I want to chat with people who were/are involved in restoring the Jewish cemetery in this town. I am working on a project in a very small town-Zloty Potik- and am looking for information as to the process, etc. in Opatow.
Thanks,
Milton Koch
Bethesda, MD, USA

The links to the image of Avner Mappa's grave in Israel:
https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/coridotombimages/Medium/65/6585039E-FEC8-419B-9F69-FE1A77683F87.jpg

Translation:
On the brown part:
Avner Mappa
Clean of hand and pure of heart [a biblical phrase]
Born 15 Tishrei 5778 [this is incorrect. it should be 5678 -- 1917; it would be 1 October]
Died 21 Tishrei 577 [21 October 1984]

On the horizontal, light part:
In memory of family members who perished in the Holocaust:
His father Asher Zelig of blessed memory
His mother Tsvetl Scheindel of blessed memory
Brother Yaakov Yossef of blessed memory
Brother Aharon David of blessed memory
Sister Esther Malka of blessed memory
Brother Moshe of blessed memory
From Lodz Poland.

It is not unusual for people to add names of family members who perished in the Holocaust and whose place of burial is unknow to a gravestone.

--
Odeda Zlotnick
Jerusalem, Israel.

Many British Mandate records from Haifa, Jaffa & Jerusalem consulates are in the Israeli Archives.

https://www.archives.gov.il/en/catalogue/group/1?kw=British%20Mandate
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Tamar AMIT
Israel
ta.genealogy@...

You may want to check with the Red Cross to see if they have any post-war records. Germany did give some scholarships to survivors to pursue certain technical or educational tracks such as textiles so he may have stayed for practical reasons such as work or education. It wasn’t easy to get a visa to the US so many survivors weren’t able to immigrate. You may also want to contact the Jewish Museum in Frankfurt and the Jewish Community of Frankfurt jg-ffm.de. Someone may have known him or have interviewed him after the war to document his story. He may have been active in the synagogue or with the Jewish community in Frankfurt so some records may exist. He is listed in the USHMM’s database so maybe you will find documents from his arrival in Germany. Like many survivors he may have gone to a DP Camp after liberation. Best of luck with your search…
Lisa Malamud

Hi Ed,
Do you have other documents confirming they were Evangelisch (=Protestants), or is it just that their births, marriages and deaths were recorded in the Churchbooks?

Until the late 1800s there was no universal, separate civil registration for these events in Prussia - everyone who registered a B, D or M was entered in the Churchbooks by the priest/minister, even when he was made responsible for providing a forerunner to civil registration.

This was one of the features of the oppression that Jews lived under. An exception is 1826- 1867, when there were separate Jewish registers. 

The Mormons have made these records even more complicated to understand by calling them ‘Churchbooks’ in their microfilmed collections. , This obscures the fact the contents are usually both

- parish records of local Protestants (or Catholics, or later, Reformed Church) and

- B, M and D registrations for local Jews, who appear as ‘baptised’ under what were compulsory German names (more oppression)

E.g., I have an ancestor who appears as Johann Benjamin Josman Finke - his community knew him as Rabbi Benjamin Yosman Fink.

His bro appears as Johann Adam. Names from the Christian Bible seem to have been accepted as German names sometimes, but not reliably. And there is a huge no of ppl called Johann X Surname or Wilhelm X, Maria X (yes!), Anna X, where the first name is totally ‘generic German name’.

I hope this is helpful - it took me a while to understand exactly what I was looking at. And the person who has recently edited all  the obvious Jewish content out the Family Search profile of my many times ggf the Rabbi has not worked it out yet.

best of luck,

Yolande McNicoll

Dear Group,

(1) Can anyone please advise about the location/availability of online or offline archival resources for Nachod, Czechoslovakia?
     (I am looking for both vital records and/or other types of genealogical resources, e.g., taxpayer lists)

(2) Can anyone please advise about newspaper coverage for Nachod (online or offline) from the interwar period?

Thank you
Yaron Wolfsthal, Israel

Gaby,
my paternal grandmother was born in Kempen, Germany. It is still Kempen in Germany (the Rhineland).
You are seeking records from Kempen in Posen, which is now Kepno (or rather Kępno)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C4%99pno

familysearch.org has Jewish records from 1825 to 1847 which may be too early for you. Unfortunately, they can't be viewed from home. You will need to visit a family history centre to view them.
For the period 1874 to 1918 or there abouts, there should be civil records somewhere. ancestry does not seem to have them - they would probably be in their (misnamed) Eastern Prussian Provinces collection. The records are in a Polish State Archive.  There are several web sites holding tons of images filmed in Polish State Archives.

Try this link for civil records from Kempen in Posen:

https://www.szukajwarchiwach.gov.pl/en/zespol/-/zespol/95439
As you navigate the site, the following three words of Polish may be useful:
urodzen=births, malzenstw=marriages, zgonow=deaths.

The following seems to be a match for your grandfather, but with a different surname:
https://www.szukajwarchiwach.gov.pl/en/jednostka/-/jednostka/11950750
brings up the volume of births for 1900. Image 39 is the birth record for Georg Meister, son of Leopold Meister and Henriette Schacher, born 5-Feb-1900 in Kempen in Posen.

I hope that helps,
Rodney Eisfelder

Ancestry started marking my DNA matches a long time ago after I had my
dad's DNA done. It would say "Father's Side" if Dad was a DNA match and
nothing if it was on Mom's side. (Mom died in 1993, so no DNA for
testing, obviously.)

I have found this enormously helpful as a guide for what side of my
family to search for a particular DNA match. It really narrowed things
down and saved me a lot of time, and I was able to find connections I
never knew existed. It helped me grow my family tree a lot.

Jeri Friedman
Port Saint Lucie, Florida

--
This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
www.avast.com

My father's mother's line = Grauman(n) .  Her parents came to the US from a town called Strasburg, West Prussia, which is now Brodnica. Poland. They arrived in 1849, and settled in Louisville. I am finding little about the Jewish community in Brodnica, except that its synagogue was destroyed on Kristallnacht, and most of the Jewish population perished in the Holocaust.

Several generations earlier, a number of Graumans were members of the Evangelical Church in Germany. I do not know if they were genuine Christians, or simply hiding the Jewish identity.

I have traced the line back to my 6th G-grandfather, Kristopf (Christoff) Grauman, who was married to Maria Gerdruth Springmann on 01 Dec 1716 • Evangelisch, Langenberg Rheinland, Rheinland, Prussia. Presumably, Kristopf was born around 1690.

Other first names in the line are Dieter, Johann, Casper, Wilhelm, and Diedrich (all of which seem to repeat in successive generations).

I would appreciate any help you can provide.

--Ed Marks

The new Ancestry feature is worse than useless to me.  Of my listed matches, 44 are known relatives, 34 maternal and 10 paternal.  Ancestry's Parent 1 and Parent 2 lists each show both maternal and paternal relatives, and some of the known relatives for which I've marked a relationship aren't in either of the two lists.  To add insult to injury, this is now the default display for my matches, requiring extra effort to show the master list of matches.

I gave them feedback to keep the original display as it was and to send their parent matching algorithms back to the drawing board.  Naturally, they seem to have ignored my feedback.

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David Ellis
Natick, MA 01760
djemkitso@...

I found the tool to be essentially useless.  For one of my parents, the first match was for a paternal second cousin once removed;  we have a solid paper trail to document this.  The second match for that same parent was a maternal second cousin, once again attested by known relationships and reliable documentation (census records, revision lists, birth/death/immigration records).  For both of these relatives, I can trace known ancestors back through four generations, and there is no crossover.  Also note that the paternal line is attested in Kyiv Gubernia back to the turn of the 19th century, while the maternal line is attested in central Poland back to that same time period.

My hunch is that Ancestry's method is being skewed by endogamy.

Joel Novis
NOVITSKIY, OLSZTAJN, POMERANTZ, HYMAN

Diane,

Do you know that someone has a tree on Ancestry with Awner MAPPA?
The birth date differs slightly, and so does the death date (by one day) and place. 
The town of birth is Chmielnik.  Parents names Asher Zelig MAPPA and Curtia-Szajndla KUKIELKA.

Your info:            May 10, 1917 in Chmielnik, Poland, died October 20, 1984 in Frankfurt, Germany
The tree's info:   Oct. 13, 1916 in Chmielnik, died October 21, 1984 in Israel.

Also, when searching for records it appears that the surname is sometimes spelled MAPA.

Best regards,

Sherri Bobish

Marc,

The family historian mentioned in the article (Judith Brown Taback) can be found in The JewishGen Family Finder.
https://www.jewishgen.org/jgff/
If you search for surname TABACK you will find her, and you can send her a message through The JewishGen Family Finder.

Good luck in your search,

Sherri Bobish

Searching:
RATOWSKY / CHAIMSON (Ariogala, Lith.); LEFFENFELD / FINK / KALTER (Daliowa & Jasliska, Pol.)
BOJDA / BLEIWEISS (Tarnow & Tarnobrzeg, Pol.); WALTZMAN / WALZMAN (Ustrzyki Dolne, Pol.)
LEVY (Tyrawa Woloska, Pol.); SOLON / SOLAN / SOKOLSKY (Grodek, Bialystok, Pol.)
BOBISH / BLUMENKRANZ / APPEL / WEINER / ROSENBERG (Vysoko-Litovsk, Brest, Biala Podlaska)

On Fri, Oct 28, 2022 at 04:10 AM, Eva Lawrence wrote:

Maybe the Family Finder could do with a Spring-clean, eliminating anyone who doesn't reply to an official request for confirmation that they  still wish to be listed..

Please don't do a spring cleaning.  The expired information in Family Finder can be useful.  I found only one record there for my family in our town, where it noted that the researcher was deceased.  But I recognized the name belonging to the husband of one of my father's cousins and used that hint to track down his online family tree which had been taken over by one of his daughters.  We've been in touch and she has shared a lot of information about that branch and put me in touch with other cousins.  

The fact that the record says someone hasn't logged in a long time (or is deceased) should be enough of a clue that you shouldn't expect a response.  But reports recent activity is no guarantee that the researcher will answer either.  Purging the database won't necessarily improve matters and it can potentially remove valuable information. Just the fact that there are/were people researching a surname in a town can be useful, a clue that you are on the right track. 

Perhaps there are ways Family Finder can be augmented to address some of the needs raised here.  But most of the suggestions I've seen appear to be trying to "reinvent the wheel," undervaluing the real value of Family Finder.

Lee David 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

Dear Geners,
Thanks for your help with this question.
I've learned that NYC can issue one of two birth certificate forms --short and long. The long form obviously contains more information, including parents' names, which is important for dual citizenship applications. It (and other documents) is available through VitalChek, a service that claims to be an authorized processor of key documents. Its web site also says it represents several hundred government agencies across the US. Thus, I have been able to order a long birth certificate.
Again, thanks to all who responded.
Ronnie Hess
Madison, WI
Researching HESS, HIRSCHLAFF, ROSNER, KESSLER

I understand that the sorting process is still evolving, but I would
hardly call it beta!

My mother has tested on Ancestry, and if I could see the actual
chromosomes for the larger (150cM) matches, I could pretty easily spot
those that are 95% maternal side. Ancestry's algorithm cannot. Right
now, it can only identify my known relatives, which is not very helpful.

For my mother, Ancestry has identified all matches as "mother's side"
even while corroborating that a match is on her father's side of the
tree! I spent a half hour on the phone with them last year trying to
sort this out, but that was a clear waste of time.

I recognize the complications created by endogamy, but Ancestry can't
even seem to get the easy stuff right.

JoAnne
--

 

Dear Benny,



Marcus Leopold became French citizen by a decree in 1885.

--
Regards,
David CHOUKROUN

david.choukroun@...
FRANCE

CHOUKROUN ATTALI ATLANI