Television: House of Life, Prague

If you are in the US, do watch out for the screening of "House of Life: The Old Jewish Cemetery in Prague." Reports indicate that various PBS stations are scheduling it this week, so check your local listings.

Narrated by Claire Bloom, the documentary tells the story - layer by layer - of The Old Jewish Cemetery in Prague, which attracts nearly 700,000 international visitors each year.

It chronicles history, including lore, mysticism, tradition, philosopy, great rabbis and philanthropists, and even the Golem.

The 12,000 stones on the surface of The Old Jewish Cemetery may be covering as many as 100,000 members of Prague's historic Jewish community.

During World War II, it was the only place where Jewish children were allowed to play. When the country was under communist rule, lovers used it as a meeting place.

The cemetery serves, as does the film, as a reminder of the indomitable spirit of a people compelled to honor their past and preserve the lessons of history.

Oregon: What do I want to know? April 21

The Jewish Genealogical Society of Oregon is offering a "Back to Basics" series. The next one focuses on "What do I want to know?" with Debbi Korman.

The meeting is set for 7pm, Tuesday, April 21, at Ahavath Achim Synagogue, 3225 SW Barbur Blvd., Portland.

Learn how to frame research issues, develop a research plan, keep track of sources and organize the genealogical information found.

Debbi has been researching her family tree for 20 years and is prepared to reveal all of her mistakes in order to help you to be a more successful researcher.

She specializes in Hungary, Slovakia and Poland. For five years, she edited the Jewish Genealogical Society's journal Rootskey, and is now the JGSO Shalshelet editor. She has discovered and connected with distant relatives in multiple European countries and Australia.

For more information, see the JGSO website

Seattle: Russian Jewish genealogy resources, April 13

"Russian Jewish Genealogy: Utilizing early-19th-mid-20th century genealogical documents" with Michael Steinore, is the topic for the next meeting of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Washington State.

The event begins at 7pm, Monday, April 13, at the Stroum Jewish Community Center on Mercer Island.

Numerous sources of genealogical information exist for those with ancestors who lived in Czarist Russia and/or the Soviet Union. Some are harder to find and translate than others.

This presentation will offer practical advice on how to locate, understand, and utilize some of the important sources of Russian Jewish genealogy.

With one significant exception - Yizkor books - few broad-in-scale historical sources of genealogical information were created for that purpose. To understand how other documents were created (and their contents), Steinore will offer an overview of major Russian history events and how they resulted in documents to be discussed. He'll also provide information on whether such documents are likely to be found for a specific town or region.

The focus will be on sources more easily accessible in the US, such as census documents, metrical books and passports, Duma voter lists. yizkor books. Extraordinary State Commission records, etc.

Michael Steinore is the author of numerous articles and web pages on Jewish genealogy, focusing on the history and genealogy of Jews who lived in Czarist Russia.

He has translated and made available a number ofRussian-language materials on the internet, including maps, Duma voter lists, Holocaust victim lists and Czarist decrees. He has also catalogued the two primary Yizkor book collections in the Pacific Northwest.

Steinore is a software engineer at a well-known software company in Redmond.

For more details, click here. Admission: JGSGW members, no charge; others, $5.

Home Again: Whose Father Was He? Part 5

This is the New York Times' final installment of Erroll Morris's interesting look at the case of Amos Humiston, for which he has extensively interviewed author Mark Dunkelman and Humiston family relatives. This installment also offers many photographs, documents and letters.

There is historical information on the battle at Gettysburg, descriptions of the aftermath of war on battlefields, and of the monument to Humiston, bearing a bronze plaque with a depiction of both Amos and his children. Dunkelman says it is "The only monument to an individual enlisted man on the Gettysburg battlefield.”

The ending paragraphs are compelling to family historians who have photographs of their ancestors - with names and without. Those images represent a real person with a past and, as genealogists, we really want to recreate our past, our families. Sometimes we can connect with that particular person in the image, often we simply can't and can never identify the individual.

At the heart of this is the dream of defeating time and thereby achieving immortality, creating a past that can live on after we die. Mark Dunkelman and David Humiston Kelley were inspired by their grandfather’s stories and spent a considerable fraction of their adult lives sifting through evidence and compiling genealogies. They are placing themselves in the arc of first being inspired by the past and then creating their future place in it. But not everyone is like this. Ironies abound. What about the other Humiston descendants? David Humiston Kelley was obsessed with history, but Allan Cox, who inherited the letters, was much less interested in the past. Mark Dunkelman found the letters, but how many Mark Dunkelmans are there in our futures? How many future historians to lovingly research and recreate our past?

Morris writes:

Perhaps more than any other artifact, the photograph has engaged our thoughts about time and eternity. I say “perhaps,” because the history of photography spans less than 200 years. How many of us have been “immortalized” in a newspaper, a book or a painting vs. how many of us have appeared in a photograph?

The photograph of Amos Humiston’s three children — of Frank, Alice and Fred — allows us to imagine that we have grasped something both unique and universal. It suggests that the experience of this vast, unthinkable war can be reduced to the life and death of one man — by identifying Gettysburg’s “Unknown Soldier” we can reunite a family. That we can be saved from oblivion by an image that reaches and touches people, that communicates something undying and transcendent about each one of us.

The original ambrotype is still missing. Where could it be?

Dunkelman hopes that his book would draw attention to the story and someone would find the ambrotype. Writes Morris:

Perhaps it is displayed on a mantle or in an antiquarian’s shop or in an eccentric, personal collection of Gettysburgiana (like Edward Woodward’s poem).Where is it?Where is the ambrotype? The readership of The Times is respectfully asked to join in the quest. The promise of its return still remains unfulfilled.

Read the complete article at the link above.

Home Again: Whose Father Was He? Part 4

Part Four of this compelling and detailed story in the New York Times continues as writer Errol Morris gets into the not-so-nice happenings at the Homestead. This installment also includes many photographs, documents, maps and family trees.

There's Rosa J. Carmichael, whom he calls Cruella de Vil of the Homestead, of children being punished, of other children acting as informants. The horrible goings-on were exposed in an 1876 series of newspaper articles that detailed denying the orphans food, clothing and education; that they were beaten and subjected to leg irons and hobbling chains.

Dr. Bourns was charged with embezzlement in 1877, including mismanagement, waste of property and violation of trust. In 1878, the sheriff seized the property and the contents were auctioned.

Morris asks author Mark Dunkelman about Bourns' character, and Dunkelman points out what he calls "Jekyll and Hyde aspects to Bourns' personality," which included acts of altruism (reproducing the photograph, raising funds, establishing the orphanage), but then things seem to have gone wrong and he's not sure if it was greed or financial difficulties.

Amos Humiston's daughter Alice was quoted in 1914 in a story about her effort to recover the ambrotype from Dr. Bourns. He refused to return it.

Morris also talked to Amos Humiston's great-grandchildren: archaeoastronomy expert David Humiston Kelley and retired salesman Allan Lawrence Cox.

There's more on Kelley's claim about having traced some family branches back to King David, which will interest genealogists, as as well as the note that he's working with Bennett Greenspan of FamilyTreeDNA.com on this.

And Kelley chimes in with more on Dr. Bourns' personality, as well as a large portion on Kelley's own research of ancient peoples, research on the Mayans and their calendar, the date of the end of the world (in 1220) and the possibilities of recovering ancient history.

His conversation with Allan Cox concerned letters passed down by Humiston's widow Philinda to her son Fred, to Fred's daughter and then to Cox. The originals have vanished but photocopies exist. There are quotes from 14 of Humiston's letters to his wife.

Read the complete article at the link above, to make sense of this all.

Israel: Memorials to vanished communities

There are more than 350 monuments - representing more than 1,400 communities and countries - in Israel. The Israel Genealogical Society has announced that its online database of Memorials to Vanished Communities in Israel is now available here.

The project is in memory of Dr. Ludger Moyal and was prepared for the 2004 IAJGS International Conference on Jewish Genealogy in Jerusalem.

The database also includes memorials dedicated to certain towns where pogroms occured not related to the Holocaust.There are a few cases where memorials are dedicated to town Jews who suffered pogroms which were not related to the Shoah.

The memorials were built by associations of former residents (landsmanschaften) of communities in Europe annihilated during the Shoah. The immigrants arrived in Eretz Israel before, during or after the Shoah. Many but not all of the monuments are located in cemeteries in Israel, and contain soil brought from the killing fields in Europe . A large number of the memorials commemorate more than one community.

This project does not include every single memorial in Israel . In particular, we have not yet documented the Chamber of the Holocaust on Mt. Zion in Jerusalem , which we intend to carry out as an entire project.

The IGS appreciates hearing from readers who may have corrections, who have discovered an error of identification for a memorial, or know of additional cenotaphs not included. Please email the IGS webmaster.

Philadelphia: Jewish museum seeks docents

The National Museum of American Jewish History is set to open on Philadelphia's Independence Mall in fall 2010. It is looking for volunteer docents to complete a comprehensive training program for tours and educational programs. The course will begin in October 2009.

What do docents do?

They provide visitors with a deeper understanding of museum artifacts and the history, people, and the stories behind them. The NMAJH Docent Program wants to offer all visitors an exciting and engaging experience - one that provides a new understanding and appreciation for, and continued interest in, American Jewish history and everyone’s connection to it.

Docents attend a one-year course with weekly meetings on American Jewish history. In addition to volunteering a minimum of eight hours a month to guide tours and other visitors, they also research and learn about special exhibitions and conduct independent research, facilitate programs with area schools and community groups, as well as assisting with public programs.

A background in (museum) education, (American Jewish) history, volunteerism/human relations or (theater) arts and culture is preferable but not necessary, according to the site.

For more information, click here and go to the Education tab.

Miami: Poland roots trip, April 12

In 2006, Dr. Ken Lipner traveled to Poland in search of the roots of his Lipnatzki- Lipner family, and will share the experience at the next meeting of the Jewish Genealogy Society of Greater Miami.

A retired economics professor at Florida Intenational University, Lipner will speak about the reaction of the Polish people to him and his research, along with photos and more information during his presentation, "From Suwalki, Poland to San Antonio to Miami."

The program begins at 10am, Sunday, April 12, at the Greater Miami Jewish Federation on Biscayne Boulevard. Free parking and Passover refreshments.

For more information, click here.