Dear researchers,

I am very pleased to announce that there will be a Rohatyn Birds of a
Feather (BOF) meeting on the opening day of the 32nd Annual IAJGS Conference next summer in Paris, Sunday, 15 July 2012 at 5:00 p.m.

This meeting is open to anyone with family connections to the Galician
town of Rohatyn, or is generally interested in learning more about the
town, its former Jewish community, and Jewish research sources abroad.

The following is a synopsis.


Today, Rohatyn is located in western
Ukraine, less than two hours' drive south >from the beautiful historic
city of Lviv (formerly, Lemberg and Lwow). In many ways, Rohatyn was
- and is - a typical eastern Galician town: during the inter-War
years its population was 50% Jewish; at the outbreak of WWII, its
population was 1/3 Polish, 1/3 Jewish, and 1/3 Ukrainian. It was
multi-lingual and culturally vibrant, and was commercially linked by
rail to Lwow, Tarnopol, and Chernivtsi. Many Rohatyn Jewish families sent their sons and daughters to
prestigious academic Universities in Krakow, Vienna, Prague, and
Budapest, and maintained strong business connections as well to these
urban â??jewelsâ?? in the crown of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

The Rohatyn BOF meeting will be
conducted by Marla Raucher Osborn, a member of the Board of Directors
of Gesher Galicia. Over 2011, Marla spent five months living and
researching in Lviv, making more than half a dozen trips to Rohatyn.
Marla will discuss her Rohatyn trips and discoveries, as well as the
undertaking of a long-term project to recover the Jewish headstone
fragments still found around the town today and their return to
Rohatyn's former Jewish cemetery. She will also present slides and
other information about the box of Jewish paper scraps discovered in
the 2011 renovation of a building that housed the Rohatyn Judenrat
during the Nazi occupation, the proposed future plans for translating
and exhibiting of these rare and important artifacts, and her
meetings with various townspeople and officials during 2011. Marla
will also talk about the Rohatyn Shtetl Research Group (â??RSRGâ??),
founded in 2009 by Dr. Alex Feller, today with more than 150 members
worldwide, all of whom have family or historic connections to the
town, like herself. Time permitting, Marla will also share examples
of the many and varied types of records she has obtained across
western and central Europe for her Rohatyn family (>from sources in
Lviv, Vienna, Krakow, Warsaw, and Munich, to name a few), plus
discuss the RSRG's latest, exciting project: the overlaying of
Rohatyn's 1846 cadastral maps onto google maps, allowing users to
zoom in on their pre-War ancestral homes and businesses!

Bilingual in English and French, Marla will be happy to take and respond to questions and comments from
those attending this BOF meeting. We hope you can join her at 5:00
p.m. on Sunday, July 15th.
Please continue to check with the
Conference website for updates and room changes:
http://www.paris2012.eu/events/rohatyn-ukraine-bof
Kind regards,

Marla Raucher Osborn
headed to Krakow for 3 months,
then back to Paris, France for 2012

osborn@...

Researching surnames HORN, FRUCHTER, LIEBLING, and KURZROCK >from Rohatyn
and TEICHMAN >from Chodorow (Galicia, Western Ukraine); SILBER >from Ulanow and
Sokolow Malapolski (Poland); BLECHER >from Soroka, Bessarabia (Moldova);
BRUNSHTEIN/BROWNSTEIN/BRONSTEIN, SARFAS/CHARFAS, and FABER >from
Mohyliv Podilskyy and Kamyanets Podilskyy  (Ukraine); FRANKENBERG >from Vilnius (Lithuania);
and RAUCHER/RAUSCHER and KESTENBAUM/KOSTENBAUM /KASTENBAUM >from
Przemysl (Poland)