Reflecting on Finding Family, Retracing my Genealogy Journey on Social Media

I started exploring social media with bevmargo accounts on Facebook (FB), YouTube, Twitter,.... Now, I am reflecting back on my genealogy quest, trying to remember how it started, the twists and turns, surprises, discoveries, over the years. Here is my list broken down into 5 major areas to reconstruct my searches and successes.  I've come a long way.
Tracking my Genealogy Journey:

1.  JewishGen: Family Finder bulletin board - posted surnames & towns, since ~2000

• 2011 triple success story published JewishGen testimonials page Jan. 2011
• Marc Ast photo of Abramowitz family matches my Henry Abramowitz
• Marc Gelkopf - found him by revisiting old JewishGen emails for missed clues.
• Yael Michaeli  - finds me in her first week on JewishGen - She sends me a photo, which unbelievably was my brother's Bar Mitzvah picture.
• 2015 - Mary Fay Emanuel contacted me - another Gelkopf in Australia 
• 2017 - Recently: Stephane Gehlkopf  found me through JewishGen, his first week, like Yael, July 2017. He connected me to Sylvie who lives between NYC, Florida & Paris.&  I met her for lunch in NYC.

2.  Sharing & Gaining Followers on Social Media - since 2008

• Facebook:  added photos, videos, documents to genealogy albums. (> dozen albums).
  My niece Danielle reconnected with Larry Bugaisky.
• YouTube.com/bevmargo:  added videos: ~20 videos, including a dozen digitized and extracted from the 4-hour Steven Spielberg Survivors of the Shoah VCR tapes for my mom, dad & uncle.
• Followers on YouTube, Twitter, Blogspot - at IAJGS Tammy Hepps referred to this as cousin bait, posting content that attracts cousins.

• Twitter - Remy Binsztok from Paris 9/17/2014 - random follower
• Blog & YouTube - Erwan Grandais  - 3/30/2015 Erwan found my TonTon videos and subscribed to my Youtube channel & also commented on my Blog 

3.  FamilyTreeDNA.com - DNA started with Y-test & Mt  11/2011 - added autosomal FF 2016.
I suspected Marilyn Binstock was a cousin.  We share personality traits and our dads look like brothers in photos!  Marilyn's dad & my brother Claude took the Y test to confirm our connection with a distance of 0, which means that our grandfathers or great grandfathers were brothers.

4.  MyHeritage.com Family Tree Smart Matching - joining other family trees & networking with other genies who share common branches,  since 2011.  Be wary, any wrong info will get propagated to many other Trees.

5. Traditional Classic Research Methods

• Conversations 
• 1/2013 confirmed cousins with Diane - based on my brother Claude remembering visiting Konkowski from Canada.
• discovered Liliane Stzrausberg based on conversations with Diane.  Diane kept talking about "asking her cousin Liliane". One day I asked who she was & discovered she was the Strausberg cousin I had been seeking, on Diane's tree....just waiting for me to pay attention.

• Research & Records
• BMD records - found on Jri-Poland & Jewishgen - ordered from PSA- 2008-09 Gielkop marriage, ggpa Kiva Dawidiowicz marriage, gpa Shmul Dawidowicz birth
  
• USHMM onsite visit 8/2011 - searched ITS & DP archive records
• discovered my dad's cousin Maurice as Mordka Binsztock -  I recognized the  Paris address as my dad's apartment! My dad documented dates, names, places. However, could not locate living kin.....
• until REMY !!!!  a Binsztok from Paris follows me on Twitter 9/2014

• Red Cross ITS Tracing - provided me with Robert Binsztock birth record, son of Mordka. He was deported and murdered at age 8.
• Columbia U - onsite visit to view shoah videos in  usc archive   8/2011- discovered Israel Binsztok from Bedzin - with 3 sons in Florida

•  Meetings in-person and Face-Time 
• FB face-time / video-chats with Yael, Stephanne, Quentin Schneigeiger
• my sister Simone & niece Danielle went to Israel to meet Gelkopf cousins, Rosalyn & Marc.  Simone also went to Australia to meet other Gelkopfs - Mary Emanuel
• met Sylvie in NYC
  

Stephane: Another lost cousin finds me

Yesterday I got an unexpected email inquiry from Stephane of Paris.  He described his grandfather Wilhelm Gehlkopf from Elberfeld. His great grandfather Abel had a brother Schelemen and  a sister Maryjem.  Maryjem is my great grandmother: my mothers paternal grandfather Kiva was married to Maryjem Gielkop.  I knew immediately from what Stephane shared in his email that we were related. I confirmed the relationship. It was Stephan's 2nd week researching his tree.  I 've been searching for decades!  He found me through an email I sent his grandfather more than a year ago, 2/2016.

I made the first connection to my mom's Gehlkopf cousins in 2011. Thankfully my mom was still alive to discover I found the Gelkop cousin she was searching for since she left France in 1950's.

Today I met Stephane and his wife Valerie via Video chat through Facebook.  I am hoping to add him as a Facebook friend so I can introduce him to the other Gehlkopf family and share photos

New Discovery: Document found on Mom's History

Josh Korman sent me this link to my mom's home town: Elberfeld, Wuppertal Germany's synagogue http://alte-synagoge-wuppertal.de/index.php?id=13&L=1. There I found a document listing all Jewish people buried in the cemetery there. I found my mom's mother - Grandma Screnca Bugaisky, my mom's little sister Elli, and my mom's cousin Rosa Gelkopf. Ellie died of meningitis, in October 1929 at the age of 4. Three months later Screnza died at a clinic after a medical procedure to enable her to have another child. Coincidently 3 months later cousin Rosa died during childbirth.