Gesher Galicia is pleased to announce that the speaker at our annual
luncheon to be held at the IAJGS conference in New York City on Monday,
August 14th will be author Daniel Mendelsohn, a frequent contributor to The
New York Review of Books , The New York Times Magazine and The New York
Times Book Review, who will discuss his new book, due out in October 2006,
“The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million.”

“The Lost” is the story of an odyssey in search of six ghosts. Daniel
Mendelsohn grew up in a family haunted by the disappearance of six relatives
during the Holocaust—an unmentionable subject that gripped the author’s
imagination >from his earliest childhood. Decades later—spurred by the
discovery of a cache of desperate letters written to his grandfather in
1939—he embarked on a hunt for the remaining eyewitnesses to his relatives’
fates.

Part of Mendelsohn’s journey included a return to his family’s ancestral
shtetl of Bolechow, Ukraine, formerly Galicia, where his family had lived,
continuously, in the same house >from the late 17th century--when the Jews
first arrived--until 1941, when the Germans invaded. 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
and the emotions encountered when one moves between past and present in an
effort to solve a long-standing family mystery. Dunai will also be there,
providing his perspective on the role of the guide, researcher and
translator in undertaking a genealogical quest that resembles a detective
story..

The luncheon requires advance registration and a fee separate >from
conference registration.

Registration information can be accessed at the IAJGS conference website at:

http://www.jgsny2006.org/registration.cfm

We look forward to seeing you there!

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