Hi Len,

I am the owner of the Zhabokrich KehilaLink on JewishGen. Four years ago I created the webpage, which covers a short history of the town, reminiscences of some people who lived there (including my grandmother Dora (Donya) Kravchek Waltman - 1898-1991), information about the cemetery, surnames of some of the families who lived in the town, Holocaust history, photographs I took when I visited the town in 2013, etc. If you haven't looked at it already, you can find the webpage at: https://kehilalinks.jewishgen.org/zhabokrich/index.asp. You might be interested in knowing that the town's name means "Frog's croak", which refers to the numerous frogs that lived in the large pond in the 'downtown'. My grandmother spoke of them often! 

Take a look at the KehilaLink and then feel free to contact me about any questions you may have. I would be very happy to know if you could provide information about which of your ancestors lived in Zhabokrich and what you know about them. I would be happy to include your surnames and other information you have to the lists on the website. There are also some published works (a book and some articles) that have been published about Zhabokrich, that I provide information about on the KehilaLink.

Best wishes,
Marla Waltman
Zhabokrich and Kryzhopil KehilaLink leader
Toronto, ON, Canada
Searching: Ukraine: BEGLER, KRAFCHEK, SPEKTOR, WELTMAN
Poland: BALTMAN, BARAN,  LEWKOWICZ, ORGANEK/ORGANKIEWICZ/ORGANICK, USZEROWICZ
Belarus: KRAVCHICK

On 10/28/2020 3:04 PM, Dan Bodenheimer wrote:

Bill, you wrote that someone, "told me his goal was to 'memorialize'
Holocaust victims." and that "this is a term used by the Mormon church
to designate a ceremony in which Jewish victims of the Holocaust are
baptized by the Mormon church."

I do not agree with your premise, as I have a goal of "Memorializing"
Holocaust victims so that they are never forgotten, so that we have
pictures of real people, and so that we all can see that relatives
linked to us were lost. All this makes it more real, and solidifies the
fact that this should Never Happen Again.  I use the term memorialize,
and it has nothing to do with the old LDS baptism issue from many years
ago, which they refer to as "posthumous baptisms" or "proxy baptisms",
not memorials

In accordance with a 1995 agreement, the LDS has removed more than
300,000 names of Jewish Holocaust victims from its databases, as well as
subsequently removing names later identified by Jewish groups in more
recent years (2012).

Additionally, MyHeritage is an Israeli company, headquartered in Or
Yehuda, Israel, and it owns and operates GENI.
FamilySearch is run by the LDS and Ancestry.com was a spin-off from that
and is headquartered in Utah.

Dan Bodenheimer
San Diego, California

I suggest you read the following article:

Mormons are baptizing Holocaust victims, Lubavitcher rebbe and relatives
of celebrities, researcher says
BY JOSEFIN DOLSTEN DECEMBER 22, 2017 2:56 PM

https://tinyurl.com/yyy7ehvy

They didn't stop.

Jeri Friedman
Port Saint Lucie, Florida

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

It depends, I guess, on what you mean by "genealogy". Some people think that it is somehow impressive to generate trees containing 50,000 people of variable accuracy with all of their 7th cousins.

So what? These are all a meaningless and uninteresting waste of time. At that level you might as well include everyone in the world.  

There are many many issues here that are beyond this thread, including the theft of data about people that are of no real possible interest to the people posting this stuff apart from a macho "big tree" mentality that actually conveys no insight at all. 

However I will mention one issue: you say somewhat disparagingly that "Sadly, some people think genealogy is about hiding yourself and your family." 
Firstly, 7th cousins are not "your family" in any meaningful sense (I have many tends of thousands of 7th cousins). But more importantly, not everyone lives in LA,CA. Sometimes posting tghis sort of information places people you really don't know at substantial risk, including risk of death right now.  

This is not what genealogy is about or should be about. It is bad genealogy. The real tools of genealogy are a note book and a pen and a young person willing to interview their grandparents for private family use. Not garbage and incorrect trees of my family generated by people I couldn't care less about. Geni is hardly the only perpetrator of this type of malfunction - Jewshgen has not exactly covered itself in glory in terms of non-correctable and stolen data. 

Dr Aubrey Blumsohn

Sheffield, UK

How about this man in 1901. 

 

 Hamburg Passenger Lists, 1850-1934

I search information about Moritz BLUMENTHAL born 1835 May 16 in Pritzwalk, Brandenburg, Germany. He emigrated to Stockholm, Sweden c. 1855-60 where he obtained citizenship. He married 1877 a divorced Swedish woman, Anna Maria Natalia Wingstedt, nee Schönbeck, and had with her five children. He also adopted her three children of her earlier marriage. He died in Stockholm 1893 April 20. He seems to have been some sort of a businessman.
I have found three people named BLUMENTHAL born in Pritzwalk: Cäcile Blumenthal CHRON, b. 1818 March 24, d. 1909 Feb 14; her sister Johanna BLUMENTHAL b. 1821 Nov 16, d. 1900 Sep 1; and their father, Israel N. BLUMENTHAL d. in Pritzwalk 1854 Feb 24. The sisters could possibly be sisters (or cousins?) of Moritz. Hopefully somebody could give me some information about the Blumenthals in Pritzwalk.

--
Martin Fischer
Vice President-Publicity
Jewish Genealogical Society of Illinois

JGSI website: https://jgsi.org

Have you tried this site: http://www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/moyt/main.htm?
Mindy Yochelson

I agree with Max.  Geni is by far the best tool we have for Jewish genealogy at the moment.  All of the best Jewish genealogists use it.  How do I know?  Because on Geni we can all see each other's work, correct mistakes and learn new information about resources in our areas of interest.  

Sadly, some people think genealogy is about hiding yourself and your family.  Nothing could be more wrong.  The more you share, the more you will learn.

As for Holocaust victims, we have on Geni various projects concerning the Holocaust, which are another great tool.  See the umbrella project at https://www.geni.com/projects/Holocaust-The-Final-Solution/10996

To learn more about why everyone should be using Geni for building their trees, please see my old blog at https://schoenblog.com/?p=712

Randy Schoenberg
Los Angeles, CA

Bill, you wrote that someone, "told me his goal was to 'memorialize' Holocaust victims." and that "this is a term used by the Mormon church to designate a ceremony in which Jewish victims of the Holocaust are baptized by the Mormon church." 

I do not agree with your premise, as I have a goal of "Memorializing" Holocaust victims so that they are never forgotten, so that we have pictures of real people, and so that we all can see that relatives linked to us were lost. All this makes it more real, and solidifies the fact that this should Never Happen Again.  I use the term memorialize, and it has nothing to do with the old LDS baptism issue from many years ago, which they refer to as "posthumous baptisms" or "proxy baptisms", not memorials.    

In accordance with a 1995 agreement, the LDS has removed more than 300,000 names of Jewish Holocaust victims from its databases, as well as subsequently removing names later identified by Jewish groups in more recent years (2012). 

Additionally, MyHeritage is an Israeli company, headquartered in Or Yehuda, Israel, and it owns and operates GENI.   
FamilySearch is run by the LDS and Ancestry.com was a spin-off from that and is headquartered in Utah.  

Dan Bodenheimer
San Diego, California

You may be the only honest on of all the curators, then maybe not. I know a curator and he has changed things on my verry small tree that I put up on Geni , when Geni was first alive. The things he has changed are all wrong. He refuses to do anything to help that situation. I am sorry I ever put tose two generations onto Geni. Now My trees, going back to the 1600s are all on my computers. They are shared with relatives only, and I do share very willingly.
--
Nancy L. Reicher
Kansas City MO

"it's quite likely that the records of Jewish births, like those of marriages and deaths, were reported and registered in the town's Kehilah, where Jewish records were kept".

Few Jewish groups kept records. A ketubah was the marriage contract, so the family had the record - no rabbi was needed (unless the government required one). Most Jewish communities were small enough that people knew who had a baby or who died. The only old communities that had records were Sephardi, who were more like Catholics in that regard. 

Jews moved around a lot, and were often expelled from a town or small area, so nobody would have wanted to carry records to remember their former neighbors.

Sally Bruckheimer
Princeton, NJ

Bill,

Its unfortunate you had such a bad experience with Geni.  I never post my family tree on any site because once you do its tantamount to tacit acceptance for the site owners and anyone else with access to your tree to do with it as they please. In my experience with Geni, a woman researched my relatives and posted them on the Geni tree as her ancestors. When I questioned her about this she finally fessed up and agreed they weren't related to her. I asked her to remove them from her tree and never responded to me.  Send me a private message and I'll give you a suggestion of what you can do in your case.

Jeff Gee
Arizona, USA

Except that it isn't anything like Wikipedia. There are a huge number of problems with this type of "genealogy" of which erroneous data is just one. But even at this level: 

Wikipedia, imperfect as it is does not involve mass cloning  and propagation of errors, not only within the Wikipedia database but elsewhere. Correction is at one point only, has to be justified, and there is a well developed structure for controlling this process. Comparing this type of nonsense  genealogy to Wikipedia is like comparing apples and belly button fluff. It's like saying that holocaust denial is a good thing because the more dishonesty out there the greater the opportunity to convey truth. 

Aubrey Blumsohn

Sheffield, UK

NTalbot,

The certificate states that the doctor attended Gussie from March 19th to April 8th, which is 21 days.

The length of stay in hospital is 10 years, ? months, and 5 days.  This is written as 3 lines.  A bit hard to see because of the large number 2 over it.

I think the large number 2 over that part of the document could have gotten there by mistake.

I also noted that in the section for informant's name it states the info came from the records of the hospital, which may infer that no relative was found to be informed of her passing.

The certificate also states that Gussie is buried at the State Hospital cemetery.

Regards,

Sherri Bobish

Trying to make contact with Elie Rosner of Paris, France who posted a
Page of Testimony to Yad VaShem in 2007 for his wife's grandfather,
Feiwel Rosenkrantz. descendants of Baharir rabbinical family.
Dr. Neil Rosenstein, Elizabeth, NJ

Hi Moishe,

As your grandparents came from Hungary and reached a port city in Italy, it is very likely that such a city was Trieste. If they continued travelling by ship from there, they had to cross the whole Adriatic sea, pass south to Sicily, cross the Mediterranean sea, enter the Atlantic ocean at Gibraltar and travel along the entire coast of Portugal, France and enter the English Channel. Otherwise, they had to stop somewhere along the western coast of France, continuing by land to Paris. Anyway, it is very unlikely they reached Paris directly by ship, as Paris is not on any coast.

But as you write that they travelled in 1938, before the war, I take the liberty to say that very likely they travelled by land, probably by train. Italy and France have a common boundary, therefore that's the easiest way to move; from Trieste they might have reached Venice, Milan, Turin, then Lyon and Paris. Or from Milan they might have reached Zuerich (Switzerland) and then crossed France to Paris.

I hope this might help.

Regards,
Davide Csermely
Italy  
davide@...