Two highlights for Galitzianers at this year’s IAJGS conference will be
Gesher Galicia’s luncheon and annual SIG meeting, where we share new
information, update research and plan for the future. Because Gesher Galicia
exists primarily in cyber-space--and most of our communication is done via
e-mail or online discussion groups--we relish the opportunity to meet
face-to-face with the people we’ve gotten to know on the internet.

Here are details on these events:

Gesher Galicia’s SIG Meeting - Monday, August 14th - 3:15PM – 4:00PM

PROGRAM & SPEAKERS

Steering committee members will provide updates on “The Galitzianer,” the GG
website, shtellink pages, town/region research groups, our research grant
program, and the “Gesher Galicia Family Finder.” Guest speakers will also
offer short previews of conference programs of interest to Galitzianers:

-Mark Halpern will elaborate on the new JRI-Poland initiatives and indexing
projects.

-Joyce Field will update yizkor book projects for Galician towns

-Logan Kleinwaks will preview his talk on searching Polish (Galician)
pre-WWII business, address, and telephone directories that have been
digitized and made available online and new databases added to his website.

-Steve Lasky will highlight Galician topics on his multimedia website: The
Museum of Family History (http://www.museumoffamilyhistory.com) including
the cemetery project, town and family photographs, documents, vintage
postcards, maps, and his Krakow immigration list.

-Gayle Schlissel Riley will also preview her “Polish Magnate Landowner
Records” talk, explaining why these records can be a valuable tool in your
research.

-A focus on using maps in your research to find elusive shtetls or document
where your ancestors lived. Ukrainian researcher, Alex Dunai, will also
present examples of cadastral maps >from the Lviv archives, and we’ll also
have samples of the detailed map series Specialkarte der k.u.k.
österreichisch-ungarischen Monarchie im Mafsstabe 1:75000 der Nature
(published 1877 - 1914) which is available at the New York Public Library
map room for photocopying.

-GG member, John Diener will present a short Power Point talk on his 2005
trip to Poland and Ukraine, where he visited the new Belzec (Poland)
Memorial—the site of one of the most notorious death camps in Eastern
Poland, where over 500,000 Galitzianers were murdered. He’ll also discuss
the emotional aspect of his journey to his ancestral shtetls in the Tarnopol
(Ternopil), Ukraine district.

Gesher Galicia is also in the process of restructuring, and will be seeking
new steering committee members interested in taking on specific roles in our
organization. Details will be provided at the end of the meeting, along
with an opportunity for questions and answers on all the topics we’ve
covered.

GESHER GALICIA LUNCHEON - Monday, August 14th, 12:30PM - 1:45PM

Author Daniel Mendelsohn will discuss his upcoming book: "The Lost: The
Search for Six of Six Million."

Decades after WWII, spurred by the discovery of a cache of desperate letters
written to his grandfather in 1939, Mendelsohn embarked on a hunt for the
remaining eyewitnesses to his relatives' fates in Bolechow, Ukraine. With
Alex Dunai as his guide, he sought to learn the truth about the lives of
this vanished family -- an investigation into the meaning of memory, family
and history. The focus of his talk will be the "writer's angle" in
genealogical research.

Tickets to this luncheon ($30) must be purchased by the August 1st deadline!
They will not be for sale at the conference or after that date. You can
do this on the conference website/registration section:

http://www.jgsny2006.org/

If you have not already registered for the conference...remember that you
can register for just one day, at the price of $75, if you can't attend the
entire week. Although Galician-related presentations are scattered
throughout the week, Monday, August 14th specifically features this
informative SIG meeting and luncheon. Do you have friends whose ancestors
hail >from Galicia--but who've never been involved with genealogy before? If
you think they might be inspired by these two events.....invite them to
accompany you for the day!

We look forward to meeting you in person this summer.

Pamela Weisberger
Research Coordinator, Gesher Galicia
pweisberger@hotmail.com