IAJGS 2017 - International Assoc of Jewish Genealogy Annual Conference -

This was my 2nd time attending the IAJGS conference, my first time as a presenter. My Facebook for Collaborative Family History Research  was well attended. One attendee asked me why I did not use Facebook groups for storing my albums. I wish I knew about them when I started with Facebook back in 2008. 

Some highlights from IAJGS sessions I attended:

Tammy Hepp's session, Cousin Bait, described ways to lure & respond to family with social media. I have been successful with this, since this blog & my YouTube channel were both instrumental in allowing unknown cousins to find me: Erwan Grandais found my video of TonTon.  Tammy found photos of her family on Flicker, with Google. I googled "Bienstock family" and discovered https://www.genealogytoday.com/surname/finder.mv?Surname=Bienstock.  Another Google search format to try: "site:website.com keyword ". 

Linda Levy presented on Jewish Joint Distribution Committee;  archives.JDC.org  holds 80,000 index cards for 1945 Displaced Persons camps.  1914-74 is searchable online. I learned that the Dominican Republic accepted 700 Jewish refugees during the Shoah.  Alaska Airlines was responsible for airlifting of 50,000 Yemenite Jews to Israel, in Operation Magic Carpet. Operation Salomon, May 1991, rescued 14,500 Ethiopian Jews.

In How to Preserve your Research – Merle Kastner described how anecdotes and photos bring dry historical details to life. She creates spiral-bound family tree books, to give as gifts at family reunions, baby namings, unveilings.  I took  Emily Garber's advice from her talk on BLOGs & submitted my blog to her genealogy blog list on extrayad.blogspot.com . Now my blog is listed on geneabloggerstribe.com .

In Keys to Involving Students, Jeff Schrager discussed how he motivates teenagers in a 3-week Genealogy program. He uses storytelling to connect events & to tie genealogy to any subject – inherited disease, history, writing. Because genealogy has a start, but no end he teaches students context and focus. The earlier they start the more ancestors are alive to interview.   

Twitter Follower turns out to be long lost cousin!

another connection….This one through TWITTER:

When people follow me on Twitter, I often wonder why. Sept 17, 2014 Twitter alerted me to a new follower: Remy. After checking Remy's profile I saw we shared a surname & PARIS.  I had been searching for my dad's French cousins Maurice and Albert for 20+ years and my Twitter follower turns out to be their nephew!

May 2015 Remy connects me to his cousin Nathalie Simonne, or rather she emails me.   Nathalie is the niece of Albert & Maurice.  She shares some valuable family tree info, adding names of extended family I did not know existed.  We exchange details of our families.
Originally I had thought that the 2 brothers had perished in the Holocaust.  I had discovered that Maurice's 8 year old son Robert was deported from Paris and murdered. Here is a link to a picture of him I found on the Serge Klarsfeld's website. Caption: Robert  Binsztock with Lucienne & Fanny Lerner:  http://www.holocaust-history.org/klarsfeld/French%20Children/html&graphics/T0951.shtml   Now I know that the 2 girls in the photo with him were also cousins: Fanny & Lucienne.  The 3 of them were deported from France and murdered in the Holocaust.

La Conscience des Francais - book authored by Rene Duschler

Like a detective, I often search  back through my old Genealogical email correspondence for clues I may have missed.  I also repeat prior google searches to see if something new is posted about a specific person.

Last week I googled "Rene Duschler" as I have many times before.  But this time,  I had an exact match on his name,  a book he authored was listed for sale:  "La conscience des Français".  Although it was published in 1987, this was the first time I noticed it in my search results.  I immediately placed my order.

I believe the author, Rene Duschler, was my dad's best friend and neighbor growing up in Paris. In 1939 Rene was a year older than my dad and Rene was enlisted in the French army.  Rene was captured by the Germans and somehow escaped. When Rene returned home to his apartment in Paris, his dad was concerned that the Germans would come looking for him.  My dad's family hid Rene in their apartment for several weeks.  My dad described this unique scenario of his family as "Jews hiding a Gentile".  

In June 1942  my dad and his family were forced to wear the  yellow star of David that identified them as  "Juif" Jewish.   My dad described the panic in the Jewish community, the pandemonium.  Jews became hunted animals, desperate for an escape route.  

Rene Duschler's dad was a peddlar with many connections.  When the time came, Mr. Duschler provided the name and address of a "cheminot", a railroad worker in Vierzon.  The railroad station in Vierzon was one of the largest in France, strategically located on the boundary between zones.  At the time France was divided into a Northern Nazi-occupied zone and a Southern free zone.

This Cheminot became my family's courageous savior.  He smuggled members of my family, and other desperate Jews, onto railroad cars headed south, all while German soldiers patrolled the area.  My dad could not recall this cheminot's name, but often talked about him.  He was eventually captured by the Germans and killed.    

When I came across Rene Duschler's book on Amazon, I felt that this book could provide  answers and details from my dad's story. Who was this cheminot? What was his full name? Wouldn't it be something extraordinary if Rene mentioned my dad in his book?  I am trying not to hold impossible expectations as I anticipate the precious content that this book may hold.  



 

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.

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.

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.