to the time of the Maccabees as well.

Her website includes a partial list of Italian Jewish surnames, and there are many additional sources on the Internet:

Anania, Garo, Ventura, Viterbo, Barone, Campagna, Costantino, Amato, Balsamo, Marino, Mazza, Romano, Staiti, Bonfiglio, Bruno, Brigandi, Bonanno, Capua, Carafa, Filomarino, Caracciolo, D'Aquino, Monforte, Mele, Gesualdo, Palermo, Milano, Napoli, Pistoia, Montalto, Amantea, Salerno, Speranza, Spagnolo, Cimino, Cristiano, Buono, Giardino, Perna, Licastro, Renda, De Rose, Pugliese, Siciliano, Jenco, Russo, De Masi, Romano, Brancato, Pane, Margiotta, Panaro, Pisciotta, Mozello, Rotoli, Catalano, De Pasquale, Mondella, Chiarelli, De Mayo, Ferraiolo, Foderaro, Orefice, Ferraro, Pignataro, Speziale, Tranquillo, Leone, Dattilo, Simone, Ricca, Stella, Fiore, Gentile, Gioia, Greco, Luzzatto, Del Vecchio, Del Giudice, De Sarro, Diamante, Vitale, Di Giacomo, Di Giovanni, Di Matteo, D’Alessandro, De Pascali, Di Nola, Di Napoli, Di Lentini, Di Rende. (Compiled by Professor Vincenzo Villella)

For location, more information and registration, click on Aiello's website here. All lectures, workshops and proceedings will be in English with translators for Italian speakers. There is a discount for registrations received by February 1. Cost includes materials, on-site lunch both days and dinner on the first day.

Want to know more about the Jews of Italy? Tracing the Tribe has had several postings on this topic, including Calabria, Sicily and much more; some include lists of names. to read these postings, click here, here, here, here and here.

Helene Berr: France's Anne Frank

Holocaust experiences impact Jewish family history around the world. The diaries and journals of those who lived through that tragedy - or more often, perished - are essential to our understanding of how those experiences ultimately impacted European Jewish life and, indeed, all Jewish life.

We all read The Diary of Anne Frank in school. In 2006, an account of Irene Nemirovsky's experience sold hundreds of thousands of copies. The newest entry, The Journal of Helene Berr, was published January 3 in Paris, and is already an instant best-seller.

Berr is described as France's Anne Frank; indeed, the two young women died of typhus a month apart in 1945 in Bergen-Belsen. Their diaries are different. Frank describes a hidden life in Amsterdam, while Berr, in Nazi-occupied Paris, deals with everyday life.

She began keeping the journal for her fiancée Jean Morawiecki, who had escaped (and survived). The family cook kept her writing and gave it to him after the war.

It begins April 8, 1942, as Berr, 22, describes her life at the Sorbonne as an English literature student and her fiancée. It ends Feb. 15, 1944 with Berr's conversation with a deportee describing how Jews are deported in cattle cars. The final words are an English quote from Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad: "Horror! Horror! Horror!"

Helene and her family were among 70,000 Jews deported from France. They died in Belsen a few days before it was liberated by the British Army, and her journal was undiscovered for 50 years in France's Holocaust Museum.

The personal account is already an instant bestseller in France, according to a Der Spiegel Online story. It will be published in English and at least a dozen other languages, says the book's French publisher (Tallandier) in an Associated Press story.

Says reviewer Jason Burke in the UK's Observer:

Cultivated, steeped in Russian and English literature, from a wealthy old French family and a keen violinist who attended the Sorbonne University, Berr starts her diary with an account of picking up a signed copy of the works of poet Paul Valery from his home.

The early pages of the diary are full of descriptions of the countryside around Paris - "I went to gather fruit in the upper orchard ... the blue sky and the sun made the dew drops sparkle and joy flooded through me like a spell", she writes.

Editor Antoine Sabbagh says she is hardly aware of a Jewish identity, the war has barely touched her and she is unaware of what is happening in Europe, but things then begin to change.

"We are living hour by hour, not even week by week," she writes. Instead of fleeing she works as a volunteer at a holding camp for children whose parents have already been deported. "They play in the yard ... repugnant, covered in sores and lice. Poor little kids," Berr confides to her diary, recounting how her co-workers beseech her to flee France while there is still time.

The nightmare gets closer and she realises that her life might end "somewhere in Upper Silesia" and in "just a few weeks." "People are speaking about suffocating gas that they use on the convoys which arrive at the Polish frontier. They are rumours but there must be some truth in them," she writes.

Her fiancé escaped France to fight with the Free French from England and survived.

"I know why I am keeping this journal,' she writes. 'I know that I want it to be given to Jean if I am not here when he comes back. I don't want to disappear without him knowing everything I have been thinking about while he has been away - or at least a part of it."

According to the review, Berr talks about experiences wearing the yellow star, of being chased from a park and of arrested relatives.

After the war, her fiancé received the manuscript as Berr had wanted, and her niece decided to publish the journal.

Read more here.

The AP story appeared following a January 7 interview with Berr's niece in Paris. Excerpts from the book are here.

Australia: Ancestors down under

The wildly successful BBC series Who Do You Think You Are? is spawning international copycats. There's a Canadian version which explores their celebrities' pasts, and now there's an Australian version.

We get the BBC re-runs in Israel, and it's only by accident that I find it scheduled. Series 3 is now being shown on Yes cable on channel 29. It is a show that grabs genealogists and non-genealogists alike. My husband is about as non-genealogist as is possible, but he watches with interest.

I love the ins and outs of each person's story, especially if they're flying off to other countries to track an ancestor. Of course, I marvel how the celebrity always finds a parking space right in front of whatever archive he or she is visiting and how there are never any lines of people waiting to pick up copies or ask for assistance.

Now the popular show also has an Australian version on SBS.

Genealogy has always seemed like an occupation for retirees with too much time on their hands and a looming sense of their mortality. Who can be bothered? It stands to reason that for most of us, most of our ancestors didn't do much at all. They were teachers and doctors and labourers and housemaids who met, married, bred, and died in an unremarkable fashion. Like that hypnosis therapy where you revisit past lives, few of us were ever going to be Cleopatra or Napoleon.

Yet the BBC series Who Do You Think You Are?, where British celebs traced their family trees, was a huge, huge hit in Britain and much-watched here when it screened on SBS recently. And now SBS has produced its own version, tracing the lineage of six well-known Australians: Jack Thompson, Kate Ceberano, Geoffrey Robertson, Cathy Freeman, Dennis Cometti and Ita Buttrose.

The shows, in whatever national version is being broadcast, provide more than an individual's family history. The series takes a look at family history within social history which impacts where and why families moved to different places and how larger events impacted their lives.

Australia, to me, is always fascinating. I've read about the Jewish First Fleeters, which is a fascinating part of the nation's history. I don't know if any of the people set to be interviewed on this series have roots in this group or later Jewish arrivals, but if you'd like to read more, see here and here.

As the series progresses, it becomes more and more apparent that there are an awful lot of people out there - both the subjects of each episode, and the legion of researchers, who are engaged in a prolonged, relentless search for identity and belonging. And that, perhaps, lies at the heart of both the success of these programs and the widespread interest in genealogy.

They tap into one of the most profound metaphysical questions human beings ask of themselves. As Thompson says at the beginning of his journey: "I am, in some way, a product of my ancestry - and I have no idea what that ancestry is."

Read the complete story here.

UPDATE: Here's the official segment information on Ita Buttrose's Jewish ancestry. Click here

Media personality and publisher Ita Buttrose discovers determination and drive may be hereditary as she puts her journalistic skills to the test to trace her global family. She knows of a relation named William Butters who sailed from Scotland to Adelaide but not how the family name changed from Butters to Buttrose.

Following her maternal side, Ita discovers she has a strong Jewish connection, including a chief rabbi, in her family. She traces her Jewish ancestors to the once impoverished Jewish ghetto where they had lived in New York and Hungary and learns that poverty and hardship drove them to seek a better life in Australia.

Along the way she finds the Buttrose will to ‘fight the system’is flowing through her veins.

New York: Research and Art Restitution, Jan. 20

Art restitution articles seem to be everywhere these days, as new claims are filed and families struggle to reclaim stolen art. Learn from expert Karen Franklin what is involved in this research and sometimes successful restitution of stolen art and other objects.

The upcoming Jewish Genealogical Society of New York program will include a screening of short clips from Stealing Klimt (2007), which re­counts the struggle of Maria Altmann, 90, to recover five Gustav Klimt paintings stolen from her family by the Nazis in Vienna.

Speaker Karen Franklin in "State of the Art: Researching and Restitution" will show how Jewish genealogical research has been utilized to help solve looted art cases in New York, the Netherlands, Israel and Ukraine. Her il­lustrated presentation will highlight cases for the Leo Baeck Institute and research for the Origins Unknown Agen­cy.

Cases vary from a potentially multi-million dollar restitution settle­ment for the Larsen family, to the return of a doll and furniture to a family who fled Ger­many to Palestine in the 1930s. Each offers specific re­search tech­niques and general legal and ethical issues regarding looted art.

She'll explain how the Council of Ameri­can Jewish Museums’ (CAJM) Resolution on Nazi-Era Looted Art, which she co-authored, affects the Jewish community and claims for Jewish objects.

Franklin is a co-chair of the JewishGen Board of Governors and past presi­dent of IAJGS and CAJM; serves on numerous boards, including the In­terna­tional Council of Museums (ICOM) and its Memorial Museums Committee, as well as the Commis­sion for Looted Art in Europe. She completed research for The Plaut Family: Tracing the Legacy by Eliza­beth S. Plaut, just published by Avo­taynu.

The meeting begins at 2pm, Sunday, January 20, at the Center for Jewish History, 15 W. 16th Street, New York City. For more information, click here.

Attendees who arrive early will have access, from 12.30-1.45pm, to the Ackman & Ziff Family Genealogy Institute for net­work­ing with other researchers and access to research materials and computers. It also has a growing microfilm collection of Jewish materials from Austria, Germany, Poland and Hungary. Click here to see what is available.

Philadelphia: New Jewish Museum

The new National Museum of American Jewish history will open on July 4, 2010, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Designed by James S. Polshek and under construction at some $170 million, it will trace American Jewish history since the first Jews arrived from Brazil to New Amsterdam in 1654, how they influenced and how they were influenced by the experience of centuries.

The goal, said the museum’s executive director, Gwen Goodman, is to distill the experience of all ethnic groups making a new life in America by tracing the history of Jews in this country.

“Our museum tells the story of what happens when an ethnic minority arrives in America, and how they can feel welcome,” Ms. Goodman said. “This is a museum about the meaning of America itself, seen through the eyes of one community.”

Polshek said the five-story glass facade "implies that one should not take for granted the freedoms supplied by a democracy."

Three exhibition floors will overlook Independence Mall, which contains Independence Hall, where the Declaration of Independence was signed; the Liberty Bell, rung on July 8, 1776, and the National Constitution Center, with a permanent Constitution exhibit.

“They will never be able to forget that they are in the birthplace of this country,” Mr. Polshek said.

At the top of the facade, a replica of a flame will represent both the torch of the Statue of Liberty and the eternal flame that traditionally burns in a synagogue.

Major donors include movie producer Sidney Kimmel and Jones Apparel Group founder; Philadelphia Flyers hockey team owner Ed Snider; and the Dell Foundation. By the end of 2007, $107 million had been raised.

A collection of some 24,000 objects, includes silver, books, drawings, prints and photographs from colonial times to the present - even a Yiddish typewriter. It includes about 10,000 objects (late-19th to mid-20th centuries) donated by Rabbi Peter H. Schweitzer of New York City.

The exhibit will also examine assimilation, a result of freedom in America.

Goodman said she hoped the museum would attract both assimilated, non-affiliated Jews as well as those who lead active Jewish lives.

Museum historian Josh Perelman said exhibits would examine contemporary Jewish issues, such as intermarriage. “There were a lot of Jews in the colonies, but sometimes there were not enough young people to find your mate here,” he said.

Goodman was asked why the museum is not in New York or Washington; the story of American immigrant experience should be told, she said, in the country's birthplace, "where it all began."

Read more here.

And - mark your calendars now - the 29th IAJGS Conference on International Jewish Genealogy will be held August 2-7, 2009, in Philadelphia, co-hosted by the Jewish Genealogical Society of Greater Philadelphia.