Thanks so much for posting this heartening update.  Did you discover if there was a factual basis for the alleged Mexican connection?

Family History Today: Jewish Students, Medical Globetrotters, and Persevering Women  

 

Date and time: Wednesday, February 5, 6:30 PM
Location: Center for Jewish History, 15 West 16th St., New York, NY 10011

At first, aspiring Jewish men from Galicia, Lithuania, and elsewhere ventured to Padua University to study medicine when other schools across Europe refused their admission. Then, from the end of the eighteenth century onward, Jews from Galicia attended Habsburg universities—from Lemberg/Lwów and Kraków, to Vienna, Pest and Prague. Many nineteenth-century Jewish medics influenced Galician life beyond their profession, advocating educational, religious and civic reforms. At the turn of the twentieth century, Jewish women were at the forefront of newly won access to university education, changing societal and family norms.

 

This presentation will take us across the countries and continents, with genealogical information illustrated by unique archival records, newspaper accounts, and maps. You don’t have to have medical practitioners among your ancestors to find this topic interesting and helpful in your family history research.

 

About the Speaker: Andrew Zalewski is a former professor of medicine at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia. He is the vice president of Gesher Galicia, a non-profit organization devoted to genealogical and historical research on Galicia. Andrew Zalewski has also authored two books on Austrian Galicia: Galician Trails: The Forgotten Story of One Family and Galician Portraits: In Search of Jewish Roots.

Tickets: zalewski.bpt.me or 800-838-3006 ($10 general admission; $5 Center for Jewish History/Partner members, seniors, and students)

This program is sponsored by the Ackman & Ziff Family Genealogy Institute and Gesher Galicia. It is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

Jewish Genealogical Society NY Meeting
Sunday, January 26, 2020 at 2 p.m.
Center for Jewish History, 15 West 16^th St., New York

Lecture: The Sugihara Refugee Story: Survivors and Those Without Whom This Story Would Not Be Told
Speaker: Mark Halpern, 2018 Recipient of the IAJGS Lifetime Achievement Award

Most Jewish genealogists know the story of Chiune Sugihara, the “Japanese Schindler.” Sugihara issued over 2,000 Japanese transit visas that enabled many Jews to escape war-torn Europe in the summer of 1940. In his talk, Mark Halpern will identify some of the many additional people – Europeans, Americans, Japanese – who participated in the rescue efforts, and talk about their exploits. He will trace one woman’s 15-year odyssey from Poland via Lithuania, Russia, Japan, China and Canada to Santa Monica, California, using her Sugihara transit visa to ultimately obtain US citizenship.  Mr. Halpern will document her journey using genealogical methods and records.

Mark Halpern was formerly an international businessman (who lived in Japan) who became interested in his roots while on a business trip to Poland. Since his retirement, Mark serves in various leadership and research roles with, among other organizations, JRI–Poland, JewishGen, IAJGS, Gesher Galicia, and the Jewish Genealogical and Archival Society of Greater Philadelphia. In 2018 he received the 2018 IAJGS Lifetime Achievement Award.

$5 at the door; free for JGSNY members 

More information on our website: jgsny.org and on our Facebook page

Submitted by:

I will give a couple reasons to include babies who died at birth.
I recently corresponded with someone who did extensive research to determine a genetic disorder in his family. Part of this involved looking for children who died young in the family tree. However, the vast majority of the deaths in childhood that were so much more common in the past were probably just from the lacking medicine and sanitation and don't indicate anything hereditary.
In my family tree discovering multiple infant deaths has helped determine the birth order and approximate years of the surviving siblings by considering the pregnancy time for the deceased infant.
Finally, they are part of the family and the family story. Since they often were not discussed this is really the last chance to give them recognition.
All the best,
Binyamin Kerman
Baltimore MD

There are some great Jewish genealogy groups on Face book including one on DNA.  Also the regular DNA groups there have search angels and DNA Detectives who might be able to assist you in your search.  There is also a non-Jewish Polish genealogy group with I think records available on the internet. 

Congratulations on finding your birth father so quickly and making positive contact with the nephew and niece.  I am interested in the rest of your story as it unfolds.

There are a number of practical reasons why still-births should be recorded on your family tree.  First, the 1910 U.S. census asked families to indicate how many children the mother had birthed and how many were still living.  If you only knew of two children but the census indicated that there had been another child, no longer living, the fact that you’ve noted the still-born child saves you and future researchers wasted time in hunting down this third, potential relative. Second, still-births can help explain a large gap in birth years between siblings, again saving wasted time in hunting for hypothetical sibling(s) who may not have been recorded.  Third, a still-birth or consecutive still-births may provide a possible answer to the question of why a given couple “didn’t have children.”  Finally, understanding the heartbreak of a still-born birth, even during times when infant mortality was high and “normal,” gives us (just like the sudden death of a husband or wife in a household of young children) a small glimpse into the mostly-hidden personal lives of those who lived long ago.

--
Jeff Marx
Researching ANSPACHER, AUGAPHEL, AUGENBLICK, BREAKSTONE, BREGSTEIN, CARLEBACH, HIEGENLICH, KUBELSKY, MARX

Stillborn children impact on the family. They fill gaps where people
might still be searching for a lost cousin, they tell us about the
life of the of the family and about the mother's health. So I always
keep a record of them. That said, it's not always necessary to include
them in every tree, I even sometimes omit unmarried family members. It
all depends on the context in which you are working..

Eva Lawrence
St Albans, UK
--
Eva Lawrence
St Albans, UK.

Excellent point!

Boris Feldblyum
boris@...

It will help others to help you if the message is less cryptic.

For instance, your grandparents’ names, dates of birth/death/marriage will place your inquiry in a proper historical context.  There may be a love story behind a mixed marriage that took place 120 years ago or last Sunday. But if your grandmother was born, e.g. 1939, one must consider a possibility of her being Jewish by birth, saved by the Catholics during WWII, and living her life as a Catholic afterwards.

I also would like to use this opportunity to call on “fellow genealogists” to list your full name and a contact info in the body of the message. In this case, it would be nice to know wether to address “ntc52" as Nancy or Nicolas. Also, if there is a need to write a direct message, a responder should not waste his time figuring out how to do it. There is no benefit in hiding. As someone whose personal data was stolen from US government databases at least once, and reports of Google amassing our personal medical information, I no longer believe in privacy of anything, as sad as it sounds. No system, including JewishGen, is immune to hacking, so we may as well make life a bit easier for each other.

Boris Feldblyum
boris@...

So glad that you have been able to open a new chapter. My husbands parents divorced right after he was born, and his mother's side did not want the father or his family to have contact with Joe. Joe lived all of his life thinking and accepting that his father didn't want him. (Joe is now 68). Then I started doing genealogy about 7 years ago, and with a friend's help, found Joe's father's family. His father had passed away, but Joe had an aunt and uncle, whom we have seen many times. We were also invited to a cousin's wedding last year. Then we found, through DNA, that Joe had a half-brother and half-sister that neither his aunt or uncle knew about. The half-brother is less accepting, but we are planning a trip to to visit the half-sister this year! This is a long way to say, you never know. 😊. All the best to you!!

--
Barbara Ellman
Secaucus NJ USA
HASSMAN, SONENTHAL, DAUERMAN, LUCHS - Drohobycz, Ukraine
HIRSCHHORN, GOLDSTEIN, BUCHWALD - Dolyna, Ukraine
ELLMAN, COIRA, MAIDMAN - Minkovtsy, Ukraine
KAGLE, FASS - Ulanow, Poland

LitvakSIG is pleased to make publicly available our entire collection
of 1784 poll tax lists, part of our Grand Duchy of Lithuania (GDL)
project. The lists are organized into 14 compilations by district. The
compilations include 158 component lists and a total of 46,906 lines.

Detailed information about the GDL project, including guidance and
examples of locating one's ancestors in these patronymic records
(i.e., no surnames, for the most part) can be found on our GDL page,
https://www.litvaksig.org/research/grand-duchy-of-lithuania-gdl/gdl-following-the-paper-trail.
The compilations may be downloaded - no password needed - >from our GDL
Transcriptions page,
https://www.litvaksig.org/research/grand-duchy-of-lithuania-gdl/gdl-transcriptions.

We thank Dorothy Leivers for her dedication to this project. We also
thank Sonia Hoffman and the late David Hoffman, who initiated the GDL
project and donated the full set of scans and their partially
completed transcription work to LitvakSIG.

LitvakSIG is an independent organization that raises its own funds and
determines its own activities. As always, we are grateful to our
donors and translators, without whom we could not make these records
available. These records have been available exclusively to our donors
for about the past 18 months. To learn how to support LitvakSIG's work
and gain priority access to new translations, visit our website,
https://www.litvaksig.org .

Russ Maurer (vhrproject@...)
Records Acquisition & Translation Coordinator, LitvakSIG

Please join us for the following program, presented by the Ackman & Ziff
Family Genealogy Institute and Gesher Galicia.

Family History Today: Jewish Students, Medical Globetrotters, and
Persevering Women
Date: Wednesday, February 5, 6:30 PM
Location: Center for Jewish History,15 West 16th Street, New York, NY 10011
Description:Andrew Zalewski, vice president of Gesher Galicia, will explain
how he uncovered the surprising history of Galician Jewish doctors through
archival research - and how this case can inform your family history
search.

Tickets: $10 Regular; $5 Center for Jewish History/Partner Members, Seniors
and Students; You may purchase tickets in advance at zalewski.bpt.me or
800-838-3006.

Moriah Amit
Senior Genealogy Librarian at the Center for Jewish History (New York, NY)

Other than looking for their names in JewishGen, I would also look at: genteam.eu
They have some records about conversions in Austro-Hungary.

January 27, 2020 marks the 75th anniversary of the liberation of
Auschwitz. Between now and February 22, but mainly between January 27
and 31, a series of commemorative events is planned in 35 towns in
southeastern Poland, under the auspices of the Marshal of Podkarpackie
[Subcarpathian] voivodeship, Wladyslaw Ortyl.

The complete list of towns and villages is: Baranow Sandomierski,
Blazowa, Czudec, Debica, Dukla, Dynow, Glogow Malopolski, Gniewczyna
Lancucka, Grodzisko Dolne, Jankowice, Jaroslaw, Jasionka, Jaslo,
Jodlowa, Kraczkowa, Krosno, Lezajsk, Lubaczow, Markowa, Mielec,
Niebylec, Pruchnik, Przemysl, Przeworsk, Rudnik nad Sanem, Rymanow,
Rzeszow, Sanok, Stalowa Wola, Tarnobrzeg, Tyczyn, Tryncza, Ustrzyki
Dolne, Zagorz, and Zarszyn-Nowosielce. There will be talks, including
by Holocaust survivors, musical performances, exhibitions, church
services, and various other commemorative events.

The driving force behind this program, as in earlier years, is the
Department of Jewish History and Culture at the University of Rzeszow,
under Prof. Waclaw Wierzbieniec. Many other institutions, though, are
also involved in the sponsorship and organization of events, including
municipal councils, cultural centers, schools, teacher training
colleges, historical societies, organizations for the preservation of
Jewish heritage, museums, and local community groups.

For further information, please contact:
ur.dzienholokaustu2020@... at Rzeszow University, or else:
anna.dziama@.... English-speakers can also call for information
at: +48 609504192, or +48 661582989.


Michal Majewski, Holocaust Project Coordinator, Gesher Galicia
Tony Kahane, Research Coordinator, Gesher Galicia

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Hello,

I have posted an article >from the German newspaper Aufau on Viewmate.
I would like a complete translation. It can be found at:
https://www.jewishgen.org/ViewMate/responselist.asp?key=76632
Translation - German - Reichmann - 1950

Thank you,
Debbie Soren
MODERATOR NOTE: Please reply privately or use the ViewMate form