Gesher Galicia welcomes two new additions to our board of directors:
Eli Brauner, who lives in Israel, and Jurek Hirschberg, who lives in
Sweden.

Aside >from adding an international component to our board, they bring
special expertise in different aspects of Galician research.

Eli Brauner was born in Germany and immigrated to Israel in 1950. His
mother was >from Lwow and he lives in Zur-Hadassa, near Jerusalem. He
heads the Association of Survivors and Descendants >from Lwow, a
nonprofit organization dedicated to commemorating Lwow Jewish
heritage. The group's goals are to renovate the building that was the
quarters of the Jewish community leadership and to establish a museum
there for major villages, not only for Lwow. Also planned is a
memorial park on the grounds of the historic city cemetery. Because
Lemberg/Lwow/Lviv was the capital of Galicia, and played such an
important role in the history of our ancestors, we plan to devote more
Gesher Galicia resources to Lwow-based research projects in the coming
years.

Jurek Hirschberg's parents were born in Tarnopol and Skalat and he has
traced their Galician roots back to mid-eighteenth century. They
survived the Holocaust in the occupied territories while most members
of their families perished. In 1945 they moved westwards to what now
was to be Poland. He was born in Katowice, where his father practiced
law there until his death in 1964. He emigrated to Sweden in 1969 with
his mother and brother following the vicious anti-Semitic campaign of
the late 1960s. He is a sworn translator >from Swedish to Polish, from
Polish to Swedish and >from English to Swedish and his main interest is
in translating literary texts, and in particular Polish poetry. Jurek
lives in Stockholm and in his spare time (speaking as a true
genealogist) he enjoys searching for the mystical connection between
the Tarnopol Hirschbergs and the Podwoloczyska Hirschbergs, and
numerous other challenges of similar magnitude. He was instrumental
in assisting Gesher Galicia with the translations >from Polish of some
of the more difficult, antiquated professions in the
recently-completed 1910 Tarnopol Jewish census.

We look forward to their contributions to our continuing work and to
board activities.

We are also bidding adieu to Marla Osborn who is moving >from the board
of directors, to the Gesher Galicia Advisory board as our Adviser on
Jewish Heritage Preservation and we congratulate her on her new
position in Warsaw with FODZ, the Foundation for the Preservation of
Jewish Heritage in Poland.

Thanks to Marla for her time serving on the board and a hearty welcome
to our newest board members.

Pamela Weisberger
President & Research Coordinator
Gesher Galicia
pweisberger@...
www.geshergalicia.org