Speaker:  Dr. Alexander Beider, PhD

Even though the alphabet in Polish looks pretty much the same as ours, I like to think of it as a different alphabet. Letters that look familiar to English speakers are pronounced differently, there are combinations of letters such as cz, that give a specific sound, and there are a few letters with attached accent marks that have specific pronunciations, such as the "l" with the line through it.   In addition, some of the sounds in the Slavic languages are not exactly the same sounds that we learn, as children, to produce in English.   

The pronunciation of Gawłuszowice, is a good example.   This is the closest I can get to the letters with the equivalent pronunciations.  
"W" is pronounced like our "v" 
The "ł" with the line through it is pronounced like a "w" i  "way"   (The city of Lodz is pronounced like "Wuj")
"sz" is pronounced like  "sh"   Cz is prounced like "ch" 
"c" is pronounced like "ch"

So the closest pronunciation I can get for Gawluszowice is  Gav-woo-show-viche, with the accent on the third syllable. 
Any corrections or different ideas are welcome.

You can probably google a web site for Polish language and equivalent English pronunciation, as there are other differences in addition to the ones
I listed above. Good luck!



--
Avivah R. Z. Pinski 
Wynnewood, PA (near Philadelphia)
Researching:  Reznik-Drohiczyn, Poland
Zuchman - Sarnaki, Warsaw, Poland
Sundak - Latvia;  Slonim -  Belarus
Rifczes - Ukraine, Austria; Kopeikin - Belarus
Pinski - Mogilew, Belarus

I've posted a vital record in Polish or Russian for which I need a translation. It is on ViewMate at the following address ...
https://www.jewishgen.org/viewmate/viewmateview.asp?key=VM100407 
Please respond via the form provided on the ViewMate image page.
Thank you very much.

Luta Goldman

As someone who specializes in Ashkenazi genetic genealogy, I can tell you this may just be endogamy.
That 24 cm segment has a 20% chance of being more than twenty -- yes 20 -- generations old. (See Speed and Balding (2015) Relatedness in the post-genomic era: Is it still useful?)
There are no other segments of note, and as someone pointed out, the average segment size is only 11.5. You generally want to aim for an average in the mid teens or higher. And you want to look for a preponderance of large (15-20cM+) segments, the larger the better.
It also matters greatly which platform this is on. If it's Ancestry I might pay it slightly more attention given the location match between your families. If it's any of the others, I'd move on. (Ancestry uses an algorithm that greatly reduces the effects of endogamy.) And if it's on MH I'd be curious which chromosomes the matches are on. There's a known Ashkenazi pileup on 15.

I think it's useful for people from endogamous communities to invert our DNA paradigm. Rather than assuming that all these people on your "match" lists should be connectable to you, realize that the vast majority of the people you're paired with as "matches" are actually not meaningfully related to you; only a small subset are, especially on platforms other than Ancestry. I have assessed hundreds and hundreds of Jewish DNA match lists and I see these types of matches all day long. 
Hope that helps.
Regards,
Jennifer
--
Jennifer Mendelsohn
Baltimore, Maryland
https://www.apgen.org/profiles/jennifer-mendelsohn

Deborah,

Further info on Claims Conference, Hungary database:
https://www.jewishgen.org/databases/holocaust/0134_Hungarian_claims.html

Good luck in your search,

Sherri Bobish

Arthur

The JewishGen Gazetteer
https://www.jewishgen.org/Communities/LocTown.asp
lists three places in Poland called Jaroszówka.

Jaroszówka	populated place (-505239)	52°09' N 19°34' E	G	Poland	61.0 miles W of Warszawa 52°15' N 21°00' E
Jaroszówka	populated place (-505238)	51°19' N 15°59' E	G	Poland	223.8 miles WSW of Warszawa 52°15' N 21°00' E
Jaroszówka	populated place (-505237)	49°54' N 20°16' E	G	Poland	165.2 miles S of Warszawa 52°15' N 21°00' E

I think that "Faroozowka" is just a sloppily written "Jaroszówka."

Ancestry.com comes up with these three places:
Jaroszówka, Dolnoslaskie, Poland
Jaroszówka, Lodzkie, Poland
Jaroszówka, Malopolskie, Poland

Good luck in your search,

Sherri Bobish

Thank you Josh.  I didn't know that there were as many as 20,000 Ritchie Boys.  I can't stop remembering the wonderful film about them, and that focused on about six Ritchie Boys.  It was very informative and humorous at times (yes it was).  My father-in-law, who immigrated to the US in the 30's was drafted and was in the infantry.  He was wounded at the Battle of the Bulge, and after recovering was sent to Nice to join military intelligence in interrogating German prisoners.  I always said that he would have enjoyed seeing the film (unfortunately he passed away at 68).

I'd say the medal is a bit overdue, eh?

David Cherson

I just wanted to share the following (verbatim) email I had just received earlier today in response to my previous post here...

---

"Hello,

The searchable index used on the site was created by the Long Island Genealogy Federation by transcribing original hard-copy indexes (which may have been inaccurately transcribed from original certificates). Future phases of the Historical Vital Records of NYC project may include opportunities for crowd-sourcing to improve and correct the index.

The certifiate is found under certificate 35459, was of by one number.

Sincerely,

The NYC Municipal Archives Staff"

... I'm hoping that this response will be helpful in some way for others in a same/similar situation.

-- ~Brian D. Kerr, Esq | SSG, U.S. Army (Retired) | SSA, Brigade G1, U.S. Army (Retired) |>>Known Family Surnames (Researching): Dessler, Walk(Valk), Mahler (Maler), Paradisgarten (Paradisegarten), Tomasy (Thomashy), Gluck, Preisz (Priess), Steinhardt (Steinhart), Grossman (Grosman), Sholtz (Shultz), Kaplan, Bloom, Fischer (Fisher), Levy, Baum, Duwidewic, Meisal (Maisel)<<|>>Known Family Locations/Regions (of Surnames): Poland, Ukraine, Russia, Hungary, Lithuania<<|

The JewishGen USA Research Division introduces Shul Records America (SRA) <https://www.jewishgen.org/sra/> a new finding aid pointing to the location of American synagogue records. Launching with over 450 collections held at 47 repositories or websites, about 20% include URLS for digitized materials

 

Synagogue records are created by congregations, their staff including rabbis and administrators, other ritual leaders such as mohels, educators, and board members. The records that are preserved can contain a broad variety of materials including some that are of more value to community historians than family historians, but the real gems to genealogists include birth, marriage, and death registers, mohel or circumcision lists, ketubot, burials, and yahrzeit memorial plaques. Additionally, there are other types of synagogue materials that may be helpful such as membership lists, congregational bulletins or newsletters, board meeting minutes, donor lists, bar or bat mitzvot lists, photographs, eulogies, and more.

 

Finding synagogue records is problematic and time consuming. They can be housed at an active synagogue or at an archive. You can certainly research where defunct or historical congregational records may have been deposited by searching for the congregational name, rabbi, or mohel on WorldCat, ArchiveGrid, or Google possibly finding the location of preserved material hidden away at hundreds of small historical societies, museums, archives, or within commercial genealogy company catalogs.  

 

The reality is that the archival world does not catalog all collections with the same terminology or use the same transcriptions from foreign languages. There are also boxes at archives that are not described in finding aids and never make their way to WorldCat or Google, so when searching with a phrase such as "synagogue records" a collection that is simply catalogued as a "congregation register" or "rabbinical papers" or not described at all, may not point you to where the records exist and are housed or even what they contain.

 

There are also many errors in catalogs, and the only way to verify contents is to see the records in person or by digitizing them for broader access.

 

To make it easier, and in one place to identify where congregational records are housed, the JewishGen USA Research Division has partnered with the American Jewish Archives, the Center for Jewish History, Yeshiva University, and The Jewish Theological Seminary to start the search for you with Shul Records America.

 

The details:

• Most are in English, but there are also Hebrew, German, and Yiddish collections.
• Most of the collections listed are not digitized. When they are, there is a hyperlink. These are the easiest projects to tackle indexing first.
• Some collections are duplicated and housed in more than one repository.
• Others are split up with portions of records in different repositories.
• If you find errors, which we know there will be, please contact us with corrections to keep this list as useful to everyone as possible.
• If you know of U.S. synagogue records housed in repositories not included here yet, please tell us, so we can add them.

We need you! Help us to identify where American synagogue records are located both online and offline, and grow this finding aid! Inspire individuals, Jewish Genealogy Societies, and congregations to create indexing projects from these records for placement on JewishGen. And if you don’t find a congregation you are interested in on SRA, perhaps motivate an active congregation to collect and share their records with archives such as AJA, JTS and YU.

 

To add additional collections, volunteer to index digitized synagogue records, or for more information about Shul Records America, visit https://usa.jewishgen.org/synagogue-research/shul-records-america or contact USA-RD Director, Ellen Kowitt at ekowitt@....

Visit today! https://www.jewishgen.org/sra/

Ellen Shindelman Kowitt
Director, JewishGen USA Research Division
ekowitt@...

I wouldn't characterize this is a close match. IAverage segment size is only 11.5cM (92cM divided by 8 segments) and there's only one large segment (I usually define "large" as 15cM or more). Most matches I encounter that are like this are endogamous matches, small bits from many distant ancestors, not traceable to a single recent relative.

There's not hard and fast rules but in general, multiple large segments are the best indicator of a strong Jewish DNA match. Matches where average segment size is 15cM or larger are promising and matches where average segment size is less than 12cm are usually endogamy.

     --Steve

--
Steve Toub

I thought this item reviewing the contents of the US Census decade-by-decade would interest other list members.  There is a "Research Guide" providing more details connected to each short decade's summary and a list of "genealogically important questions" at the end.

https://familytreemagazine.com/records/census/everybody-counts/

Lee Jaffe
===============
Surnames / Towns:  Jaffe / Suchowola, Poland ; Stein (Sztejnsapir) / Bialystok and Rajgrod ; Roterozen / Rajgrod ; Joroff (Jaroff, Zarov) / Chernigov, Ukraine ; Schwartz (Schwarzstein) / Ternivka, Ukraine ;  Weinblatt / Brooklyn, Perth Amboy, NJ ; Koshkin / Snovsk, Ukraine ; Rappoport / ? ; Braun / Wizajny, Suwalki,  Ludwinowski / Wizajny, Suwalki

I've posted a JRI-Poland vital record in Polish for which I need a translation. It is on ViewMate at the following address ...
https://www.jewishgen.org/viewmate/viewmateview.asp?key=VM100422
Please respond via the form provided on the ViewMate image page.
Thank you very much.
Ken Berger

On Nov 2, 2022, at 11:05 AM, Renee Steinig <genmaven@...> wrote:

o Go to YouTube and enter the words "How to Pronounce Przemysl." Similar videos are available for other cities, but unfortunately, there's none for my mother's birthplace -- Gawłuszowice, Poland, a village whose pronunciation I've never mastered.

Forvo has pronunciation for Gawłuszowice:
<https://forvo.com/search/Gawłuszowice/>

David Brostoff

Dear Colleagues,

I am searing for Hungarian Claims Conference Documents for my family.

This found an index listing from a search on Jewish Gen

Name: Barany, Elemerne
Code: 128615 
DocCode: 362.10
Page 41

I am a bit lost in the databases.
Thank you for helping me,
Deborah Barany

 

--
Deborah Barany
deborahbarany@...

I can't fully answer the question but wanted to thank you for sharing the photo as my grandmother (Sephardim from Cairo) married a British Army officer 18th December 1941 in Cairo.

I can point you towards some academic research on Rabbis in both the British and American Armies during WW2:
Slomovitz, Albert Isaac, "The Fighting Rabbis: A History of Jewish Military Chaplains, 1860-1945" (1995). Dissertations. 3544. https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss/3544 

Another suggestion might be the Royal Army Chaplains' Museum and Archive as there certainly were British Rabbis and if you have a date for the photo there may be some associated overseas marriage records either there on in the British Public Records Office. I know from my grandmother that the marriage is registered as an overseas marriage in the British PRO.  The marriage certificate should give the celebrant, although the index won't. (https://royalarmychaplainsmuseum.business.site/).
--
Elizabeth Gardner
Seattle, USA