IAJGS Conference, Days 3 and 4

It really is amazing how much you can cram into a conference schedule when you try.  Between speaker sessions, volunteer activities, and networking, I've been going steadily all day long every day.  But oh!, the things I'm learning!

Tuesday began with a Jewish bloggers brown bag breakfast.  It's a pleasure to meet people whose words you read in cyberspace and put faces to names.  I had a lovely time chatting with Lara Diamond (Lara's Jewnealogy), Emily Garber ([going] The Extra Yad), Israel Pickholtz (All My Foreparents), Ann Rabinowitz (JewishGen blog), Mary-Jane Roth (Memory Keeper's Notebook), Marian Wood (Climbing My Family Tree), and Barbara Zabitz (blog in progress).  Then it was off to learn more!

Well, it should have been.  In the first session I headed to, the speaker kept his head down and read directly from prepared notes, without looking up at the audience.  He also wasn't making any great revelations, so I quickly moved on and instead spent some research time in the resource room.  The second session was much better, though.  Alexander Beider spoke about the origins of Jews from North Africa.  His discussion covered the same types of linguistic and naming clues that he discussed in Monday evening's presentation, indicating origins from multiple locations in Europe and elsewhere.

From there I gave my third presentation of the conference, on where to find and how to access online Jewish historical newspapers.  I was really happy to let people know that there are now two free online OCR programs for Yiddish and that Google Translate handles Yiddish.  That makes a lot more historical Jewish newspapers much more accessible than they used to be.

On Tuesday IAJGS held a Tech Lunch, where people with technical and computer skills are asked to volunteer their skills in helping IAJGS.  It sounds as though there are plans for a Web site redesign and a desire to offer assistance to societies.  Something was said about encouraging everyone to be on Facebook also, but I still don't think that's a substitute for a good Web site.  Facebook is great for short term, but legacy material is lost.

The afternoon brought some interesting subjects.  Nicolas Coiffait has been researching the soldiers in Napoléon's armies and has identified more than 2,000 men he believes are Jewish.  He is continuing the research and trying to learn more about each man.  Eugenio Alonso spoke on how to research conversos and Anusim in the Caribbean by using documents from the National Historical Archive of Spain, many of which are available online for free.  He showed several examples that identified individuals as "judaizing", meaning that they were following Jewish practices.  He pointed out that he had even found two documents that specified the judaizers were black.  And that was the end of the day for me, because I had to head back to my room to reconstruct a presentation for later in the week (more on that in my next post).

On Wednesday I finally had the opportunity to "sleep in":  My first session didn't begin until 8:15!  (Hooray!)  And I had to be there, because I was the one speaking, on the subject of copyright and how it affects genealogy.  Unfortunately, far too many genealogists are still woefully undereducated on this subject, with significant numbers believing that if it's online it's ok to copy.  It was gratifying to have one person in the audience who understood already, but it was also good that people asked lots of questions, because that indicated they wanted to learn what they should be doing.  I'm very happy that the program committee accepted that talk for the conference.

We had a small but dedicated number who came to the JGS Newsletter Editors meeting.  Five people, including me, were there, representing four society publications.  Mostly it was another opportunity for networking, but we also did some brainstorming.  It's interesting that one group still has only a print publication, with no electronic version.

A session on the Yad Vashem Web site was supposed to show advanced ways to use other record sets besides the central database.  It didn't really deliver, but as a sample photograph the speaker used a wedding photo that accompanied a recent article in ZichronNote.  The photo is notable because even though it was for a wedding, the bride and groom, and in fact the entire wedding party, were wearing the cloth yellow Stars of David mandated by the German government.  Surprisingly, the speaker did not mention that.

Squeezed in between the end of the third morning session and the beginning of the group lunches, most of the SFBAJGS members here met for a quick photo to celebrate being at the conference.  While we had almost 50 members last year at the Seattle conference, this year we are a more modest thirteen, ten of whom came for the photo.  That isn't too bad!

San Francisco Bay Area Jewish Genealogical Society members in Florida

After lunch, my afternoon was spent at the IAJGS Annual Meeting.  I was the representative for my society this year, as the president was at home in California.  I've never been to the meeting before, so I wasn't sure what to expect.  I should have known — it was a standard bureaucratic meeting, including lots of reports, delays, and minor tiffs.  We did accomplish what we needed to, voting on bylaws and the next set of officers, and only ran about 15 minutes overtime.  It's unlikely that I'll be attending next year's conference in Warsaw, so someone else will have the pleasure of attending the meeting.

My day ended with one of the best parts of family history:  actually getting together with family.  I don't come out to the east coast often, so I always try to see family when I'm here.  I have cousins who live relatively nearby (75 miles away), in Daytona.  They drove out to the hotel, and we had a nice dinner together.  I even updated them on the latest research I'm doing on our grandfather.  They're as interested as I am in finding out who his biological father was.

My commentary on days 1 and 2 of the conference is here, and that for days 5 and 6 is here.

What's that, girl? Timmy fell down the well?

Lassie was always ready to help, wasn't she?  But she probably wouldn't have been able to do much to assist with the below projects.  Maybe you can?  The first three are a little more time-sensitive than the others, but it's a long list this time with plenty of options.

Neoklis Girihidis in 1943

When he was a teenager, Neoklis Girihidis saved the lives of 17 Jewish Greek boys from Thessaloniki (Salonika) by guiding them to guerrilla fighters in the mountains and allowing them to escape from the Nazis.  Now, more than 70 years later, he is trying to find out what happened to those boys.  He would like to connect with at least one of them before he dies; he is currently 88 years old.  A story with more details is online.

Please share this story.  It is probably the only way to find the children Mr. Girihidis saved, if any of them is still alive today.  If you have any information on any of the boys, please send a message to sofiachristoforidou@yahoo.gr.

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Two Irish sisters are looking for their mother, who may have immigrated to the United States in the 1960's, possibly to Chicago.  She may have moved because she had two aunts who were living here.  Details about the family's story were published on Irish Central.  The sisters are being assisted in their search by Finders International, which welcomes any information about the mother.

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Dr. Charles Foy of Eastern Illinois University is conducting research for a book on black dockyard workers and longshoremen.  The book will include a chapter on the San Francisco Bay area from 1934 to 1969.  Dr. Foy will be in the Bay Area from July 25 to August 5 this year and would like to interview black dockyard workers and longshoremen or their family members.  Dr. Foy can also arrange to do interviews at other times, either by phone or Skype.  He can be contacted at crfoy@eiu.edu or (347) 200-9893.

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Eduardo Propper de Callejón

The Spanish diplomat Eduardo Propper de Callejón is remembered for having facilitated the escape of thousands of Jews from occupied France during World War II by issuing more than 1,000 visas in Bordeaux in June 1940.  For his efforts, he received the Righteous Among the Nations designation from Yad Vashem in 2008.

The official list of the visas somehow "disappeared" in 1941.  Felipe Propper de Callejón, son of Eduardo, has asked for assistance in locating a visa or travel document issued by his father.  He has never seen one.

Karen Franklin, Director of Family Research at the Leo Baeck Institute in New York, is trying to help Mr. Propper de Callejón.  If you are in possession of one of the visas or travel documents, or know where one can be found, please contact Ms. Franklin.

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Béla Guttmann in 1953

David Bolchover, a writer based in London, is currently working on a biography of soccer coach Béla Guttmann (1899 Budapest–1981 Vienna), a Holocaust survivor whose team won the European Cup in the early 1960's.  Mr. Bolchover would appreciate hearing from anyone who can help answer several questions about Gutmann, or suggest avenues for research:

• Where was he from 1939–1943?  Gutmann was in Budapest in 1939, in 1944 was hiding in Ujpest, and then was in a labor camp in Budapest.  He was probably also in or near Budapest in the intervening years, but that is not known for sure.  Some commentators have suggested he was in Switzerland, but no evidence has been found to support that conclusion.

• When and where were Guttmann and Mariann Moldovan, who met in Ujpest in 1939, married?  Biographical sources say 1942, but she was a non-Jew and intermarriage was against the law in Hungary from August 1941.

• Where did his father, (Moshe) Abraham Guttmann, die?  He was born in Tiszaújhely about 1866–1867 and was alive at the outbreak of World War II but simply disappeared.

• Did his brother Armin Guttmann (1893 Budapest–1945 Buchenwald) have a wife and children?  If so, what happened to them?

• When did Guttmann become an Austrian citizen?  (Bolchover thinks it was in the 1950's and has submitted a request to the Austrian authorities regarding this, so he may find out the answer himself.)

• When was Mariann Moldovan born?  Her father was Pal Moldovan.  She lived in Ujpest before the war and died in 1997 in Vienna.

• Who, if anyone, inherited the estate when Mariann died?

Please send any information or leads to David Bolchover.

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During World War I, a married couple in Vignacourt, France, Louis and Antoinette Thuillier, took more than 4,000 photographs of Allied soldiers who were billeted in the area.  Due to circumstances related to the war and the family the glass negatives lay ignored and forgotten for decades, but they survived and there is now a project to try to identify British soldiers in the photos.  Read about the "Lost Tommies" project and look at the photographs, conveniently posted on Facebook and available to everyone.  If you can identify anyone, instructions on how to send the information is included in the article about the project.

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The next request for assistance is again related to the United Kingdom and a war, but this one is for World War II.  The new International Bomber Command Centre (IBCC), being built to honor those who served in Bomber Command, has sent out an appeal for letters, photographs, and oral testimonies of Caribbean and West African crew members, which will be included in the center's digital archive.  An article about the search for information about these black war heroes gives some background about the IBCC and information on who to contact to send materials.

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A new site, the USAF Basic Military Training Flight Photograph Project, aims to collect copies of the approximately 119,000 U.S. Air Force basic training photographs from the creation of the modern Air Force in 1947 to the present day.  The collection currently includes photos from all bases that conducted USAF basic training, including Lackland (Texas), Parks (California), Sampson (New York), and Sheppard (Texas).  The intent is to include USAF basic training that was conducted overseas.  The site also has a "Memories" section, where people can post their comments about basic training.

In addition to the photos that are currently being processed, the project is looking for donations from former airmen and their family members.  Instructions on how to send electronic or print copies can be found in a light-hearted article about the project.

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Richard Ayer tugboat

The San Francisco Maritime Museum is currently working on the restoration of a New Deal mural in the museum. You can help if you have any photographs of the building's interior taken prior to 1976 showing the Richard Ayer murals.  These photos will be useful in reconstructing the painted-over images which featured his abstract nautical themes with fish, ship parts, and relief designs.  Some clues even came from a home movie of the 20th anniversary get-together of the UC Berkeley 1919 graduating class!  If your personal archives show even a glimpse of any of the rooms, please contact National Park Service Historical Architect Todd Bloch.

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The New York Public Library has another crowdsourcing project.  This time it's transcripts from the library's Community Oral History Project.  The project includes narratives focused on Greenwich Village, Harlem, SoHo, Upper East Side, veterans, Latinos, and more.  Volunteers are sought to go through computer-generated transcripts of the oral narratives and make corrections.

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Aufbau, founded in 1934 in New York City, is a journal focused on German-speaking Jews around the world.  During its history it has included announcements about births, marriages, deaths, and other events, including many related to the Holocaust.  The Aufbau Indexing Project is a volunteer effort to create a free every-name searchable index so that genealogists and other researchers may more easily find the names they are seeking.  While you need to know how to use a spreadsheet, knowledge of German is not required.

Aufbau itself is also available free online.  Digitized issues for 1941–1950 are on Rootsweb, and for 1934–2004 at the Internet Archive.

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If oral histories and newspaper announcements sound boring to you, how about decoding Civil War telegrams?  This is another crowdsourced project.  Almost 16,000 top-secret telegrams saved from military communications during the Civil War were saved and are now held by the Huntington Library, along with the cipher books to crack them.  The project page has all the information you need to get started.

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The Washington Post has launched a crowdsourced black history project on Tumblr, somewhat in conjunction with the anticipated opening of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture in September 2016.  While the opening of the museum is national news, not everyone will be able to attend, and the "Historically Black" Tumblr project creates an opportunity for people to participate in another way.

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A man in Newfoundland, Canada and a jewelry store owner are trying to find out who the lovely woman is in a photo in a locket.  Was she a soldier's sweetheart?

The locket was among the personal effects returned to the family after Sergeant Charles Reid died during the Battle of Beaumont Hamel in World War I.  It came in a box from a jeweler in Oban, Scotland.  The store is still in business, but its records don't go back to 1916.

A CBC article has more details about the locket and the family.  If anyone recognizes the woman or has any information which might help in the search, send a message to the e-mail address given in the article.

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Molly Marcus, a doctoral candidate in Clinical Psychology at Chestnut Hill College, is looking for transracial adoptees that fit all of the following descriptors to share their experiences by participating in an in-person or phone interview:

• 25–35 years old
• Hispanic/Latino (defined as "a person of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Central or South American, or other Spanish culture or origin, regardless of race")
• Adopted by white parents by the age of 2, in a closed adoption
• No contact with birth relatives prior to the age of 21

The interview will take approximately 1 to 1 1/2 hours to complete.  It will be audio recorded and transcribed.  To ensure confidentiality, all transcriptions and materials will be stored in a locked cabinet accessible only to the researcher.  Identifying information will be kept separate from interview materials, and fictitious names will be used to protect the identities of all participants.

The study has been approved by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) at Chestnut Hill College.  The chairman of the IRB is Dr. Kenneth Soprano, whose e-mail address is irb@chc.edu.  He can also be reached by phone at (215) 248-7038.

If you meet the above criteria and are interested in participating in this study, contact Molly Marcus at MarcusM@chc.edu or (215) 821-8022.  If you know of other individuals who may fit these criteria, please share this information with them to spread the word.

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Pepperdine University’s Culture and Trauma Research Lab is seeking participants who are descendants of European immigrants who emigrated after World War II for an important psychological study on generations.  Participation involves the completion of an online survey which will take about 15–20 minutes.  Individuals may be eligible if:

• They are 18 years of age or older and
• Their parent or grandparent emigrated from Germany, Poland, Czech Republic and Slovakia (formerly known as Czechoslovakia), Austria, Hungary, or Romania between 1945–1952

This study will create a more robust understanding of the long-term impact of specific immigration factors.  Participation in the study is voluntary and confidential.  Each participant will receive a $10.00 Amazon or Starbucks gift card for completion of the survey.  This study is being conducted under the auspices of Dr. Thema Bryant-Davis.

If you have any questions or would like more information on the study, contact the principal investigator, Melissa Duguay, at Melissa.Duguay@pepperdine.edu or (818) 971-9877, or Mia Singer at mjsinger@pepperdine.edu.

If you are able to send out a news blast about the study, post information on your social media pages, or distribute flyers, please let them know.

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The JewishGen Yizkor Books in Print Project is looking for Yiddish speakers who are at least mildly proficient with using MS Word and have about 2 to 3 hours a week available to devote to a project that publishes translations of memorial books (Blach Buchs) of destroyed Jewish communities of Eastern Europe.  The project needs help with translating captions of images and placing them into newly translated books using MS Word in preparation for publishing.  People fluent in Yiddish with knowledge of Word would be very helpful to the project to facilitate the ability to publish books more quickly.  All work on the project is done by volunteers.

The original books were written in the 1950's–1970's, mostly in Yiddish and some in Hebrew, by survivors and former residents of the towns.  The Yizkor Books in Print Project has already published 46 books.  See http://www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/ybip.html for a listing of currently available books.

Books are sold at very low prices to enable this unique literature that captures the intimate history of the shtetlach to be available to as many people as possible.  The project is part of JewishGen.org, the primary online source of Jewish genealogical information, and is not-for-profit.

If you can help in any way please contact Joel Alpert, the project coordinator, at joel.alpert@uwalumni.com.

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Donna Gilligan is a museum archaeologist and material culture historian now working on a Master's thesis on the topic of the visual and material culture of the Irish women's suffrage movement.  The year 2018 will mark the centenary of the first time any women were granted the national vote in Ireland.

As part of Gilligan's research, she is attempting to trace and record information and images on the Irish suffrage movement.  She is appealing to people who hold or know of such objects to contact her with details.  If you have any information or inquiries relating to Irish women's suffrage, contact Gilligan at donnapgilligan@gmail.com.

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Harald Hadrada on window

An online archive of Norse and Viking culture is in development, funded by the Irish Research Council, and contributions are being sought.  While it's likely that the majority will come from museums and other such institutions, individuals are invited to contribute items also.

"Do you happen to have any Viking-related material lying around the house?  Maybe a helmet or two, or a sword or dagger?  Perhaps there’s a longboat buried in your garden.  If so, or even if you have something a lot less dramatic to offer, you should get in touch with the World-Tree Project, which is being launched today by UCC’s school of English with the objective of creating the world’s largest online archive for the teaching and study of Norse and Viking cultures."  Also acceptable are translations of Norse poetry, films of Viking reenactments, and original artwork.

Read about the background of the project, then visit the World-Tree Project to see what's there so far and how you can add to the collection.

I Started Learning to Read Hebrew!

I've been wanting to learn to read Hebrew for many years.  As a Jewish researcher, I've always known it would be a useful skill.  In addition, as an officer of a Jewish genealogical society, though it isn't a requirement, I thought I really should know something about the language.

So I've had it on my (very long) list of things to do for several years, but there were always reasons I didn't manage to do it (like money, time, and all those other things that get in the way of getting things done).  But then I read about a free (!) five-week class at Congregation Beth Israel–Judea in San Francisco.  And I figured out that I could take BART to the synagogue and didn't have to drive (because I hate driving in San Francisco).  It was perfect!

The Hebrew Reading Crash Course (yes, that's really what it's called; look at my little diploma up there) was a lot of fun.  It teaches one letter at a time and has you practice syllables, then starts putting the syllables together into words.  The next thing you know you're actually reading Hebrew.  I even recognized some of the very few Hebrew words I know (such as the prayer over wine!).

The instructor (the Rebbetzin of the synagogue) warned us that Hebrew as taught in the course is very formal and somewhat archaic, and also that the extremely helpful vowels which are used throughout are not usually found in everyday Hebrew writing.  But I figure I'm off to a great start.

The class is offered through the National Jewish Outreach Program, which also has a Hebrew Reading Crash Course II.  Everyone in the class told the Rebbetzin that we'd love to take the second course.  And there's even a Hebrew Writing Crash Course!

Of course, everything in the textbook is printed Hebrew.  At some point I know I'll have to learn to read handwriting, and eventually I hope to learn to read Yiddish also (which uses the same alphabet but is definitely not the same language, the same way that English and French use the same alphabet).  One step at a time . . . .

IAJGS Conference Wrap-up, and Visiting Family and the Cemetery

Friday, the final day of the conference, was not just throw-away sessions.  The ones I attended were interesting, even if I didn't agree with everything.

The early morning one (that I had to be at on time, because I was assisting the speaker) was given by Sandra Crystall, whose day job is using geographic information systems (GIS) in wetlands assessment for the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services.  She is also an enthusiastic genealogist.  She has taken population data collected by Dr. Laurence Leitenberg and is creating maps that show the changes in population over time for about 800 towns.  Crystall is using data for the years 1750, 1800, 1850, 1900, and 1930.  The research and project were supported by the International Institute for Jewish Genealogy and Paul Jacobi Center.  The maps show increases and decreases and indicate shifts in population from small towns to larger cities.  When the maps are completed they will be posted for online viewing.  Several people in the audience suggested that interactive maps that showed the continuum of changes would be better than the static maps that are being created, but those would take significantly more time and programming.

Certified Genealogist Rhoda Miller gave a presentation on evidence analysis.  This was essentially a talk about the Genealogical Proof Standard (GPS); she discussed all the points of the GPS in relation to several examples.  Few people in the audience were professional researchers, and almost no one had heard of the GPS before.  In one example, I disagreed with her classification of a piece of evidence as being a primary source.  She had created a table showing the pieces of evidence she had found for the birth year of her grandfather.  For all but one, there was no way to determine who had given the information for his birth year (e.g., ship manifest, census return), and she listed them as secondary sources.  But for one record, an application for a grave purchase, her grandfather had given the birth year.  She classified this as primary, saying that he would know when he was born.  I asked why that was not a secondary source, as he was not cognizant at the time and could not attest to it from his own knowledge or memory.  She explained that his parents would have told him.  I did not press the point, but in my mind, that's the very definition of second-hand information:  when someone else tells you.  But I'm not a CG, so I may be missing something.

The final session was definitely one that I'll be able to use.  Vivian Kahn and Rony Golan taught a quick-and-dirty Hebrew class for genealogists.  The handout was a list of genealogical terms in English and Hebrew, complete with pronunciations, and lists of male and female names in English and Hebrew.  We got an overview of the alphabet in both block printing and cursive (which was great, because cursive is so much harder) and even some comparisons to Yiddish.  For example, I now know that cursive Yiddish uses vowels, but Hebrew doesn't.  Printed Hebrew often doesn't use vowels either, particularly on tombstones.  Those missing vowels can make translation difficult.  I'm starting slowly -- I can recognize three letters so far! -- but it's a start.  Learning Hebrew and Yiddish has long been on my to-do list, and at least this class was a first step.

There was no wrap-up or good-bye ceremony for the conference; it was just suddenly over.  I left the hotel and went straight to meet up with my cousin so we could drive to Connecticut for a visit with her mother.  It was a lovely visit, and she answered all sorts of questions about the family.  Luckily, her memory is still very good.  She also has a beautiful photograph of my great-grandmother and three of her siblings, along with all of their spouses.  She let me take a photo of the photo (even if I got it a little fuzzy) and identified everyone for me!  But she doesn't know why a cousin is in the photo and the fifth sibling isn't.

On Saturday, before I returned my rental car and boarded my flight back to California, I made one more genealogy visit, but this time the conversations were one-sided.  I drove to Brockton, not too far from my cousins' house in Sharon, and found Calvary Cemetery, where the great-grandparents, great-great-grandparents, and several cousins of my stepsons are buried.  I paid my respects at both of the family plots and stayed around to talk to them for a while (just like Kelly Clarkson did on Who Do You Think You Are?).  It's a well maintained cemetery, and the gravestones are in good condition, which was nice to see.  I'm glad I was able to go.