Sunday, November 7, 2010

JewishGen Success Story

After 10 years on JewishGen, this year, 2010, has been a triple header. I discovered a new branch of my family tree on my dad's side and another branch on my mom's.

On My Dad's Family Tree:
Yael contacted me during her first week on JewishGen. We were both researching the same town and surname (my maiden name). I could not confirm the connection, until she sent me the photos. The first photo was quite familiar to me, since I had the identical photo in my own photo album. It was my brother's Bar Mitzvah photo from 1959. The second photo was a family photo with me in it as a gawky 13 year old. That's when we knew we were cousins.

Discovering Yael was perfectly timed. Since I was having my family over to celebrate my son's college graduation, we planned a Skye session to introduce Yael and her twin boys to my family.

Saturday, June 26, 2010

researching my Family History online

I recently helped my mom, an elderly Holocaust survivor,  find the cousin in the Netherlands, that she had been seeking for more than 15 years! 

I have been a genealogy researcher for more than 10 years. Jewishgen.org has helped me tremendously. By posting surnames and countries, Jewishgen researchers can connect with others searching for common ancestors. In the past 10 years I have found some Polish records online for my mom's family and emailed many other JewishGen researchers in attempts at finding connections, around the world.

For 10 years I searched for potential cousins that were lost or dispersed in the Holocaust. For the victims, I want to learn their identity, to memorialize them in my family tree and in Yad Vashem yadvashem.org. Familyecho.org hosts free Family Tree software that can be edited and shared.