Transcribing my Dad's Story from pencil...

Happy New Year 2020! On this blog I have often posted excerpts from my dad's story "In His Own Words." 

Sometime in the late 1990's, my dad completed writing his memoir, more than 150 pages handwritten in pencil.   When he first handed me his manuscript, he watched as I inspected it.  One of the entries in his Table of Contents was "experience".  I turned to the page and began reading. I was not expecting that "experience" referred to his first sexual experience, his visit to a brothel! 

I knew I needed to preserve his story, electronically on my computer. So I began the process of transcribing and entering his words into Word Perfect.   I did some wordsmithing and editing to tweak his English.  In one chapter he describes the increasingly threatening conditions in Paris 1942 as "titanium".  It took me a while to realize he was referring to the state of chaos, or "pandemonium."

To this day I refer back to details in his story to help me track our family tree.  My dad diligently  detailed names of cousins, their occupations, locations in Poland, street addresses in Paris.  The street addresses were a key clue in connecting a name in a database as a cousin.

My dad wrote that cousins Albert and Maurice Binstock moved into his parents' apartment on Rue Fessart.  For many years I tried to track down these two cousins in documents online. During my 2011 visit to the USHMM research floor I copied all ITS records for Binstock of Bedzin or Paris.  Finally I discovered a Mordka Binstock with the same address listed for Rue Fessart & immediately I knew I had found my "Maurice."  It wasn't till 2014 that I connected with his living descendant, Remy, through Twitter.

I could write an entire miniseries just from the stories that were passed down. The survivor witnesses, each with their own unique story of survival: my mom, my aunts, my uncle, my cousins.

My next step is to get my dad's story published in a book, to share with the world.   My dad would want his name as the writer. I can put my name as editor. Not sure how to begin the process.

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
  

My FACEBOOK Presentation at IAJGS 2017

I recently received the recording of my session from the June 2017 International Association of Jewish Genealogy (IAJGS) conference iajgs2017.org.   In my Facebook for Collaborative Family History Research presentation I share the Facebook albums I created, the photos, documents, videos I posted and the discussions and discoveries they generated.

The recording is 55 minutes long, too big to upload to YouTube. I will be extracting and sharing 1-minute portions here.   So, please check back to this post.  I will post excerpts like I did with the 3 hour Steven Spielberg videos on my youtube/bevmargo channel.

1-Minute Video clips extracted from my Facebook presentation:

1. This video clip describes connecting with my cousin Yael through JewishGen.org  and a photo.
 


2. In this next Facebook video clip, my mom describes seeing her little sister Henny for the first time after 7 years. She describes how confused my Tata Henny was, just learning that she was Jewish in 1945. She was 2 years old when she was sent to Switzerland. She grew up with the name Evi and parents who loved her.  She only discovered the truth of who she really was after liberation and a 1-year custody battle.