Maurice Schwartz and his Yiddish Art Theatre

For more than sixty years Yiddish acting great Maurice Schwartz has directed and performed in more than one hundred plays both domestically and abroad. His dedication to performing plays of the highest quality exemplifies the artistry that occurred within the Yiddish Theatre in the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century. The Yiddish Theatre, in all its glory, was at its zenith on the Lower East Side of New York City, especially in the area on or about Second Avenue.

The photograph included here is of Schwartz (left) and novelist I. J. Singer, author of the novel from which Schwartz created the play "Yoshe Kalb."

For those of you whose interest lies in Yiddish theatre, you will enjoy perusing the more than twenty pages found within this exhibition. You can not only read about Maurice Schwartz the man (a link to an unpublished biography of Schwartz can be found within this exhibition), but also the actor. You can also see photographs of many of his productions and learn a bit about many of the Yiddish Art Theatre productions themselves, i.e. not only the plays his troupe performed, but also those who worked behind the scenes as well and the playwrights themselves. You will also learn a bit about Schwartz's acting troupe itself and the myriad of talented actors and actresses that once graced the Yiddish stage.

For those of you who do research about the Yiddish theatre, you will find not only a listing of most all his YAT productions, but also a page that lists in greater detil more than one hundred of his productions. This is especially interesting because of information these listings contain, e.g. full cast listing of the majority of those productions listed. You will typically find the title of the production, the playwright's name, the location and name of the theatre in which the YAT performed this production at, and the month and year the production opened. I am still missing information on many of these listings as well as complete information on other YAT productions, so if anyone has information that isn't available on this webpage, please contact me.

Though some of the material found within this exhibition has previously been presented by this online Museum, there is much new to be seen. To see this exhibition, please click here. The aforementioned page listing the more than one hundred YAT productions with casts of characters can be found at here. You can also find a listing with links to most of the Yiddish Theatre material at the Museum of Family History's Yiddish World here.

Lastly, for those of you who wish to hear and read in Yiddish (and English) some poetry written by Itzik Manger and Peretz Miransky, please visit the Museum's Yiddish Vinkl Poetry Corner here.

New film: "Martin: The Story of Dr. Martin Kieselstein"

Dr. Martin Kieselstein is both a Romanian/Transylvanian Jew and a Holocaust Survivor, having been imprisoned in Auschwitz, Rotschweig, Alach and Dachau.

Today he lives in Israel and has become a prodigious artist, having produced many sculptures relating to the Holocaust in such mixed media as glass, bronze, clay and wood. The Museum of Family History welcomes a ten-minute film about Dr. Kieselstein and his work which can now be found within the Museum's Screening Room. This film serves as a companion piece to the Museum's online exhibition about Dr. Kieselstein which presents to you two dozen of his sculptures.

You can find the online exhibition of Dr. Kieselstein's work here.

You can find the film about Dr. Kieselstein here. This film is in Hebrew with English subtitles.

The entire list of the Screening Room's thirty-two films with links to each can be found here.

A Jewish Community in the Carpathian Mountains: The Story of Munkacs

For those of you who are interested in Munkacs, or simply care to see how a wonderful institution has chosen to honor one of the many vanished Jewish communities of Europe, Yad Vashem has put together an interesting online exhibition about the town, both before and after the Holocaust. You can find it here.

The town has been known by names depending on the country which possessed it at the time. It has been known as Munkacs, Hungary; Mukacevo, Czechoslovakia; Mukachevo, Soviet Union; and what it is known as today, i.e. Mukacheve, Ukraine.

The Munkacs synagogue is pictured above, as it once existed circa 1930.

New at the Museum's Screening Room: "A Film Unfinished" About the Warsaw Ghetto

At the end of WWII, sixty minutes of raw film, having sat undisturbed in an East German archive, were discovered. Shot by the Nazis in Warsaw in May 1942, and labeled simply "Ghetto," this footage quickly became a resource for historians seeking an authentic record of the Warsaw Ghetto. However, the later discovery of a long-missing reel complicated earlier readings of the footage. A FILM UNFINISHED presents the raw footage in its entirety, carefully noting fictionalized sequences (including a staged dinner party) falsely showing "the good life" enjoyed by Jewish urbanites, and probes deep into the making of a now-infamous Nazi propaganda film. A FILM UNFINISHED is a film of enormous import, documenting some of the worst horrors of our time and exposing the efforts of its perpetrators to propel their agenda and cast it in a favorable light.

You can see the film preview here.

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.

Update on Two Upcoming Exhibitions at the Museum of Family History

The Museum of Family History is readying two new online exhibitions about the Jewish "experience" in Europe before, during and after World War II and the Holocaust.

These two exhibitions (and a third one to come later this year or early next) will, after the exhibition is finished, be partly integrated into the Museum's "World War II and the Holocaust" wing.

These two exhibitions will deal mainly with the Jewish ghettos that were formed in Europe during World War II as well as more than three dozen concentration, extermination, labor and transit camps that much of the Jewish population of Europe were incarcerated in.

The third exhibition, entitled "Persecution and Flight: The Nazi Campaign Against the Jews," will similar in nature to the other two exhibitions, though it will mostly deal with the period before the Second World War.

Within these exhibitions you will see photographs taken in Europe before, during and after the war. You will also see and hear testimony from some who survived the War. Most interestingly, perhaps for some, will be the many pieces of postal mail that will demonstrate to the Museum visitor some of the types of mail that were sent between those imprisoned (as well as from some who worked in the ghettos and camps) and the outside world. I would suspect that most who will visit these two exhibitions have never seen such examples, or at least very few at best.

There is still time for those of you who might have interesting period photographs, audio and video clips, written testimony, that might fit in well with the theme of these exhibitions. If you do have such material and wish for the Museum to add it to the exhibitions, please contact the Museum at postmaster@museumoffamilyhistory.com with the following phrase in the Subject line of your e-mail "World War II and the Holocaust Exhibitions."

The first ones to view these two new online exhibitions will be those who have signed up to receive the Museum's e-newsletter "Perspectives," which to date has only been published twice, the last time quite a while ago. This is a perk of signing up for the newsletter, i.e. you get a chance to preview selected new exhibitions before the general public.

Perhaps three or four weeks subsequent to the sending out of Perspectives, a general announcement will be made to the public of its availability. Thus if you have not already done so, you might like to sign up for Perspectives. You can do so by clicking here. Please read the entire Perspectives signup page before signing up.

Six more films by Tomek Wisniewski

At the Museum of Family History you can now view six new short films created from both pre-WWII and current photographs and film clips by Bialystok, Poland native Tomek Wisniewski.

The film titles include:
--Bialystok Cemetery: Painted Gravestone (Bialystok)
--The Fourth Partition of Poland: Bialystok Brest 1939 (Bialystok)
--Lodz Litzmanstadt 1939 (Lodz)
--Szczuczyn Kolno Wizna Łomża 1939 (Lomza)
--The Old Jewish Cemetery on Okopowa Street 1942 (Warsaw)
--Snapshots of Jewish Warsaw 1939-1942 (Warsaw)

You can find the links to these six films of Tomek's (along with links to fifty-one of his other films) by clicking here. The films and links on this page are listed according to the name of the town or city associated with the particular film.

Need a Cemetery Map?

The Museum of Family History's Cemetery Project contains much of interest to the Jewish genealogist. Information on more than 130,000 burials in the New York metro area, a directory of cemeteries, an exhibition of society gates, the inner workings of a typical Jewish cemetery, and dozens of photographs of cemetery maps.

These cemetery maps are not of individual society plots, but of the maps that you pick up when you visit the cemetery office, that allow you to know where your family member is buried and how to find it. Most of the maps provided are of New York and New Jersey cemeteries, but you will also find maps of Jewish cemeteries in the states of California, Florida, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Maryland, Illinois and Ohio, not to mention the provinces of Quebec and Mannitoba in Canada.

The latest maps to be added are from Massachusetts, i.e. from Sharon Memorial Park in Sharon, and from Los Angeles, i.e. Hillside Cemetery. It is hoped that more such maps will be added in the future, though this will mostly depend on people like yourself who can obtain such maps, scan them and e-mail them to the Museum. Please mail these maps to steve@museumoffamilyhistory.com. Ideally, they should be unmarked.

You can find the maps of the New York and New Jersey cemeteries, as well as links to maps of Jewish cemeteries in other states and Canada, by clicking here.

Three More Films from Tomek Wisniewski

Now you can see the three new Tomek Wisniewski films appearing at the Museum of Family History. There are now fifty-one of Tomek's films available for you to view, each interesting in their own right.

The first of his new films is entitled "Over the Rooftops" and is a nearly thirty-minute series of views of Bialystok, often from a "birds-eye" view. You can find the film here.

The second film is also about Bialystok, is more than thirty minutes long, and is entitled "Bialystok: Yesterday and Today, From the Heavens and the Earth." To see this film, please click here.

The third film is about the Taibl Pomerantz Jewish nursery school of Grajewo, 1926. The film is basically a seven minute scan of a student group photograph with the frequent zooming in of the faces of the young children. To see this film, please click here.

The Museum hopes you enjoy all that Tomek Wisnewski has to offer. He is quite a creative talent and cares much about the history of the Jewish people in Poland.

The entire list of and links to the fifty-one of his films at the Museum can be found here. Undoubtedly, more will follow in the coming weeks.

More Synagogue and Holocaust Memorial Photographs from Europe

The Museum has added to its evergrowing exhibitions of European synagogue and Holocaust memorial photographs.

New synagogue photos have been added for the following countries and towns:

--Austria: Kobersdorf (Kabold).
--Croatia: Varazdin.
--Germany: Dresden.
--Hungary: Esztergom, Gyongyos, Gyor, Gyula, Hajdúböszörmény, Keszthely, Kisvarda, Mad, Mako, Miskolc, Nyiregyhaza, Pecs, Siklos, Sopron, Tapolca, Tata, Tiszafured and Zalaegerszeg.
--Poland: Krakow, Tarnogrod, Tarnow and Wrzesnia.
--Romania: Targu-Mures.
--Slovakia: Samorin.
--Ukraine: Brody, Kamyanka Buzka and Vylok.

You can find these photos by visiting the particular country synagogue page. Just click here.

New Holocaust memorial photographs have been added from:

--Hungary: Budapest and Kunmadaras.
--Poland: Deblin, Kielce, Kozienice, Krakow, Lodz, Opole, Piotrkow Trybunalski, Przemysl, Radomsko, Rzeszow, Sochaczew, Tarnow, Warszawa and Wrzesnia.
--Ukraine: Rogatyn.

You can find these and all the other exhibition's collection of Holocaust memorial photos by clicking here.

More such photographs are always welcome. You may send jpegs to the Museum at steve@museumoffamilyhistory.com. Please identify the photographs, e.g. country and town where they are located, name of the synagogue, and any other information you think is relevant.

WWI Honor Roll and Holocaust Memorial in Great Britain

New to the Museum are two pages listing Jewish soldiers and personnel who perished during both the First and Second World Wars.

In 1990 two plaques honoring those soldiers et al who died between 1914 and 1919 were transferred from the East London Synagogue to the area of the Waltham Abbey Cemetery. A photograph of the plaques and lists can be found by clicking here. Be sure to click twice on the photograph if you'd like to read what has been inscribed on these plaques.

Also in this location you can also see a memorial conceived and built by Holocaust Survivor Roman Halter, dedicated to the six million Jews who were murdered during World War II by clicking here. This is the first Holocaust memorial from Great Britain that is featured in the Museum's "World Holocaust Memorials" permanent exhibition. More are always welcome.

The Jewish New Synagogue of Harbin, China

You can now view a number of photographs of the Jewish New Synagogue of Harbin, China. It used to be the largest synagogue in Northeast China, but it hasn't be used as such since the Jews left Harbin in the 1950s. Built in 1921, it served as both a synagogue and library and has within the past number of years been renovated. Harbin used to have the largest Jewish population in the Far East.

The Harbin photos can be found at www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/ce/jasia/jasia-02c-china-harbin.htm.

Update on the Lodz Ghetto Cemetery Database

More names have been added to the list of those buried in the Jewish Ghetto Cemetery of Lodz, Poland, now totaling more than 3,400 burials. More will be added, but not until 2011. Not only does this list contain the names of the deceased and date and age of death, but also grave location, Hebrew name of the deceased and father and more.

The lists are displayed in two different ways, i.e. by cemetery section and alphabetically. One must also scroll across the screen the see the many columns of information available. You can also see the map of the Jewish Lodz Cemetery here and note the section number that corresponds to the individual sectional lists provided to you.

To select your preferred method of search, go to www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/ce/ghetto/lodz-ghetto-cemetery.htm and use the links provided.

Each webpage contains a photo of the cemetery, cir 1940-1944 that you might not have seen before.

This burial list is part of an upcoming online Museum exhibition entitled "The Jewish Ghetto" which will go online sometime this summer.

More Photos of the Synagogues of Europe

Many more photographs of the synagogues of Europe (now close to six hundred in all), both from sometime before World War II and of the recent past, can now be found within the Museum's exhibition. "Synagogues of Europe..." which arguably has the largest number of synagogue photos from Europe online.

More photographs will be added along the way as time permits. Recent photos added to this collection are of Polish synagogues from Przeymyl, Slupsk, Bydgoszcz, Bielsko Biala, Wlodawa, Lesko, Krakow, Szydlow, Inowroclaw, Pinczow, Kielce, Ostrow Wielkopolski, Gliwice, Wroclaw, Konskie, Lodz, Lublin, Lowicz, Piotrkow Trybunalski, Porozow and Opole.

Also from the Ukraine: Berehove, Uzhhorod, Mukacheve, Vylok; also a synagogue in Sveksna in Lithuania, Budapest and Szeged in Hungary, and Subotica in today's Serbia. You can now also see new webpages created for synagogues in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Denmark, Estonia, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Slovenia and Portugal. The main page for this exhibition can be found at www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/s/mfh-syn-europe.htm. More synagogue photos are always welcome.

An Untapped Genealogical Resource: Pre-War Gravestone Photos from Europe

One of the resources for genealogical discovery not often thought about, I don't think, are old pre-war photographs or films, e.g. where names of Jewish businesses are displayed on various signs, or where there are photographs of pre-war matzevot (gravestones) from Europe are displayed. The latter, of course, is intriguing as many of these matzevot that we can see now online no longer exist, having been destroyed at sometime from then until now.

For instance, in my latest display of Lodz Ghetto Cemetery data I have displayed at least two photos of the cemetery grounds where one can distinguish the names inscribed on at least two matzevot, one for a Sura Goldkrantz and the other for a Rivka Leah Borenstein (Borenstejn perhaps in Polish). The first photo can be found at www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/ce/ghetto/lodz-ghetto-cemetery-R-S.htm; the Borenstein gravestone photo can be found above or at
www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/ce/ghetto/lodz-ghetto-cemetery-A-D.htm. There are photos like these that are found on a number of sites, e.g. the US Holocaust Memorial Museum (http://www.ushmm.org/), not to mention others. It might be a good project--that shouldn't take that long at all--for someone to do a limited search on such sites and find such matzevot photos, and where there are names inscribed that are legible, to make a list of them, i.e. at least the name of the deceased and the town in which the cemetery is located. Then you can post them for all of us to see. Of course, you're welcome to send this list to me and I will make the list available to all online.

Of course there are many matzevot still extant within the many cemeteries of Europe, and many photos have been taken of them and put online. Many, however, are broken, missing or otherwise eroded to the point of being indistiguishable. Surely, though, there are photos online or elsewhere of matzevot that are no longer extant, that can be of genealogical value to those who are researchers of particular surnames or towns.

Just an idea for a project that sounds interesting to me. What do you think?

Catskills Bungalow Heritage Museum

Master List for Lodz Ghetto Cemetery Now Online

For those of you who are interested in learning about those who are interred within the Lodz Ghetto Cemetery, you can now view the current master list online within the Museum of Family History.

Because of the large size of the database--there are more than 3,400 burials to date--the data had to be spread over four webpages, the burial lists organized alphabetically by the first letter of the deceased's surname.

The fields include:

Plot Location (section and grave number)
Surname (English)
Surname (Hebrew letters)
Given Name (English)
Date of Death (English)
Date of Death (Hebrew)
Age at Death
Hebrew Given Name(s) (English)
Given Name(s) (Hebrew letters)
Father's Name (English)
Father's Name (Hebrew letters)
Other Surnames
Comments

You can begin your lookups by visiting www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/ce/ghetto/lodz-ghetto-cemetery-A-F.htm .

It is important to note that even though the list is divided among four webpages, it might take a minute or so (or not) to download each page. Also, because of the many fields and columns, you will no doubt have to scroll across the webpage to glean all the information for any particular burial.

There are many more burials in the Lodz Jewish Ghetto Cemetery and hopefully by sometime in 2011, more work will be done by those involved in this project to get more burial data online.

A question of online accessibility of Pennsylvania death certificates

Below is an excerpt of an e-mail I received today that some of you might be interested in:

"Here is the link to the website about the grassroots effort to have Pennsylvania make its older state death certificates much more accessible and also available online similar to what they have already done in other states: http://users.rcn.com/timarg/PaHR-Access.htm. We hope you will join in on this effort and if you would pass this information onto anyone you know who is into Pennsylvania genealogy and history including out-of-state residents. Every letter, phone call or email helps and you can write more than once.

This effort will only succeed with your help. Otherwise we could be stuck with the same old archaic and restricted system in Pennsylvania forever. It will not happen by itself. There are millions and millions of people who are into genealogy, but unless we speak up we are allowing those who don't care about genealogy decide what records we may or may not have access to.

By the way there are now fourteen states that have scanned images of their older state death certificates available online: Arizona, Delaware, Georgia, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, Texas, Vermont, Utah and West Virginia.

Six other states have extracted data available online: Washington, Alabama, Louisiana, New Mexico, Idaho and Florida. Arizona, Delaware, Vermont, Washington and West Virginia now have scanned images of their older state birth records online. The links to the various states (except Delaware and Vermont) can be found on the 'Death Certificate Databases for Other States, Etc.' section of our website."

Seven New Films for You from Tomek Wisniewski of Bialystok

There are now a total of ten short films of Tomek Wisniewski being shown at the Museum of Family History. I have announced three so far, and seven new ones are ready for you to view. Most of them have interesting instrumental music to go along with the film's scenes.

These new films include:

1. Of Bialystok, Poland:
--"Once Upon a Time in Bialystok," a very interesting film that takes you back to the Bialystok of the interwar period. Thirty minutes long.

--"The Kaufman Brothers", one of whom was Boris Kaufman, the cinematographer for "Twelve Angry Men" and others. The brothers were all natives of Bialystok.

--"A Yiddish Song in Bialystok." A large group gathers in Bialystok in 1940 to hear a couple sing what seems to be a Yiddish song. Can anyone identify the song by name? If so, please contact me privately. More films of Bialystok are to come, including a film about the Warner Brothers (also from Bialystok).

2. Of Zabludow, Poland:
--Two films of the Zabludow Synagogue, scans of photos of the interior and exterior of the synagogue, cir 1927.

3. Of Kossovo, Belarus (pre-1939, Kosow Poleski, Poland):
--"Berteza Kartuzka: The Street That is No More, 1916"

4. Of Minsk, Belarus:
--"Jewish Minsk." While watching this film, you can imagine you are walking or in a horse and buggy down the streets of Minsk as Tomek scans across a few of his very old photographs of Minsk. Also photographs of the synagogue complex and the Choral Synagogue.

You can access these films, as well as the previous films announced, on the webpage I've created listing Tomek Wisniewski's films at www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/tomek/films.htm .
Enjoy!

Three Short Films, Courtesy of Tomek Wisniewski

The Museum of Family History now presents to you, with permission, three short films created by Tomek Wisniewski of Bialystok, Poland. He has created a great many such films, and the Museum hopes to present many of them to you in the coming months. These first three films will be shown within the Museum's Film Series until May 29th; more will be added along the way. Best to check this Museum's blog from time to time to learn when new films are available for viewing.

Here are the titles of the first three, all with an instrumental background, at least one with vocal music and Polish dialogue:

--Bialystok, Poland: Rabbi Gedaliah Rozenman (once the Chief Rabbi of Bialystok);
--Tykocin, Poland: The Tykocin (Tiktin) Synagogue, 1929;
--Suwalki, Poland: Suwalki 1937 (That Which is No More.)

The links to these web pages/films can be found by clicking here. The links are at the top of the film listings.

Additionally, if you would like to learn more about the history of the Great Synagogue in Bialystok, read the memoirs of Rose Schachner, a granddaughter of the builder of the synagogue, Solomon Rabinovitch. You can find her short biography by clicking here.

The Landsmanshaftn Collections at the Center for Jewish History, New York City

For those of you with more than a passing interest in a particular landsmanshaftn (mutual aid societies established by many of our ancestors to assist their fellow Jews from the same hometown who came to live in such countries as the U.S.), you should consider visiting the Lillian Goldman Reading Room, found within the Center for Jewish History (CJH), which is located within the YIVO building in New York City. Whether it be AJHS's collection entitled "Landsmanshaftn and other town and country-related organizations incorporated in New York County, 1848-1920" which can be found at http://www.jgsny.org/landsmanshaft/ajhs.htm), or YIVO's catalogued landsmanshaftn collection (found at http://www.jgsny.org/landsmanshaft/yivo.htm), you might be surprised by some of the material you may find.

First, search the tables on these pages (there are also some other worthwhile collections to peruse at http://www.jgsny.org/ to see if the European town you're interested in, or the landsmanshaft itself, is listed. If so, and if it is possible for you to go there yourself, visit the Reading Room between most any Monday through Thursday and the friendly and helpful staff will help you find what you need.

When I visited the Reading Room a few weeks ago in search of historical information about the society to which I belong to, i.e. the United Zembrover Society, I was pleased to find plenty of interesting material, and you might too for your own town or society of interest. Of course, there might also be very little there for you even if a folder for your society exists, but you never know until you check.

The AJHS (The American Jewish Historical Society) has many incorporation papers on microfilm, and you are permitted to copy by yourself any of the pages of interest you find for a quarter per page.

As to incorporation papers, you will probably find the date the society was incorporated, the names of the officers and their official positions (and even their home addresses); the "purpose" of their society being formed, and more.

On YIVO's landsmanshaftn papers, you may find hard copies of many papers, ledgers, photographs, names and addresses of members, and even souvenir journals. Sometimes, of course, papers or journals may be solely or mostly in Yiddish, but not always. What also is of interest are the maps they sometimes have of the society's burial plots. They may also have copies of contracts made between a society and a cemetery for a purchased plot that the society wished to use to bury their members when the time came. The helpful staff that works within the Reading Room will charge you thirty-five cents per page to copy the materials they hold, but they will do the copying for you.

So why not check out at least the two aforementioned webpages when you can? By doing so, and then perusing either the microfilm or society's papers, you may learn when a society was formed, who the officers were, maybe when a particular cemetery plot was purchased (on how much space for how much money), or when the society gate was erected, etc. You may also find other interesting items within these collections, but you'll have to check what each folder or microfilm contains.

If you don't live in the NYC area but discover that records are available for your society, you may want to contact the Center for Jewish History by e-mail or phone and ask them what you're options are for getting copies of these materials. The URL for the Lillian Goldman Reading Room is http://www.cjh.org/collections/readingroom.php.

Best of luck!

New "Walk in My Shoes: Collected Memories of the Holocaust" Entry for Kaunas, Lithuania

Ed (Ephraim) Gruzin was born in 1927 in Kaunas (Kovno), and is a survivor of the Kovno Ghetto and Kaufering concentration camp number one near Landsberg, Germany. He has written a biography of his life and has graciously given permission to the Museum to make his story available to all museum "visitors."

You can read his story, as well as see some of his family pictures, by clicking here.

This is the Museum's first WIMS entry for Lithuania. More such stories are welcome, no matter from what country the Survivor comes from.

Time Travelling to Coney Island, 1905 to 1952

Now that summer is fast approaching here in the U.S. (it begins at the end of June), thoughts of past years of frolic at the beach come to mind. So to get a head start on summer and the inevitable thoughts of Brooklyn's Coney Island come to mind (especially among those who once visited there), I have put once again online the five videos about Coney Island that once graced the Museum of Family History's Film Series. You can now watch them at your leisure.

These short films include:

--A group of young women from a boarding school spending the day at Coney Island in 1905.

--A film of Fatty Arbuckle at Coney Island, 1917, which includes visions of Luna Park.

--Coney Island of the 1940s.

--Coney Island Freaks, B-Girls, and a Touch of Tatooing.

--Coney Island in 1952.

So you can now spend nearly an hour getting a whiff of sea air and yesteryear watching these five short films which cover a span of nearly fifty years of the once great Coney Island. Now it is a mere shell of what it was with perhaps large buildings filled with condominiums and a shopping mall in its future, but we can still keep alive the memory of Coney Island in our own minds as long as we can travel back in time through the magic of film. Enjoy--and don't forget the sunscreen!

The videos can be found by clicking here.

The rest of the Coney Island exhibition begins here and consists of the introductory page and a short history of early Coney Island. You can find the first page here.

Publication of “Skala on the River Zbrucz,” a translation of the Skala Yizkor Book

In 1978, the Skala Benevolent Society (SBS) published a Yizkor [memorial] book called Skala. The book was written by the town’s (shtetl’s) former Jewish residents who either had survived the Holocaust or had been born in Skala and previously had emigrated. Its purpose was to honor Skala’s Jewish community, which had been annihilated by the Nazis and their cohorts. Most of the contributors to the original book were the survivors themselves, who felt a deep inner compulsion and moral obligation to those who perished, to tell the story of Jewish Skala and to share with their children and future generations their memories of suffering, struggle and loss. The Yizkor book was written primarily in Yiddish and Hebrew and was largely inaccessible to many modern researchers, most of whose families came from this shtetl. Skala on the River Zbrucz, a translation of the entire Yizkor book into English, now has been published by the Skala Research Group (whose members are investigating their roots in Skala) and the SBS.

Situated in eastern Galicia and once ruled by Austro-Hungary, the town of Skala was part of Poland during World War II. It now is called Skala Podil’ska and is part of Ukraine. The Skala Yizkor book includes articles, photographs, and documents on the history of the town’s Jews from the 15th century up to and including the Holocaust, when the Jewish community was completely destroyed. This material recalls a once vibrant shtetl, its people, the environment in which they lived, their hopes, dreams and struggles for survival. The Yizkor book also describes the tragic events of the Holocaust, stories of those who survived and provides a list of Skala’s Holocaust victims and survivors. The English translation contains a new chapter about the town’s righteous gentiles who saved Jews during the Holocaust, as well as photographs showing Skala as it is today. It is a precious legacy that deserves to be preserved.

For copies, please contact Tony Hausner, thausner@gmail.com .

The book will be distributed to contributors at a luncheon to be held on May 16, at 12 p.m. at the Darna Restaurant , 600 Columbus Avenue (89th St.), New York, NY 10025.

Immigration at the Museum of Family History: A Review of Two Current Exhibitions

For those of you who haven't yet visited the Museum's exhibition titled "A Multitude of Immigrants," may I suggest you do so at your convenience.

The online exhibition contains eleven articles written between 1891 and 1910, and published in such New York City newspapers as the Daily Tribune, the World and the Sun. The articles are interesting in many ways, particularly if you're curious as to how these newspapers portrayed the "flood" of immigrants that passed through New York City ports around the turn of the twentieth century, as well as how they tried to regulate the inflow.

As a sort of "companion" piece to this exhibition, please visit "Castle Garden and Ellis Island: Ports of Immigration." Here you may read any or all of the dozen newspaper articles that talk about the history of Castle Garden and Ellis Island, all written and published between 1887 and 1909.

When read as a whole these articles give us a chance to "taste" the sentiment of the time toward immigration and the Jewish immigrant specifically.

You can find the exhibition "A Multitude of Immigrants" by clicking here.

You can find the exhibition "Castle Garden and Ellis Island" by clicking here.

A Review of the Searchable Cemetery Databases in the Metro New York Area

Now that I've announced the presence of a database for burials at New York's Knollwood Park Cemetery, I thought that this would be a good time to review the number (ten) of searchable, online burial databases that are currently available for Jewish cemeteries in the metro New York area (including New Jersey).

There are ten such databases online at present, though there are actually only eight, as the cemetery database for Mt. Carmel includes the burial data for both the nearby Hungarian Union Fields Cemetery and Knollwood Park Cemetery. Below, along with name and town location of each cemetery, I've also included the approximate number of burials in each. The sum total of burials included within all these databases mentioned below are more than 810,000. I know of no other cemetery in the New York metro area that is currently creating their own searchable cemetery database.

New York:

Mt. Hebron Cemetery, Flushing, Queens, http://www.mounthebroncemetery.com/, 217,000 burials.
Mt. Zion Cemetery, Maspeth, Queens, http://www.mountzioncemetery.com/, 210,000 burials.
Mt. Lebanon Cemetery, Glendale, Queens, http://www.mountlebanoncemetery.com/, 88,000 burials.
Mt. Carmel Cemetery, Glendale, Queens, http://www.mountcarmelcemetery.com/, 69,000 burials.
Mt. Judah Cemetery, Ridgewood, Queens, http://www.mountjudah.com/, 54,000 burials.
Mt. Ararat Cemetery, Lindenhurst, Suffolk, http://www.mountararatcemetery.com/, 45,000 burials.
Knollwood Park Cemetery, Ridgewood, Queens, http://www.mountcarmelcemetery.com/, 17,000 burials.

New Jersey:

Riverside Cemetery, Saddle Brook, http://www.riversidecemetery.org/, 65,000 burials.
Mt. Moriah Cemetery, Fairview, http://www.mountmoriahcemeteryofnewjersey.org/, 29,000 burials.

Knollwood Park Cemetery Burial Data Now Online

I noticed today that Mt. Carmel Cemetery (Glendale, Queens, New York), which has taken over supervision of the nearby cemetery Knollwood Park Cemetery(in Ridgewood), has finally put online the information about the Knollwood Park burials.

There are currently over 17,000 burials listed now and I am assuming that this is the current number of burials at the cemetery. You should be forewarned, however, that most of the dates of death, especially the deaths pre-2000, are not included. These dates are simply listed as 1/1/1900, which is the default date for the database. I have no idea why this happened or if it will be fixed in the future.

The Knollwood Park burials are listed as Cemetery Section 5 within Mt. Carmel's website. Sections 1 and 2 are of the main "old" Carmel Cemetery; Section 3 is of the New Carmel Cemetery (down the road), and Section 4 is of the (former) Hungarian Union Fields Cemetery. You can find the burial data for these five sections combined as one on the Mt. Carmel Cemetery site at www.mountcarmelcemetery.com . I imagine if you find a burial for Knollwood Park and would like to know the actual date of death for someone, you can telephone either Knollwood Park or Mt. Carmel; I'm not sure if one or the other or both have that information.

Would You Like to Display Your Pre-War Family Photos from Europe in a Museum?

The Museum of Family History proudly displays more than a thousand pre-war family photos from Europe. Hundreds of followers of the Museum have e-mailed the Museum scans of their precious family photos, wishing to not only share images of their family members and ancestors with all of us, but to simply honor their memory. Once in a while someone even sees a connection between their family tree and the family tree of the person who posted their family photos and both parties are put in contact with each other.

Also, placing one's family photos within the Museum's "Postcards from Home" permanent exhibition allows one to share their photos with other family members living in different parts of the world, saving them the dilemma of how to send a cousin, for example, a family photo without having to make copies, etc.

So your family photos are always welcome. Within the "Postcards from Home" exhibition, the photos are organized not only by country and town name, but also by family surname, so someone with a particular interest in a country or town or surname can make a specific search.

How does one submit photos for inclusion within the Museum's website?

First, of course, you must scan each photo and document into a folder within your computer, preferably scanning them as jpegs. The Museum prefers that you not send it originals for obvious reasons. If you haven't a scanner, there are many drugstores that have them, and you may scan your photos there by their photo department onto a CD and you can subsequently mail the CD to the Museum.

Then, after you've scanned the photos into a designated folder, you can send them to the Museum in groups of ten or twelve or more depending on the size, at postmaster@museumoffamilyhistory.com . You might want to send a second email at the time to the same e-mail address, letting the Museum know that the photos are on their way. In the subject heading of the e-mail that contains the photos, you may wish to type, for example, "Sam's family photos." I will let you know when I receive them.

If you can identify any/all of the people in each photo, please do. Assign a country and town name to each photo, so at least for the Museum's Postcards from Home exhibition, they can be placed correctly within the exhibition.

If you know the date the photo was taken, or can approximate it, please do. Surely you will not know the name of each person, and you may not have a clue as to the date, but do what you can. Perhaps you can label the photos to reflect their name, or family name. Preferably no spaces should be left between words witin the file name (if possible).

If a particular photo is from a photographic studio, e.g. it has the name of the studio/photographer imprinted at the bottom of the front of the photo mount, don't crop it; simply send the complete front photo, etc. If there is a lithographic design on the back of the photo that tells us the name of the studio, its address, etc., please send that too. There is also no need to touch up the photo as the Museum does that to its satisfaction.

If the photos are simply of life in a town and you don't know the names of the people in the photo, that's fine. Best to e-mail all the photos to the Museum and let me decide what I can and cannot use.

That should do it. If you have any questions, please write to me at steve@museumoffamilyhistory.com and ask.

You can visit the Museum's "Postcards from Home" exhibition at www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/pfh-a.htm .

The Museum's "Great Cantors" exhibition

The Museum of Family History now has filled its "Great Cantors" room with short bios, photos, sound and video clips of eight well-known cantors, i.e. Cantors Yossele Rosenblatt, Mordechai Hershman, Gershon Sirota, Moshe Koussevitzky, Zavel Kwartin, David Roitman, as well as Richard Tucker (pictured left in 1933, the famed tenor who was also a chazzan) and Moishe Oysher (a chazzan as well as star of a number of Yiddish films.)

You can visit the "Great Cantors" room at www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/cantors.htm .
Webpages about other well-known cantors will be added to the room in the near future.

Cantor Rosenblatt sings in "The Jazz Singer"

Cantor Yossele Rosenblatt appeared as himself in the 1927 talkie "The Jazz Singer" starring Al Jolson. As the first entry into the Museum's "Great Cantors" room (which may be found by visiting the Museum's plan for its Second Floor), a webpage has been created so you may enjoy a film clip of this performance.

You will see Al Jolson as the character Jakie Robin, attending the Rosenblatt concert while conflicted between his desire to become an entertainer and the wish of his father, a Cantor, who would like Jakie to follow in his footsteps. In this YouTube video, Cantor Rosenblatt sings a secular Yiddish song.

One can find the aforementioned page by clicking here.

Cemetery Project Q & A: Markers at Baby's Gravesites

Recently, someone wrote to me with a question about baby markers, and how to keep the gravestone from completely sinking into the ground over time.

The question was:
"I recently had a baby marker created but the monument dealer/installer never heard of adding cement around the bottom of the stone and doesn't see how it prevents the stone from sinking. My question to you is: Do you know where I can obtain proof to show to the dealer?"

I then wrote to Todd Ivler, the cemetery manager from Mt. Judah Cemetery in Ridgewood, Queens, New York, whom I've interviewed in the past.I know Mt. Judah has handled a good number of such burials, so he was the one to ask.

I thought his response might be of interest to some of you, as many any of us who have visited our Jewish cemeteries have noticed that these small markers often appear eroded, oriented on a slant, or are partially or completely sunken into the ground.

I don't doubt that decades ago baby markers were sometimes made of sandstone and probably not set in cement, etc., but Todd's response at least can be said to reflect the method commonly used today, at least at his cemetery. Here is his answer:

"We call a baby marker a piece of granite that is twelve inches from left to right, usually at least three feet high and about two inches thick. When placed in the ground we pour concrete in the hole first then on the sides which leaves about a inch or two around the whole stone. This helps the marker from not sinking."

You can well imagine how difficult it is to find a baby's burial site for the reasons I've mentioned above. It's one thing for a cemetery to have a searchable burial database; at least one can look up a name, even if the gravestone marker is nowhere to be found or is highly illegible. Without such a source of data, one can always of course, try contacting the cemetery office, though there is often less burial information about a baby than an adult.

You can read the complete interview the Museum had with Todd Ivler, Mt. Judah Cemetery manager at www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/qna-cem-mgr.htm .

The Museum's Film Series: Two Short Films of the Nazi Death Camps

From Saturday, April 17 through Sunday, May 9 you can view two short films about the Nazi death camps. One is part of a documentary once presented on British television, the other a Universal newsreel.

Nazi Death Camps (5 mins, 03 secs):

In April 1945, U.S. and British troops entered the Nazi death camps and filmed the horrors they found there. For decades the film was stored at the Imperial War Museum in London. This documentary was unfinished and was missing soundtracks. The directors, including Alfred Hitchcock, had developed a script to go with the pictures. Frontline, a British television program, presented this documentary unedited. It was a film the British Government deemed too grisly for release after World War II. The film has received its public debut on British television. Fifteen minutes of the black-and- white film, which was shot by the armed forces after the war. From YouTube. You can see the short film by clicking here.

Nazi Murder Mills (8 mins, 16 secs):

First actual newsreel pictures of atrocities in Nazi murder camps. Helpless prisoners tortured to death by a bestial enemy...Here Is "The Truth" (Real-life horror pictures revealing the unbelievable atrocities committed by the Nazis in their murder camps.)

Grasleben: Wounded and emaciated Yanks, captured in von Runstedt's Bulge attack of last winter, are fed and given medical care by the Yank armies of liberation.

Hadamar: Protected by gas masks, grave diggers open reeking graves at this converted insane asylum. They discover that 35,000 political prisoners had been slain here, largely by poisoning.

Camp Ohrdruf : General Eisenhower, General Patton and General Bradley can hardly believe their eyes when they view torture-gallows, heaps of charred human bodies and lime pits filled with corpses. From You Tube.

You can view the newsreel by clicking here.

The Complete Memoir of Peter Kleinmann of Munkacs

There has been a good addition to the Museum's ongoing and evolving exhibition "Walk in my Shoes: Collected Memories of the Holocaust."

You can now read the complete memoirs of Holocaust survivor Peter (Dezider) Kleinmann, who was born in 1925 in the small village of Kustanovice, about a one hour walk from the city of Mukacevo (aka Munkacs, Hungary; Mukacevo, Czechoslovakia; Mukachevo, Soviet Union; today Mukacheve, Ukraine).

Peter writes about:

Jewish communal life in Munkacs
The rise of anti-Semitism during Hungarian occupation
The Munkacs ghetto
Deportation
Existence in the concentration camps Auschwitz, Gross-Rosen and Flossenburg
The Death March
Liberation

There are a good number of photos included, both of family, scenes around towns, a sanitorium in Switzerland, and also of the camps.

You can begin to read his memoirs at www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/wims-kleinmann-01.htm.

More about Peter Kleinmann, including video testimony, will be made available to you sometime this year once the Museum's "World War II and the Holocaust" section has been augmented and made ready for viewing.

The submission of more such memoirs to the virtual Museum of Family History are also welcome and will be considered for inclusion within the Museum's "Walk in My Shoes" online exhibition.

MOFH Film Series: Now Playing until April 18th

Now showing within the Museum of Family History's Film Series, through April 18th:

Film no. 1:

Archival film from 1936 showing the Jewish district of Kazimierz in Krakow (3 mins, 26 secs). Most of these buildings can be visited today and are in a similar condition - only the people who walked those streets are long since gone.

The original [version] of this film is in the Polish film archives in ul. Chelmska in Warsaw. -- From YouTube.

Note that there is another version of this film on YouTube that states the film is of Kazimierz in 1938-9, not 1936.

This short film "The Jews of Krakow's Kazimierz District," can be found at www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/fs-krakow-kazimierz.htm .

Film no. 2:

From the exhibition "The Jewish Ghetto," coming to you at the Museum of Family History sometime in 2010:

"The Ghettos of Dąbrowa Górnicza and Będzin" (10 mins, 51 secs):

A film in two parts, shot in the ghettos of Dąbrowa Górnicza and Będzin, probably at the beginning of the ghettos.

Dabrowa Górnicza is part of the Katowice conurbation. Jews settled in Dąbrowa Górnicza in the middle of the 19th century. There were 4,304 Jews living in Dąbrowa Górnicza according to the 1921 census (11% of the total population).

The German army captured Dąbrowa Górnicza on 3 September 1939. In the fall of 1940 several hundred young Jewish men were deported to slave labor camps in Germany. Several hundred more were deported in the course of 1941. At the end of that year a ghetto was established. On 5 May 1942, the first deportation took place in which 630 Jews were taken to Auschwitz and exterminated. In the second deportation, conducted on 12 August 1942, another few hundred Jews were sent to their death in Auschwitz. On 26 June 1943, the ghetto in Dąbrowa Górnicza was liquidated and all its inmates were transferred to the ghetto in Srodula (a suburb of Sosnowiec), the only ghetto still existing in Upper Silesia. It too was liquidated and all its inhabitants, including the Jews from Dąbrowa Górnicza, deported to Auschwitz and killed.

According to the 1921 census, there were 17,298 Jews in Będzin or 62.1 percent of its total population. By 1938, the number of Jews had increased to about 22,500.

Situated close to the border, Będzin was quickly captured by the Wehrmacht. On 7 September, persecution of the Jews began, with the instituting of economic sanctions. On 8 September, the Będzin synagogue was burned, and the first massacre of local Jews took place.

The ghetto was founded in May 1942 but deportations had started as early as October 1940. Despite cooperation with the occupiers as is shown in this film, several large deportations took place in 1942. The last major deportations took place in 1943: 5,000 were deported on 22 June 1943 and 8,000 around 13 August 1943. About 1,000 remaining Jews were deported in the subsequent months. A rising took place in August 1943 which was put down and the ghetto was eliminated.

This film is held in the Polish film archive in ul. Chelmska, Warsaw. -- From YouTube.

The film can be found at www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/fs-ghettos-dabrowa-gornicza-bedzin.htm .

Film no. 3:

Jolson sings in "Hallelujah, I'm a Bum!"

The film trailer.
"The picture, some persons may be glad to hear, has no 'Mammy' song. It is Mr. Jolson's best film and well it might be, for that clever director, Lewis Milestone, guided its destiny, and the supporting cast includes Frank Morgan, the beautiful Madge Evans, the pathetically comic Harry Langdon and that veteran of Keystone days, Chester Conklin. It is a combination of fun, melody and romance, with a dash of satire, all of which make for an ingratiating entertainment..."-- From the New York Times, Feb. 9, 1933.

Don't forget to visit the Museum's large Al Jolson exhibition titled "The Immortal Al Jolson" (and see and hear many more videos, not to mention more than forty sound clips) at www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/ajolson.htm .

ERC Lecture Series: The Development of Yiddish Literature Since the Czernowitz Conference

From Iosif Vaisman, in his description of the first Yiddish language conference:

The First Conference for the Yiddish Language, also known as the Tshernovits Conference, opened on Sunday, August 30, 1908. The Conference was convened to discuss very important topics, formulated in the ten point Conference agenda. To what extent the Conference succeeded in finding the solutions to any of these ten problems has been a subject of discussions (sometimes quite fierce) ever since. A simple look at the agenda is sufficient to see that many issues have yet to be resolved:

1. Yiddish spelling
2. Yiddish grammar
3. Foreign words and new words
4. A Yiddish dictionary
5. Jewish youth and the Yiddish language
6. The Yiddish press
7. The Yiddish theater and Yiddish actors
8. The economic status of Yiddish writers
9. The economic status of Yiddish actors
10. Recognition for the Yiddish language

In October 2008 Boris Sandler, Editor-in-Chief of the Forverts newspaper, gave a speech in Yiddish to attendees of the IAYC (International Association of Yiddish Clubs) conference about the development of Yiddish literature since this 1908 conference.

A transcript of his talk on this subject is available now in English and can be found within the "ERC Lecture Series" at the Museum's Education and Research Center.

You can read a transcript of his talk at www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/iayc2008-sandler.htm .

Wily Marriage Makers of the East Side, 1905

The schatchens, i.e. the matchmakers, of the lower East Side in a 1905 article in the Los Angeles articles were described as both good and bad.

The schatchen is almost invariably of one type. He is not very tall; he is bearded, patriarchial and intensely Yiddish. he walks silently and watches every chance passerby with eyes that are both furtive and keen. He slips in and out of places almost without making his presence felt. When he speaks it is with a marked desire to please, but with strangers he is cautious and slow of tongue...

The article further states that the schatchen--

is a busy, prosperous man, with a good business and a large following of clients, and he has developed his ancient and picturesque trade along the modern lines of commercial America, but withal he remains the schatchen--the matchmaker, the trafficker in young men and maidens, the indefatigable, serene, obsequious, popular marriage broker.

However, the article's author states, there are also crooked, swindling schatchens, who are "next to impossible to arrest or convict."

So then if you are interested in learning about the good schatchen and the bad schatchen, please read this article. The article can be found at www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/les-marriage-makers.htm .

"Glimpses of Yiddish Czernowitz": A Forverts Film

A new film comes to you from the Forverts, i.e. the Yiddish Forward newspaper. The film is in Yiddish but has English subtitles. You can see the film's trailer at www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/sr-30-yiddish-czernowitz.htm .

Here is a description of the film:

Bukovina—land of the beech tree spreading its branches across the Carpathian Mountains with its turbulent rivers and rushing streams. More than one generation of forest merchants and cattle drivers in partnership with the local peasantry drew their livelihood from the land. Czernowitz was blessed with resonant names—the Big City, Little Vienna, Jerusalem on the Prut, Jerusalem of Bukovina.

Short, but abundant visually, this filmic essay expresses critical historical moments of Jewish life in the city and region, from the first Jewish language conference to the torment of the Transnistrian deportation and subsequent decline of Jewish life in the post War period. Featuring contemporary interviews alongside original archival images, the film presents Czernowitz through native personalities such as fabulist and pedagogue Eliezer Steinbarg, beloved actress Sidi Tal, drama critic Moyshe Loyev, writer Josef Burg, poet Beyle Schaechter-Gottesman, and linguist Prof. Wolf Moskovich.

Glimpses of Yiddish Czernowitz is a visual tale of an all but lost Jewish community. The film awakens our longing and calls us back to seek out the traces of that city of our dreams—the Jerusalem on the Prut.

Documents of Auschwitz Death Camp Doctors Found

I just found this article on the Internet and thought it might be of interest to my blog readers. Also, if you haven't yet read the testimony from Joe Rosenblum, an inmate at Auschwitz who worked in the Auschwitz hospital while Mengele was there, please do. The link is www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/mengele-speaks.htm .

Here then is the article I mentioned:

By MONIKA SCISLOWSKA, Associated Press Writer

WARSAW, Poland – Food coupons for some of the notorious Nazi doctors at the Auschwitz death camp — including perhaps the sadistic Dr. Joseph Mengele — have been found in the attic of a nearby house, where they had lain unseen for decades.

Also found in the attic were other documents relating to the lives of Nazi officials, including death certificates and a map.

Some sugar coupons bear the names of Horst Fischer and Fritz Klein, doctors who were executed for their crimes after the war, Adam Cyra, a historian at the Auschwitz memorial museum who is looking through the documents, said Monday.

"The sensational value of this discovery is in the fact that these original documents, bearing the names of main murderers from Auschwitz, were found so many years after the war," Cyra said.

Cyra said he believes a June 1943 coupon for a small amount of sugar probably was assigned to Dr. Joseph Mengele, who was infamous for his sadistic experiments, but the writing is unclear.

A February 1944 coupon for 0.28 kilograms of butter is made out for a Dr. Mergerle. There was no SS doctor by that name at camp, so Cyra believes a clerk misspelled Mengele's name.

Doctors and pharmacists at the camp conducted pseudo-medical experiments on the inmates and helped select Jews arriving at the camp for either labor or death. Mengele escaped after World War II and evaded capture for the rest of his life.

The documents — almost 300 in total — were found in the attic of a house being renovated in the town of Oswiecim, where the Nazis built the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp.

The homeowner, who has requested anonymity, made them available to historians at the Auschwitz museum on Friday, museum officials said. They believe the house was used by an SS officer during the war, but it is not clear which one.

Historians have checked through some of the documents but have more to pore over, museum spokesman Pawel Sawicki said.

The material does not document crimes committed at the camp.

The documents include a German-language map of the area around Oswiecim and a death certificate for Adolf Kroemer, a pharmacist at Auschwitz, saying he died of a heart attack in February 1944.

About 150 blank food coupons and death certificates were also found, Cyra said.

Between 1940 and 1945 more than 1 million people, mostly Jews, were killed in the gas chambers at Auschwitz or died of starvation or disease while forced to perform hard labor at the camp.

Jewish Welfare Board Cares for 100,000 Fighting Men, 1918

This 1918 article begins with:

The Jewish Welfare Board is a win-the-war organization that is helping the United States government to build up the morale of more than 100,000 Jewish men in the army and navy. It is a national body cooperating with and under the supervision of the War Department Commission on Training Camp Activities.

The board was created by the joint action of representatives from some ten or twelve national Jewish organizations to meet the emergencies precipitated by the war. The organizations represented in its councils are: Agudath Ha-Rabbonim, Central Conference of American Rabbis, Council of Y.M.H. and kindred associations, Independent Order B'rith Abraham, Jewish Publication Society of America, Council of Jewish Women, Independent Order B’nai B’rith, Jewish Chautauqua Society, Independent Order B'rith Sholom, United Synagogues of America, National Federation of Temple Sisterhoods, New York Board of Jewish Ministers, Union of American Hebrew Congregations, Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations.

You can find this article from the New York Tribune at www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/wsot-jwb.htm .

Two new films of interest showing deportations from Galicia, Lodz and Krakow

I'd like to invite you to see two more of the Museum of Family History's Film Series short films, showing at the Museum until April 4th.

At least three separate locales seem to be part of this first film, and one is supposedly a Galician village from during the war. You can also see during the last minute and a half of the film what appears to be the deportation of Jews from the Lodz Ghetto. I'm hoping that someone can confirm this for me. While watching the end of this film I felt that I was in the railroad car as people were boarding it. It's one thing to read about the deportations, or see still photos of it, or even see films about the Lodz ghetto, e.g. the film about Irena Sendler, but it is another thing to see the actual footage.

I am hoping that someone who once lived in these areas or are otherwise well familiar with the landmarks in these towns will be able to identify the town. If so, please let me know and I will tell those on the list in another posting. It is unlikely that you will recognize anyone in the film, but one never knows.

The name of the clip is "Deportations of Jews" (aka "Deportation to the Death Camps"), and supposedly the film was taken by a Nazi cameraman. For me, the film is powerfully evocative and at times eerie, especially if you choose to listen to the soundtrack which is said to have been added at a later date. The film is nearly eight and a half minutes long.

The film clip can be watched at www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/fs-deportation-deathcamps.htm .

The second film is a shorter one, but nevertheless impactful as it shows the deportation of residents to the Krakow ghetto. The link for this short film is www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/fs-deportation-ghetto-krakow.htm .

Links to the current films available for viewing within the Museum's Film Series can be found at www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/mfh-films.htm .

Emile Zola Backs up the Jews

"Zola Backs Up the Jews" in an 1896 article that appeared in the New York Sun newspaper via Le Figaro, backs up the "brotherhood of man." An interesting read from someone who staunchly defended Captain Dreyfus.

You can read the article at www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/mfh-zola-01.htm .

The article is actually an open letter written and signed by Zola. It begins this way:

For some years I have been following the campaign that men are trying to carry on in France against Jews with increasing surprise and disgust. To me it has the appearance of a monstrosity. I mean something beyond common sense and any idea of truth and justice, a foolish and blind thing that would put us centuries back, a thing that would end in the worst of all abominations, a religious persecution, covering all countries with blood. And I wish to speak out.

In the first place, what is the accusation against Jews? For what are they blamed? Many persons, even friends of mine, say that they can't endure them, that they can't touch their hands without feeling their flesh creep with repugnance; it is a physical horror, the repulsion of one race for another, of the white man against the yellow man, of the red man against the black man.

I will not inquire whether there does not enter into this repugnance the distant anger of the Christian against the Jew who crucified his God, a whole secular inheritance of contempt and vengeance. After all, physical disgust is a good reason, the only reason even, for there is no answering people who say to you: "I hate them because I hate them, because the very sight of their noses puts me beside myself, because all my flesh revolts at feeling that they are different and opposed to me."

There are now one hundred and twenty interesting articles available for your perusal. Please visit the archives at www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/archive-newspaper.htm to see what might be of interest to you.

ERC Educational Program: "Through the Eye of the Needle - Fabric of Survival"

The Museum of Family History both develops its own and supports the educational programs and activities of other individuals and organizations. One such external education activity comes to the Museum via the children of Esther Krinitz, whose exhibition of lovely embroideries of scenes of her former home in pre-war Europe can be found among the Museum's "Reflections of Memory" sister exhibitions.

Sisters Bernice and Helene grew up with the stories of their mother Esther's courage and suffering as a child during the Second World War. Years later, after their mother began to turn her stories into a narrated series of fabric art pictures, they realized that art and story combined had enormous power. They believe that together, art and story could help people understand not only what war and intolerance are, but also how it feels to those who endure them.

The primary goal of their Art and Remembrance's educational programs is to open the minds of school-age children to the powerful experiences of victims of social injustice, as narrated through art. Through guided study on the works of A&R artists, students will be encouraged to reflect upon and gain a greater understanding of important issues such as cultural diversity, prejudice, the Holocaust, and other historical and contemporary manifestations of racism. Through the study of narrative art, A&R also hopes to empower children to share their own stories, and to learn about various techniques that will enable them to do so through art.

You can find their educational activity by clicking here.

In Brooklyn's Ghetto, circa 1905

With the opening of new bridges and subway routes from the lower East Side of Manhattan to the outlying boroughs, such as Brooklyn (or Kings County), thousands of Jews moved to these areas in hopes of finding better living conditions, e.g. less overcrowding and cheaper rents.

In the article published in the former Brooklyn Daily Eagle newsaper, a report is given as to Jewish life in Brooklyn, most notably the Williamsburg section.

The start of the article is its introduction:

"For eleven months two young women settlement workers and college graduates have been living in the heart of the Brooklyn Ghetto. They have been received as residents of this interesting colony of strange people with strange habits. These two observing students have become acquainted with the methods in the daily life of the Yiddish folk with whom they have cast their lot. The things they have seen and the reforms they have instituted are related in this article, written by one of them. As they will continue for some time to make their home in the district they have chosen as their field of labor, it will be apparent why their names must remain unpublished."

You can read the article in its entirety by clicking here.

Report from the Liberated Lodz Ghetto

"Good morning, gentlemen, we are from the Ghetto here. There are only 878 of us left."

These are the words that were spoken by Dr. Albert Mazur, a nose and throat specialist who survived the Lodz Ghetto. He was interviewed by a news correspondent not long after the liberation of the Lodz Ghetto.

The Ghetto had been liberated on January 19, 1945 by the Soviet Army, and the article in which this quote appeared was published less than three weeks after the Ghetto's liberation. Mazur had been one of the dozen of the 160 Jewish physicians in Lodz who had survived. He gave a report to a correspondent about the horrible conditions in the Ghetto -- the disease, death and deportations that occurred there.

You can read this short article which will be a part of the Museum's future "Jewish Ghettos" exhibition which will be readied for later this year. The article can be found at www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/ce/ghetto/lodz-a1.htm .

Pre-World War II Film Footage of Krakow and Bialystok

The Museum has added two more film shorts to its new Film Series, on view from now until March 21st. These films are of Bialystok and Krakow before the advent of World War II....:

1. "Jewish Life in Bialystok 1939" (10:04): Produced by Shaul and Yitzhak Goskind of Sektor Films, Warsaw. In 1939, this short film displays Jewish Bialystok the way it was in 1939 before the German Army invaded and occupied the city. The film is narrated in Yiddish with English subtitles. The narration ends with the following: "Come visit Bialystok. You won't regret it." -- Bialystok was invaded by the German Army that September.....
www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/fs-bialystok-01.htm

See the Museum of Family History's listing of Bialystok material at www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/lee-bialystok.htm

2. "Jewish Life in Cracow (Kazimierz) 1939" (3:08): Krakow before the war. Background music by Abe Schwartz's Orchestra: "Yosl, Yosl, " 1925.
www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/fs-krakow-01.htm

See the Museum of Family History's listing of Krakow material at
www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/lee-krakow.htm

The full list on view at the Museum until March 21st can be found at
www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/mfh-films.htm

Compare and Contrast: Short Films of Kovno, Riga and Lwow from Before and During World War II

From World Jewish Communities: Kovno, Riga and Lwów... Three short films on view within the Museum's Film Series program through March 21.

How quickly a Jewish community can be upended, a city transformed from a 'peaceful' thriving 'metropolis' to one of destruction, occupation, imprisonment and death. Within this World Jewish Communities Film Series, you will have an opportunity to 'compare and contrast' life in the aforementioned cities cir 1939, i.e. shortly before the Second World War began, and life not long after these cities were invaded and occupied as the destruction of both people and property reigned.

Before World War II:

"Jewish Life in Kovno, Riga and Lwów" (9:42). This documentary was made in the early spring of 1939, just months before the start of the Second World War in Europe. Narration in Yiddish.
Click here.

During World War II:

"Lwów Lemberg 1941" (2: 38). This 1941 8 mm film depicts the Germans entering Lwów (Lemberg in German). You can see attacks against the Jews there, as well as provocative acts. Before the war Lwów was part of Poland, but was annexed by Russia on September 22, 1939. This time, the film short is narrated in German. From YouTube. Click here.

"German Troops in Riga" (8:29). World War II, German troops near Daugavpils (Dunaburg) moving to Riga (Latvia). Fights and the liberation of Riga. Communist war crimes, Nazi behavior to Latvian Jews, Nazi propaganda, Fights near Liepaja (Libau). Again the narration for this film short is in German. From YouTube. Click here.

The Museum of Family History's "Yiddish World Under the Stars" presents -- "Tevye the Milkman" (1939) -- Two Clips in Yiddish

Tevye is a dairyman in the Russian Ukraine early in the 20th century. He lives in a cabin outside Boyberik with his wife Goldie, his widowed daughter Tseytl, her two children, and his younger daughter, the unmarried Khave. Khave is being courted by Fedya, a Christian, the son of a local government official. Tevye warns Khave against romance and marriage outside her faith, but Fedya is persuasive too. What will Khave decide, how will Tevye react, and when the Tsar initiates a pogrom, will Tevyes friends come to his defense? Can the stubborn Tevye reconcile his heart and tradition? On the other hand....From YouTube. You can view these two clips by clicking here. Last showing March 21.

Don't forget to visit the Museum's Great Artists Series exhibition about Maurice Schwartz and his Yiddish Art Theatre.

Al Jolson Film Festival: "Show Business at War"

During the Second World War, many in show business did what they could to support the troops and the cause.

On May 21, 1943, a short film titled "Show Business at War" was released. It was part of an effort put forth my various studios to show the newsreel audience the progress of the Hollywood war effort.

Many Hollywood stars appear in this newsreel, one of whom is Al Jolson, who is seen and heard singing "Mammy" to the troops. Many others in show business appear in this film.

You can see the short film by clicking here.

Don't forget to visit the Museum's large Al Jolson exhibition titled "The Immortal Al Jolson" (and see and hear many more videos, not to mention more than forty sound clips) at www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/ajolson.htm .

This short film will be shown only at the Museum through March 21.

"Rites of Passage": A New Museum of Family History Exhibition

The life of a Jew is often filled with rituals that mark a significant change in his or her life or social status. These rites of passage may take many forms but each is deeply woven into the Jewish tradition and culture. These rites may be ceremonies that surround seminal events in a Jew's life, such as childbirth, when he or she becomes a bar- or bat-mitzvah, gets married, to the day when he or she inevitably passes away.

In this exhibition, the religious and secular significance of each event is discussed, stories are told, often through the words of those who experienced these events, or perhaps through their progeny.

What is a mohel? What is the significance of becoming a bar mitzvah? In "Rites of Passage" you can read about what a Polish Jewish wedding was like in the very early 1900s and see an early ketubah as well as a wedding invitation. Even though divorce is not a rite of passage, a page is devoted to the description of Jewish divorce in early 20th century Poland.

Then, what of death? Here you can read about how Jews in Poland buried their dead in the early 20th century, read about the Chevra Kadisha, the significance of the Jewish burial, mourning period, unveiling and the family cemetery visit. You will see, for instance, a photo of Solomon and Ester Rabinovitch at Ester's mother's gravesite. Solomon was the builder of the Great Synagogue of Bialystok which was tragically destroyed during the war. Coincidentally, this photo was taken just a day before the Germans marched into Bialystok in September of 1939.

As is the goal of the Museum, a number of personal stories as told by those who lived in Eastern Europe before the Second World War are interspersed within this exhibition, with the occasional story of Jewish life within the United States.

You can visit this informative and interesting exhibition by clicking here.

The Yizkor Book of Zambrów, Poland: The English Language Version

The United Zembrover Society would like to welcome you to its English translation of the Zambrów Yizkor Book, or Book of Remembrance. The UZS is one of a dwindling number of still-active landsmanshaftn (mutual aid societies), more than one hundred and thirty members strong. Most all of its current members are proud descendants of Zembrovers. They each feel a need to stay connected to their heritage, and because of this meet twice per year in New York City to share their common bond, to do what they can to preserve the memory of their beloved family members and "ancestral town." The UZS is still going strong, more than one hundred years after it was first established.

The Zambrów Yizkor Book was first published in 1963 by the combined societies of those who were descended from the Jewish community of Zambrów, Poland. Zambrów was a once-vibrant community which, like so many Jewish communities that once existed in Europe, was wiped out by those who once sought their complete annihilation. These descendants of Zembrovers-- both those who were born and once lived in Zambrów, as well as those who were their progeny -- at the time of publication lived in various parts of the world such as the United States, Israel and Argentina.

This Yizkor Book does an excellent job in preserving the memory of the past history of Zambrów town, from its origin and the first sign of Jews in the community (at least in the early seventeenth century), to its presentation of a plethora of accounts of various aspects of Jewish life there. Colorful descriptions of many personages of Jewish faith who once populated Zambrów make for excellent reading.

This English translation project is projected to take from three to as many as five years and is fully funded and driven by the United Zembrover Society. After each translated section has been read, proofed, edited and proofed once again, it will be added to the current translation. When finished, the Society hopes to create hard copies, bound books available by purchase by its members or anyone else who wishes to learn more about the history of Jewish Zambrów.

The Yizkor Book translation is just one aspect of the Museum's World Jewish Communities permanent exhibition. You can learn more about what other material of interest exists at the Museum about Zambrów by visiting the World Jewish Communities Zambrów at www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/wjc-zambrow.htm .

You can read the Zembrover Yizkor Book in English, i.e. what has been translated to the present day, by visiting www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/z/zyb-01.htm , or simply use the link provided on the World Jewish Communities Zambrów page.