Personal Research Projects Seeking Information and Participants

Usually the projects I write about are posted on public Web pages, often by organizations rather than individuals.  These, however, are smaller scale, people who sent messages to e-mail groups I'm in.  I checked with each of them beforehand to see if a little extra publicity about the projects might be helpful.

The Dora

Joke Stans is a graduate student at the University of Antwerp, Belgium, currently writing a Master's thesis about a Jewish refugee ship named the Dora.  This ship sailed from Amsterdam (with a stopover in Antwerp on 17 July 1939) to Palestine and arrived on 12 August 1939 at Sheffaym Beach.  The research is on the passengers who embarked in Antwerp and on the organization of the illegal Zionist undertaking (from the Belgian perspective).

The hope is to find more information concerning contacts between the Belgian authorities/leaders and the Palestinian, British, and Dutch embassies (a lot of organization on account of the Dutch Jewish Committee) or other representatives in the case of the Dora.

Perhaps information exists about contacts between Belgian Jewish committees (Belgian Zionist Federation, Jewish relief committees in Antwerp and Brussels) and governmental authorities or between different Jewish organizations (Hagana, which organized the trip; HICEM; Mossad l'Aliyah Bet; the Joint; Dutch Jewish committees).  So far five pages have been discovered in the State Archives in Brussels, but that is all.

The Belgian government offered assistance for the trip but denied its part in the undertaking to British emmissaries.

It is unknown so far who took the lead in this in Belgium, but perhaps Max Gottschalk had a role in the organization of the trip.  In addition, the Torczyner and Kubowitsky families were involved in one way or another.

Joke is also searching for databases and information about the places where the passengers on the ship prepared for the trip (hachshara).  Already known is a database for training farms in Germany.

Some people did their hachshara in Villers-la-Ville, Belgium.  Because a lot of the passengers on the Dora came to Belgium from Austria and Poland, they might have done their hachshara in Poland and Austria, so a list of those locations would also be helpful.  Probably the majority of the passengers did the hachshara somewhere, but this is not definitely known.

If you know of any information which could be helpful to Joke's research, please contact her at stansjoke@hotmail.com.

-- >< -- >< -- >< -- >< --

The father of SFBAJGS board member Preeva Tramiel created a shelter for Jews to hide in toward the end of World War II, somewhere near Munkacs or Kaschau or in between.  She is looking for names of and information about people he saved.  Does anyone have parents who escaped the camps by hiding in a building used by the Germans to repair vehicles?  Or have you heard a story about the shelter?  If so, please contact Preeva at preeva@sfbajgs.org.

-- >< -- >< -- >< -- >< --

Stephen Ankier is conducting research on the massacres in Słonim, Belarus during World War II.  He would like to hear from anyone who was a witness to the massacres in Słonim, who has relevant reliable information or documents about those events, or who has information about events that occurred in Słonim prison.  He is particularly looking for documents and photos that can be shared showing the names of any voluntary auxiliary policemen who worked for the Nazi SS in Słonim — in the prison or transporting prisoners from the prison to the death pits or active executioners — during the period 1941–1944.

Any assistance is appreciated, as even one small fragment of information can often lead to others.  If you can help, contact Stephen Ankier at sia@medreslaw.com.

-- >< -- >< -- >< -- >< --

Michael Waas, a Master's candidate in Jewish history at the University of Haifa, is looking for individuals to participate in a study of Western Sephardi paternal DNA lineages.  Thanks to a generous grant, testing kits will be provided at no cost to participants.  Eligible men are those who are direct paternal-line descendants of the Western Sephardi community.

What is the Western Sephardi community?  The Western Sephardim were arguably the original transnational people in the age of Imperialism and Colonialism, transcending religious boundaries and empires.  Western Sephardim had significant communities in Amsterdam, London, Livorno, Venice, Bordeaux, and Southwest France and their daughter communities in the New World in Curacao, Suriname, and North America.  Western Sephardim also went to the Ottoman Empire, most notably to Izmir, Salonika, and Tunis.

Anyone who is of direct paternal descent from those communities is eligible.  Michael himself is part of the testing cohort, representing the Vaz Lopes family of Bordeaux and Amsterdam.  As part of the testing, he will also need an accurate paternal genealogy, with as much information as each participant can provide.

The goal of this project is to try to shed light on the origins of the Western Sephardi community and to establish a strong dataset of DNA results, grounded in strong archival research and results that could lead to further intensive studies of Sephardim.

The aim is to have at least 50 men tested for the project.  It is planned to publish the results of the study.  Participants' privacy will be protected.

Please contact Michael if you are interested in participating or know someone who might be eligible.  He is happy to answer any questions!  His e-mail address is mwaas1989@gmail.com.

Concentration Camp Prisoners' Belongings, Cape Town Marriages, Belgians in Britain, and More

August Ahlers' watch

A new online database has photographs of more than 3,000 items from the International Tracing Service's archive.  The items belonged to prisoners taken to the Dachau and Neuengamme concentration camps during World War II.  Some items were collected in Hamburg.  The photos have been placed online in hopes that the items can be returned to survivors or their family members.  More information about the database is available in a press release on the ITS site.

-- >< -- >< -- >< -- >< --

The Great Synagogue (the Gardens Shul) in Cape Town, South Africa, is celebrating its 175th anniversary on November 6, 2015.  The search is on for photographs of weddings that took place in the synagogue; photos can be sent to admin@gardensshul.co.za.  In addition, those who were married in the synagogue are invited to be in a group photograph to be taken before the November 6 festivities.  Read more about the event here.

-- >< -- >< -- >< -- >< --

As many as 250,000 people fled Belgium at the beginning of World War I and went to Great Britain.  The Amsab Institute for Social History is now seeking stories, photographs, and documents about those Belgians.  As half of the refugees came from Antwerp, the Red Star Line Museum in Antwerp is participating in the effort.  Those who share information will receive two complimentary tickets to the November 15 "Story Collection" day at the museum.  (Even though the page about the event says it's in English, most of the text is still in Dutch.  You can use Google Translate to get the gist of the information.)

-- >< -- >< -- >< -- >< --

A photographer who took photographs of tenements and their residents in Glasgow and Edinburgh, Scotland, 45 years ago is now trying to identify the people in the photos.  Several of the photos are included in an article about the search, and all of the photos are available on the Shelter Scotland Web site.

-- >< -- >< -- >< -- >< --

The International Institute for Jewish Genealogy (IIJG) is working on a project to publish the late Paul Jacobi's 114 typewritten genealogical studies (monographs) of European rabbinical and other prominent Jewish families.  The institute now needs volunteers to proofread the text.  The work requires a high-level knowledge of the English language and will be spread out over the next ten months.  To volunteer, contact Ami Elyasaf, IIJG Executive Director, at director@iijg.org.  Information about the Jacobi collection can be found at http://iijg.org/resources/jacobi-papers.  A list of the family names represented in the typewritten genealogies is at http://iijg.org/main-2/jacobimonographs.

Newspapers, Newspapers, Newspapers . . . .

It's time for another round-up of the latest additions to the Wikipedia online newspaper archive page!  Advantage Preservation has been on a binge of digitization lately, so more newspapers seem to be coming online every day, which is great for us researchers.  And almost all the new links are free, which is even better.

Belgium:  The Bibliothèque Royale de Belgique (Royal Library of Belgium) has uploaded free digital images of newspapers dating from 1831–1918.  The site is in French, Dutch, and English, and some of the newspapers are in German.  Newspapers from 1919–1950 are indexed and appear in search results, but due to copyright issues, those images are not free.

Canada:  I found a trove of Mennonite links.  There are links to indices for death notices and obituaries in five Mennonite newspapers, and an author/subject index for one of the newspapers (which was published in in the United States for a time and so also shows up in the Multistate list).

China:  The Shanghai Echo, a periodical for Jewish refugees who had fled Europe, is online for 1946 to 1948.

England:  The Foxearth and District Local History Society has posted transcribed selections from newspapers in the East Anglia area.

England:  Spare Rib, a feminist publication, has been digitized and uploaded in its entirety.

England:  A book was published with a detailed index of The (London) Times of 1863, and that book is available online as a downloadable PDF.

Ireland:  Ancestry.com has created a new newspaper site, IrishNewspapers.com.  I wonder if this means it's trying to go back to the pricing model it used to have, where you could pay for different databases separately.

Poland:  There is an index to death notices published in Nasz Przegląd ("Our Review"), a Polish-language Zionist newspaper that was published daily in Warszawa from March 1923 until August 1939.

Russia:  This is another Mennonite resource.  Someone created an index of Mennonite-relevant stories in the German-language Odessaer Zeitung ("Odessa Newspaper").

California:  The Genealogical Society of Santa Cruz County has an index to early local newspapers, available as PDF files.  I don't see that the index tells you which paper an entry is from, but maybe I'm just overlooking it.

Georgia:  The Uncle Remus Regional Library System, which covers six counties (but not the ones I'm researching, of course), has several newspapers available online, courtesy of Advantage Preservation.

Indiana:  The New Albany–Floyd County Public Library has an index to local newspapers for 1847 to the present.

Indiana:  The obituary index for the Plymouth Pilot Daily is downloadable as several PDF files.

Iowa:  Ten newspapers from Dickinson County have been digitized by Advantage Preservation.

Massachusetts:  The first 30 years of the Boston Jewish Times are available courtesy of the American Jewish Historical Society.

Michigan:  More than one million subject index cards from the Detroit News are available on the Seeking Michigan site.

Michigan:  The Milford Public Library not only hosts an obituary index for the Milford Times for 1929–1949, but they will provide you a free copy of the obituary when you find one you want.

Michigan:  This one's a little unusual.  A cemetery has the local newspaper, the Petoskey News Review for 1874–2001, on its site.

Montana:  The student newspaper for Bozeman High School for 1939–2015 is available online, courtesy of Advantage Preservation.

Montana:  Montana State University is in the process of placing digital copies of its student newspaper, the Exponent, online.  Not everything is there yet.

Nebraska:  Advantage Preservation worked with the North Bend Public Library to digitize three local newspapers there.

New Jersey:  Ten early Plainfield newspapers running from 1837–1918 are on the Plainfield Library's Web site.

New Jersey:  The Rockaway Township Free Public Library has the Iron Era and Rockaway Record available online.

New York:  Allegany Public Library and Advantage Preservation teamed up to put four Allegany newspapers online.

New York:  The Troy Irish Genealogy Society has added a marriage notices index to complement its Lansingburgh newspapers death notices index.

North Carolina:  The Duke Chronicle, the student newspaper for Duke University, is online but only for the 1960's and 1980's.

Ohio:  A collection of newspapers printed by the Wright Brothers has been digitized and is available on two sites, Dayton Metro Library and Wright State University.

Tennessee:  An obituary index for the Nashville Tennessean for 1964 to the present is on the Nashville Public Library's site.

Multistate:  The American Historical Society of Germans from Russia hosts an index for about 200,000 obituaries.  There is no indication on the site what years this covers.

Multistate:  MennObits has transcribed obituaries from Mennonite newspapers from 1864 to the present.

I hope you find some great information in at least one of these newspapers!

eBay Score: 1929 Atlas from USSR

I have to admit, I'm a geek about maps.  I learned how to read them when I was young.  I collect them.  I have lots of old maps from the early 20th century and several atlases.  And let's face it, old maps are very useful when you're trying to find places whose names have changed.

But I think this one is especially cool.  It's a 1929 world atlas published in Moscow.  So it has the Soviet/Russian names of places from that era, in Russian, which will help make them easier to recognize in documents.  And they're typeset, which makes it easier for me to read them!  (I can read handwritten Russian, but printed is so much better.)  But it also has that lovely "Soviet" perspective on the world that you can find only in period documents.

When it arrived in the mail, I opened it up to a random page and found ... California!  The scan above shows (starting in the upper left and going clockwise) orange groves in California, picking cotton in Georgia, and an agricultural area in Belgium.

Oh yeah, and when it was new, it cost 4 rubles and 50 kopecks.  The price is printed on the back cover.

Day 2 at the IAJGS Conference

Philip Trauring taught an excellent class this morning on using Belgian archives for Jewish research.  Any foreigner who was in Belgium for more than two weeks had to register with the police, and many of the records have been preserved.  This is useful in Jewish genealogy because many Jews passed through Belgium on their way out of Europe and may appear in the records.  Philip demonstrated how he was able to put together the information he found on people named Trauring (admittedly a very uncommon name) and work out five generations of a family tree.  One of the best things about the archives is that most people's files have photographs.  These photos are often the only surviving pictures of many people; more than 25,000 Jews in Belgium were deported to Auschwitz.  Philip has an informative page on his Web site about these records, with instructions and an index.

Another highlight of the day was the film Jubanos: The Jews of Cuba. This was a short documentary about the Jewish community in Cuba and how it has survived and is now trying to rebuild itself.  One event discussed in the film was Fidel Castro's 1998 visit to the community to learn about and celebrate Chanukah with them.  The younger generation is helping lead the rebirth of the community.  I am always interested in learning more about Cuban Jews because I had cousins who went to Cuba from Europe.  Some left Cuba and immigrated to the U.S., and I am researching whether some of them are still in Cuba.

I'm looking forward to my online newspaper class tomorrow.  This will be the first time I've taught it as a hands-on computer workshop.  Should be fun!