New Film: "Stories of the Selfhelp Home"

In the late 1930s, following the ferocious anti-Jewish violence of Kristallnacht, a determined group of young German Jews left behind everything that was dear and familiar and immigrated to Chicago. Here, these refugees set out to create a supportive community for themselves and others fleeing Nazi persecution, eventually establishing the Selfhelp Home for the oldest among them.

REFUGE is a one-hour documentary that reaches back more than seventy years to give a voice to its last generation of victims of Nazi persecution and tell the story of this singular community that has provided a safe haven to more than one thousand Central European Jewish refugees and survivors. REFUGE weaves together historical narrative, archival footage and deeply personal testimony to explore the lives of six Chicagoans against the context of the Nazi cataclysm and how a small group of them came together to care for their own. The film illuminates the lost world of Central European Jewry prior to World War II--middle class, educated, cultured--and the remarkable courage, resilience and character of its final generation at Selfhelp.

In their own words, these refugees and survivors, now in their late eighties and above, speak vividly of loss of family and of place, of separations, and of decisions that meant the difference between life and death. They describe the myriad paths to survival: fleeing to the Jewish ghetto in Shanghai, hiding in the French countryside, being taken in by English families as part of the Kindertransport, and as slave laborers in Auschwitz and other concentration camps. And of those, who perished—husbands, parents, siblings, children. Yet, theirs are also stories of renewal, of finding love and creating new families, and of starting again in a new land.

The film moves back and forth between these stories and examines how the trajectories of their lives came together at the end at Selfhelp. And it reaches into the near future, when the last eyewitnesses to the Holocaust, those who have animated Selfhelp and given it its unique mission and meaning, will be gone. 
 

You can view the film preview here.

You can visit the Museum's other thirty-two film clips by visiting its Screening Room.

Chicago's Vishnevets Landsmanshaftn Society Members List, cir 1930s

For those of you who are Vishnevets, Ukraine researchers, you might like to visit my "Landsmanshaftn in America" page on Vishnevets. Vishnevets is located in Western Ukraine (see photo). The Vishnevets webpage contains a partial listing of members of the Chicago Vishnevets landsmanshaftn society, cir 1930s. There are about thirty-five names there, though these weren't all the members of the society. There is another list somewhere that has many more, and hopefully I'll receive this second list and add it to the one currently online.

To view this list, visit the main exhibition page here and click on the "enter" link at the end of the introductory text. Then on the Table of Contents page click on the page name listed under Vishnevets. As a bonus, you will also find what presumably is their contact (home) address at the time.

"The Russian Jew in the United States" -- Entire book now online

Many of you, those of you who follow the progress of the Museum of Family History, are already familiar with the Museum's exhibition, "The Russian Jew in the United States," which is based on the book of the same name. The book is also known as "The Immigrant Jew in America," both being published as separate editions between 1905 and 1907.

It should be noted that simply because the title implies that the book is about "the Russian Jew," i.e. the Russian Jew in America, during the time the book was written and published, Russia, or rather the Russian Empire, was composed of more countries (or parts of countries) than Russia alone. The editor distinguishes the Russian population in the United States from the Spanish-Portuguese and German populations, each being considered a "distinctly marked strata of population."

The Museum would like to announce that the entire book (with minor exceptions) is now online at the Museum of Family History and is ready for your perusal. The first part of the book was put online in time for the IAJGS Philadelphia 2009 conference. Post-conference the New York section was added, and just completed is the section about Chicago. I recommend that you at least "leaf through" the three sections; perhaps you will find material of interest to you. It does give a good picture of what Jewish life was like around the turn of the twentieth century for many Jewish immigrants.

Each major part of the book, i.e. for Philadelphia, New York and Chicago, is composed of ten sections, i.e. the introduction, "General Aspects of the Population," "Philanthropy," "Economic and Industrial Condition," "Religious Activity," "Educational Influences," "Amusements and Social Life," "Politics," "Health and Sanitation," and "Law and Litigation." Separate sections published irrespective of any particular city, are named "Distribution," and "Rural Settlements" in the Eastern and Western States. There are also pages dedicated to the Jew in Russia as well as the Russian Jew in the U.S., the latter written by famed Abraham Cahan, editor and founder of the Yiddish newspaper, the Jewish Daily Forward.

The link to the overall exhibition is www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/ija-main.htm. Simply click on the "enter" link found within the bottom half of the paqe. You may then chose the section or sections of your liking.