Conference taveng::bagels

From:	ULTRA::ELLIS  "David Ellis  02-Jan-1986 0850"  2-JAN-1986 08:49
To:	CURIE::GOLD
Subj:	Jewish Roots

Jack, 

I, too, have been interested in tracing my ancestors.  Several years ago, I
traced my own family and my wife's family back four generations (and a bit
more in some branches).  It took a lot of hard work -- phone interviews,
letters, trips to archives and cemeteries, and more.

We were fortunate in that our great-grandparents had made it to the US from
Europe, so there were records on them available here (Boston and NY).  In
your case, there are several key questions that might be able to open some
doors for you.  Did your parents come to the US by themselves or with other
relatives (e.g. their brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins, parents)?
Sometimes people came by themselves but later sent for their parents to
arrive on another ship.  If so, additional records may be available to you.  
Do you have any living great-aunts or great-uncles?  They can give you 
valuable information.  Do you know what towns in Europe your parents (and 
their ancestors) came from?  Knowing the towns can point you to other sources
of information, such as burial societies, Holocaust Yizkor (memorial) books
or even Mormon genealogical records on Jews from these places.

Kurzweil's book "From Generation to Generation" is very helpful.  Another
useful book is "Finding our Fathers" by Dan Rottenberg.

I'd like to post this in the Notesfile, but our system does not have VAX Notes 
installed.  If you wish, you may edit this message and post parts of it.

Please feel free to contact me with any questions you might have.

Sincerely,

David Ellis
Secure Systems Group
LTN2-2/C08 
DTN 226-6784 

From:	FULTON::GOLD         "Jack E. Gold MRO3-2/R15 DTN 297-5905"  2-JAN-1986 09:34
To:	ULTRA::ELLIS,GOLD        
Subj:	RE: Jewish Roots

David

Thanks very much for the comments, and encouragement. Unfortunately, nearly
all of my family was destroyed in the Holocaust. My mother has two brothers,
one in Chicago and one in Israel. My father has one living relative, a
niece in Israel. Although i have gotten the names of the towns where my
parents were born, they do not remember much family history. Since the places
where they were born are both behind the Iron Curtain now, it makes it
very much more difficult. My father was born in a town which was located on
the Russian, Polish border. It has changed hands several times, and is now
part of Russia. I suspect getting records from the Russians, especially
for Jews, would not be easy. 

I will look up the other book that you have mentioned. I have the Kurzweil
book. If you don't object, I would like to post your message to me in the
notes file. Would that be OK with you?

Thanks again.

Jack


From:	ULTRA::ELLIS  "David Ellis  02-Jan-1986 0959"  2-JAN-1986 09:57
To:	FULTON::GOLD
Subj:	RE: Jewish Roots

---------------------Reply to mail dated 2-JAN-1986 09:35---------------------

Jack,

Yes, it's OK for you to post anything I send you.

You're right that it's very difficult to trace a family that's been decimated
in the Holocaust.  Since you know the European towns from where your relatives
were killed, there are still some resources you can try.  Particularly where
larger towns had lots of people killed in the Holocaust, strong efforts were
made to remember the slain and their heritage.  The Yizkor books I mentioned
in my previous message were issued by town.  Most are written in Yiddish,
and some in German, Hebrew, Polish and other languages.  The YIVO Institute
in New York City has archives with a large collection of Yizkor books.  One
book I looked through had hundreds of photos labeled with the names of the
people in them, a map of the town, and dozens of articles on prominent
citizens, their families, achievements and life histories.  From this book,
I was able to trace one branch of my wife's father's mother's family back
five generations.  And this was the branch we'd had most trouble with, since
there were so few survivors.

As for getting records from the Soviet Union, there's virtually no chance of
success.  If the town was in Poland previously, the Mormons may have
microfilmed records of births, deaths and marriages, usually taken from the
18th and 19th century ledgers.  It sounds curious, but the Mormons have one
of the best collections of Jewish records around.  They keep hoping that Jews
will convert to their Church, and they maintain their collection for precisely
that reason.  Branch Genealogical Libraries may be found in many Mormon
Churches.  Anyone can pay a visit and, for a small fee, order copies of the
microfilms to be viewed in the library.  Each branch library has a card
catalog indexing the microfilms, the originals of which are kept in a gigantic
underground vault in Utah.

So, Jack, if you're willing to put in a lot of time and effort, it may be
possible to find out more than you might think at first.  Good Luck!

David


From:	ULTRA::ELLIS        "David Ellis"  2-JAN-1986 10:11
To:	FULTON::GOLD
Subj:	RE: Jewish Roots

---------------------Reply to mail dated 2-JAN-1986 10:02---------------------

Jack,

No, I don't know if YIVO answers postal inquiries.  I do know that they have
a tiny and overworked but helpful staff.  Zach Baker is their "towns" expert
and would know if they have materials on your towns.  After that, you're
probably on your own.  Their materials are frightfully disorganized and very
few of them are in English.  If you know somebody who can read Yiddish
fluently, try to bring them along after you locate the books you're
interested in -- that will be most helpful.

(No, I don't know Zach Baker personally -- I just spoke with him once briefly
over the phone some years ago, and I don't think he'll remember my name at all)

In addition to YIVO, the Yad Vashem museum in Jerusalem has extensive archives.
I suspect you may have to travel to Israel to get the most out of them.  On
the other hand, you have nothing to lose and possibly much to gain by writing
them.

David


From:	FULTON::GOLD         "Jack E. Gold MRO3-2/R15 DTN 297-5905"  2-JAN-1986 10:16
To:	ULTRA::ELLIS,GOLD        
Subj:	RE: Jewish Roots

Thanks. I was at Yad Vashem about 6 months ago. Unfortunatley, they were in 
the process of computerizing their archives, so none were available. However,
Bet Hatefutsoth in Tel Aviv is starting a new project. They hope to create
a computerized listing of all the family trees in Jewish history. They are
asking that visitors give them as much info as they know about their families.
They will then place this into their data base (for a fee). It will be available
to all visitors, at terminals in the museum. By the way, they are using
Digital equipment. It is a very nicely constructed system, using VT241 color
terminals. They had a demo running when I was there last summer. I believe
I still have some info about getting into the data base, should you be
interested.

Jack


From:	ULTRA::ELLIS        "David Ellis"  2-JAN-1986 10:22
To:	FULTON::GOLD
Subj:	RE: Jewish Roots

---------------------Reply to mail dated 2-JAN-1986 10:18---------------------

Jack,

What you said about Bet Hat'futzot is very interesting.  I was there about
five years ago, and they had brief computer printouts on many towns in
Europe.  Their new project sounds exciting!  I'd love to find out about it

Now if only I could tie into it from the E-Net.  Hmm, there ARE nodes in
Tel Aviv (TAV02, etc.)...

I got a phone call last night from a man who was doing genealogical research
on our (common) family name.  He got my phone number from a woman who sells
lists of all occurences of <name> in all U.S. phone books (a great home business
use of PC's, but I wonder how she got access to AT&T's databases).
                                        
Our name is very uncommon, in fact, a story I had heard was that it used
to be ROSENBLUTH up until the T was dropped sometime in the 19th century.
His US-wide list contained 18 entries. Out of the 18, 4 belong to my family,
and most of the rest belong to his.  

He got names of other members of my family from a holocaust-survivors database
that was available at the Jerusalem Conference of Holocaust Survivors held
~4 years ago -- he has spoken briefly with my father a couple of times.
He is looking for a common ancestor to our families, and he has some reasonably
good evidence that one might exist; certain first-names are common to both
families, and the towns we come from in Hungary are geographically close
to each other.  

He says he has found evidence that his family might be cohanim(*), and he has
been duchaning(*) since he found this out -- he said he would be sending me
photocopies of the information he had.  I find this a little hard to believe,
(offhand, without seeing the papers) -- both our families are mostly orthodox,
and I don't really see how information about being cohanim would be lost.
It's the sort of thing families are proud of and doesn't get forgotten, even
where there's not much Jewish education.
                 
Cohanim = priests; priesthood is a status conferred paternally, and is a
	  subset of belonging to the Tribe of Levi --the only specific tribal
	  affiliation that Jews today claim (aside from the legal fiction
	  that  Ethiopian Jews belong to the Tribe of Dan.)
Duchaning = pronouncing priestly blessing upon congregation at end of 
	    Additional Service (musaf).  (anybody care to start a note on Jewish
	    liturgy?)
                                      
Anyway, aside from those two sources of information, he said he had found
the Mormon Genealogical service useful, and they had provided him with
information from (I think) tombstones in Hungary.
                                      
			Kathy Rosenbluh (who may have a 19-th century
					 midwife as a namesake)

Re: .3

Kathy, I don't know about your family, but on my Mother's side as the 
family emigrated to the US in dribs and drabs from Russia in the 1910-1920 
time frame, a number of variations of the family name were created!

As my Mother told me the story, the US Customs agents at Ellis Island 
couldn't read Russian and the emigrants couldn't write English, so the 
agents tried their best to write down the names as they understood them. 
Thus my Mother's family names are Polono, Polino, Pollino, and G-d knows 
how many other variations that I don't know about.

Unfortunately, much of my Mother's family is deceased (not many got out of 
Russia, and I understand many didn't survive the Holocaust) and my Mother 
is terminally ill and no longer able to discuss any family matters at this
point. As for my Father's family, they were never close and the name Segal 
is spelled so many ways that tracing geneology would be a real task.

My suggestion to anyone wishing to understand their family roots is that 
they do NOT wait until family has died out or gotten sick before talking 
about it.

	You know, I always thought that it would not be very hard
	for me to trace my roots back to Gustav Mahler.

	I have not been able to even get the branch below
	my grandparents.

	Is it mine, or do all Jewish families not get along.
	                                    
	Michael

    	From time to time I do Jewish geanoligical research.  One way
    I do it is by asking all my oldest relatives about everyone they
    knew.  Also I ask or all the heads of any family socities and try
    to find someone who also has charts on family history.  I've made
    great success with this and have gone back as much as eight
    generations.
    	But here is something I bet none of you didn't know about. 
    There IS a Jewish genealogical group here in boston!  It is called
    the Jewish Genealogical Study Group of Boston and is headed by Bill
    Rubin in Belmont.  You can reach him at 617-484-5001.
    	Also there is a geanology notes file as well that has some useful
    information as well as stuff for genealogy software.
    
    Good luck!  Ron Goodstein

A friend of mine was trying to trace her roots, and found that her 
grandfather's brothers (long deceased) all had different last names!  This
was due to the Ellis Island custom agents' lack of foreign language training.

One of the names was Ferguson.  Why?  When asked what this very nervous, 
great-uncles name was, he replied, sheepishly, "Fer Gessein" (sp?).  (I forget, 
in Yiddish).

True Story!

    re .7
    
    I don't know how true the story is. I have heard an old 78 rpm record
    recorded by Hershal Bernardi back in the 50's when he was still
    performing in the Yidish theater in New York. He told of two Jews
    who knew each other from the old country meeting after many years
    on the corner of Alan & Rivington St. I won't go into the whole story
    but one of them was now named Sean (pronounced shawn) Ferguson.
    It so happened that when the immigration officer asked Jake his
    name he got so nervous tha he said "shoin! fer gessein" The officer
    said OK Sean Fergusen. Next!
    
    It's a long story and I was going to transcribe it for the note
    on Jewish humor.
    
    				Fred
    
    PS - That's the only Yidish joke I know.
     

    Would some one be kind enought to inform those of us who are
    interested, but ignorant of most Yiddish what the term in the last
    two replies means ("shoin! fer gessein").
    
    					Thanks,
    					Michael

    Shoin is an expresion, literally meaning now. It is used as we use
    well, or wow. Fergessin means forgot.

    Since I don't like to start new notes unless necessary, I'm going to
    revive this old note.
    
    August third, my daughters and I are going to Israel for a two week
    tour through my shul.
    
    I just found out yesterday from my mother that she has a cousin with
    family in Israel that she hasn't heard from in a little over 30 years!
    
    Since I don't have a lot of time to do "research", I'm hoping one of
    our Israeli readers can help locate her or her family. 
    
    This is what I know from a card sent in 1961:
    
    		My mothers' cousin is named Malka Nahor
    		HER mother (my grandmother's sister) was born: Malvina
    			Herzig and moved to Israel early this century
    		Her husband and children (don't know which is husband) were
    			Zvi, Noam, Jig'al (Yig 'al?), and Rina
    		At the time, they lived at Kibutz Gat
    
    Any help would be appreciated.
    
    Thanks.
    
    Neil
    
    (BTW I did find a Ygdal Nahori at ISV to whom I have sent a note)

    Update on the .12
    
    I DID find my family when I got to Israel. I was quite warmly welcomed.
    
    I feel good that I was able to re-link the family trees. They have been
    looking for US for about thirty years.
    
    The visit was quite interesting. My olders relatives speak no English
    and some my younger relatives speak little. Fortunately I was able
    to talk to most of them with a combination of Hebrew, English, and
    German[!].
    
    -Neil