Shaking The Family Tree

Jewish genealogists trace the branches of their past.

Mickey Goodman / Special To The Jewish Times

For some searchers, it's the thrill of the hunt that leads them to seek out their heritage. Hilary Henkin, owner of The Propper Source prop rentals, likens her adventures in genealogy to the Nancy Drew or Hardy Boys mystery stories that she loved as a child. As a detective she gathers lots of clues that lead to the mystery's solution. The best part is that "sometimes long-lost relatives are reunited," she says.

For others, genealogy can soothe a burning "need to know," and be a catharsis from ghostly memories. Then there are those who become entangled in their own web, and the hunt becomes an all-consuming hobby, a kind of curiosity on steroids.

Henkin, and other Atlantans like her, are hardly alone. According to the Ellis Island Immigration Museum, there are 113 million people seeking their roots. Last year, more than 3 million Jews searched the Web site Jewishgen.org and more than 41,000 people have submitted their family names to the site's Family Finder. Locally, the Jewish Genealogical Society of Georgia (JGSG) has nearly 70 active members.

Searching for family roots has become an important part of Henkin's life. "There's something deeply special about finding people whose ancestors and mine grew up together, ate the same meals together, celebrated holidays together, shared secrets with each other," says Henkin, 48, president of the JGSG. "While I used to feel somewhat separate from the world in general, I now realize I'm anchored by so many slender yet indestructible lines, to many other people."

Bringing the past to life

A researcher since 1998, Henkin calls herself a novice, but has gone at it with a vengeance. Many of her relatives immigrated to America via Ellis Island and remained in the New York City area, so records and gravesites, which often provide clues to family ties, were accessible. On a quest to the Big Apple for information, Henkin visited a cemetery. There in the same "landschaften" (a section reserved for members of the same burial society) where her grandmother was buried, she found the graves of two people she believed to be family members -- Rose and Solomon Shatz.

Paperwork at the cemetery listed Fema Fisher as the contact for the Solomon graves. Henkin, who thought Fisher might be her mother's long-lost cousin, prepared a packet with a letter, photos and a family tree documenting the relationship, that was forwarded to the Fisher family.

Two weeks later, Henkin received a "very excited introduction and greeting" from Fisher's granddaughter. She had been doing her own research but had reached an impasse because Fema, 86, didn't see the point of digging up old memories.

"My packet rekindled happy memories and convinced her to open up," says Henkin. "We've since visited them, re-establishing a link broken during World War II. I heard my first story of life in the old country," she says. Fema remembered an account her mother shared of hiding in the cellar when the Cossacks came to find Fema's grandfather, a rabbi. The long-lost relative described the terrible clump of heavy boots above their heads.

Fema and Henkin's 70-something mother now talk frequently, a source of pleasure for the entire family. This link has led to information about an entire branch of Henkin's family and how their lives turned out.

Family affair

Peggy Freedman, 51, a past president of the JGSG, experienced her own good fortune when she reconnected with cousins in Australia who found her through her Web site. Her family always thought this group of relatives had perished in the Holocaust.

To track down another part of her ancestry, Freedman traveled to Greensboro, Ga., where her great-grandparents, the Yudelsons, immigrated in 1904. The trip was a family affair, with her mother, uncle, aunt and sons coming along.

Freedman has fond memories of her grandfather joking that his house was so close to the school he would get up when he heard the first bell and be in his seat before the roll call got to "Yudelson." At the courthouse, she located the title transfer on her great-grandparent's house and learned through the clerk that it was still standing.

"We were amazed that the house and barn were still there," she says. When they actually located it, the group referenced a faded photo of long-ago relatives and lined up in the same stance to take their own picture.

Getting hooked

Avid researcher Gary Deutsch's interest was peaked by stories from his grandmother. When she died, he felt compelled to get the tales down on paper before they were lost. Then he took a class taught by JGSG members and learned skills that helped him begin his search. "Once I started, I was hooked," he says. To give something back to the group, Deutsch volunteered to rebuild its Web site and keep it humming. He's now the JGSG Web master.

A 42-year-old who works in information technology, Deutsch's favorite "find" was locating a branch of his family living in Buenos Aires. They emigrated there from the Ukraine around the turn of the century. The hunt started with a clue that came through stories about his great-grandfather visiting Argentinean relatives prior to coming to the U.S. Deutsch began by doing a basic search on Yahoo.com for the surname "Baliner" and found two pages of names. He e-mailed each one.

About a month later Deutsch got an answer from cousins in Miami. They compiled their family trees and forwarded them to him.

Another of Deutch's South American relatives remembered a "James" coming to visit. "My great grandfather's name was Herman," says Deutsch, "but everyone called him ïHymie' for Chaim. This led us to believe that ïHymie' became Jamie which got translated into James.

"Every piece of information leads to another," he says. "It's been wonderful. They e-mail me in Spanish and I e-mail back in English. Somehow we communicate."

Magnificent obsession

The genealogy bug bit 34-year-old Gary Palgon at age 13 when his Epstein School science teacher asked students to trace the origins of their hair and eye color as part of a gene project. Palgon could only get the information that his parents and grandparents could recall, and that wasn't enough for him. So he began writing letters to other family members and found that his great-grandmother had been born in 1855 in New York. Her death certificate led to a relative who had a painting of her, which showed she had red hair -- the only one in the family Palgon could find. Instead of tiring of the project, his ardor grew.

A self-described "obsessed researcher" and former president of the JGSG, the software developer has created two family trees and written and self-published four books. He is working on a fifth. His book, "Genealogical Resources in the Atlanta Area," can be found in local libraries.

In the upstairs hallway of his home, a pictorial family tree begins with photos of his wife and children, and continues, right to left, through seven generations.

People, who are truly bitten by the bug, often are driven to help others by sharing the information they have found and become part of the movement to save historical records. Palgon is coordinating the Polish aspect of Jewish Records Indexing project that is charting information from 1808 to 1865. The project began in Poland when Israeli volunteers cleaned and photographed tombstones. The statistics are posted on the Mormon Family History Library Web site.

Palgon works with other volunteers who are using the Mormon microfilm records to compile information that Palgon then posts on Jewishgen.org/zri/po. To date, volunteers have completed more than then 1 million records.

Perspective on the past

Sometimes memories surrounding the Holocaust become a compelling personal need to connect to the past. Mathilda (Tillie) Wertheim Stein, who grew up in pre-war Germany, says her early experiences have haunted her most of her adult life. After years of research and a dozen trips to Germany, she has turned her family's history into a 750-page treatise on the German village of Hesse and surrounding communities. She has dedicated the book to the memory of her parents and her husband and calls it -- instead of a family history -- "a history of anti-Semitism."

Stein, who speaks four languages, says the research trips to Germany and writing of the book have been a catharsis. "I cried for days while I was writing it," says Stein. "Injustice is hard to take."

Howard Margol and his wife, Esther, have led genealogical research trips to Lithuania, Latvia and Belarus annually since 1993. "Coming to terms with the past allows people to put it to rest," says Margol, who is president of the 7,000-member International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies. He says that many Holocaust survivors are reluctant to return to the "old country" alone. "Returning to their birthplace brings closure and puts a sad part of their life behind." Many have located relatives and friends they didn't know survived the war.

Margol does not charge for organizing the trips and pays his own way. When travelers arrive at their destination, he makes sure they have access to birth and death certificates, marriage licenses and census reports.

The trips have been a spiritual journey for Margol, who found the site where his great-grandfather's house stood in 1864 in Lithuania. Although that house burned after World War II, his great-grandfather's brother's home still stands. Margol says, "It's a wonderful feeling standing in the same spot you know your father, grandfather and great- grandfather stood. When you walk the same streets they walked you feel the connection to them."

Getting started

Many Jews are hesitant to begin the search for their past, believing that their records were destroyed in the Holocaust. Gary Palgon calls that idea a myth. "The Germans were meticulous record-keepers," he says.

He advises new genealogists to begin by writing down the names of family members and family stories so the history can be continued forward. Next, interview living relatives and video or audiotape the sessions. "If you feel uncomfortable doing it yourself, there are companies that can do it for you."

Information is also available at local libraries, history centers, national or state archives or on the Internet, where large numbers of genealogists create family Web sites linked to Jewishgen.org and others.

A database of all Jewish burials in Atlanta is now available at The William Breman Jewish Heritage Museum. The project began in 1993, following an international conference when local genealogy chapters were asked to gather data. Kenneth Ginburg, 79, was inspired to ask every congregation for their death records so he could compile a database. When he visited the cemeteries, he found discrepancies. His mission became recording each gravesite and entering the data into his computer. "Sometimes when I was working in a cemetery in the rain or the broiling sun I would wonder what I was doing there," he says.

Ginburg published the first edition in 1994 and began recording deaths listed in the newspaper. In 1999, he published a second edition that he donated to synagogues, the Jewish Federation of Greater Atlanta and the Breman Museum. "I do not want the book to be sold," he says. His sole purpose is to keep the information alive. n

Search the Web

Genealogy Class

The Jewish Genealogical Society of Georgia sponsors classes through the Marcus Jewish Community Center of Atlanta's "Lighter Side" series. Students learn to locate records, procedures for accessing, costs and hints. They learn how to use details from records and documents to make further progress. For information visit www.jewishgen.org/ajgs/jgsg.

Mickey Goodman is an Atlanta writer.

Mining The Mother Lode

Ellis Island goes online with more than 22 million records.

Michael J. Jordan / Jewish Telegraphic Agency

It's virtually "genealogy for dummies."

In a nation of immigrants where more than 35 percent of the population -- or 100 million Americans -- has at least one relative who passed through Ellis Island, officials at the historic entry point to New York have unveiled a new Web site that will enable even the tech-challenged to mine a mother lode of information on their family's roots.

The treasure trove of data is accessible at www.ellisislandrecords.org. As soon as it opened last April, the Web site averaged 27,000 hits per second, and recorded 26 million hits in its first 54 hours.

So much interest overwhelmed the system, and only one in seven would-be genealogists was able to access the site, according to Peg Zitko, spokeswoman for The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation.

The bottleneck eased somewhat as additional database servers quadrupled the site's memory.

The Web site contains records of the 17 million immigrants -- and 5 million other travelers and crewmembers -- who passed through Ellis Island between 1892 and 1924.

Online records display details in as many as 11 "fields" -- an immigrant's given name; surname; ethnicity; town and country of last residence; date of arrival; age on arrival; gender; marital status; ship number; port of departure; and line number on the ship's manifest.

In some cases, information may include the immigrant's occupation and mother tongue.

Perhaps most remarkably, the foundation has scanned 3 million pages of manifests and photos of 800 ships that docked at Ellis Island -- some 85 percent of the total.

Visitors to the site are asked to enter a relative's name and the search begins.

In some cases, however, this can be tricky. Names in Cyrillic, for example, might have numerous possible phonetic spellings in English.

A name like Moskovic might also be spelled as Moskovich, Moskovitch, Moscovic, Moscovich or Moscovitch. Users therefore are advised to try several variations.

"There's no way to guarantee you'll find your family's records here," says Zitko. "But we can guarantee an interesting search experience. It's about the adventure of the search." n

Trial Run

Benefits of the Ellis Island site outweigh problems.

The Jewish Times asked Atlanta Web graphic designer Melissa Walter to give the Ellis Island site a trial run. Walter, who is proud that her ancestor's name hangs on the American Immigrant Wall of Honor at Ellis Island museum, was eager to see what she could learn.

Walter has no problem getting on. She searches for her maternal great-grandfather, David Shilstat. Zero matches. "Let's try ïDave,' " she says. Nothing. Then Mary, his wife. "Her name was Masha, but on the census it says Mary." No luck. "Let's try Schulstat." No. "Shulstat." No again. Walter comes to a tongue-and-cheek conclusion, "He doesn't exist. We don't exist!"

Walters tries her grandfather Max Shilstat. No. "I promise you, he lived." Then she types in "Emma Lazarus." "She wrote, ïGive me your tired, your poor....' She saw the Statue of Liberty when she was coming in as an immigrant child. And you can't find her," says Walter.

"As a designer," she offers, "I could do without this [animated magnifying glass], because that's taking up memory, and making this whole thing slower."

But enough kvetching. The database is huge, it looks good, and it does work. "The fact that it goes slow is dwarfed by the fact that they actually did it," Walter says. Over several years, 12,000 volunteers from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints typed in the records of 22 million immigrants.

After 22 attempts at a Shilstat family member, Walter types in her paternal grandfather's name, Phillip Walter. No matches. Closer perusal of the densely packed site leads to the discovery of an "alternate spellings" button. The alternatives it brings up include Alber, Olfer, Altic, but not Walter.

Hilary Henkin, president of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Georgia, has found ways around the spelling confusion, using the site's editing tools. "The more you know about your relative (year arrived, port departed from, age on arrival), the better," she says.

At last! Walter prints out a page with a possible ancestor's vital statistics: Philip Walter, age 3, single, an Austrian from Mgcesthol, arrived from Hamburg in 1900.

"It's taken me two hours," Walter says about finally finding a possible relative. "Wait. There's so much we didn't see yet!" A photo of the ship. A ship's manifest, listing all the passengers. "This is just so cool. You could spend hours on this."

Stephanie Siegel is an Atlanta writer.

Genealogy 101

With the growing popularity of finding family origins, there are dozens of resources to help start the search.

Mormon assistance

A vast amount of information about people of all faiths is available through the Mormon (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) Web site, familysearch.org. Because Mormons believe that the church offers salvation to members' ancestors even though those ancestors were not alive when the church originated in the 19th century, they have sent volunteers all over the world to research and microfilm vital statistics such as birth and death records. These records are available via the Internet. Researchers can order copies of microfilm for $3.50 from local Mormon history centers.

Special challenges

Remember that once Jews arrived in the United States, many were eager to shed their European personas and didn't discuss their past. They often assumed Americanized names, so researchers have to think creatively when searching records.

Most Western European countries have made information accessible for years but records in Eastern Europe may still be closely guarded.

Translation in Eastern European and Russian countries is difficult because the alphabet presents challenges.

Atlanta resources

The Atlanta History Center has census reports on microfilm, which may yield names of household members, occupations and addresses. (404) 814-4000.

The William Breman Jewish Heritage Museum's Ida Pearle and Joseph Cuba Archives and Genealogy Center can help locate records of children who lived at the Atlanta Hebrew Orphans Home dating back to 1889, trace family trees of German families dating back to the 1600s and find all Atlanta Jewish burials. (404) 870-1862.

National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), in East Point, contains ship manifests, census and draft records for Southeast.

Other places to search

Information can be uncovered in online telephone books from various U.S. cities, city directories, census records and ship manifests

"Genealogy," by Kenneth H. Thomas, Jr., appears every Sunday in the "Living" Section of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Check out publications including, "Finding Our Fathers, A Guidebook to Jewish Genealogy," by Dan Rottenberg (Genealogical Publishing Company, $19.95) and Avotaynu, an international review of Jewish genealogy, published quarterly. n

Researching Your Roots

Point and click your way through Jewish genealogy Web sites.

MARK MIETKEIWICZ / Special To The Jewish Times

Next month, as we read the book of Bereshit, we will be given quite a clear record of the births and deaths of the personalities of the Bible. Thousands of years later, there is little doubt who begat whom.

Our extended family trees, however, are rarely that clear.

That's why it's ironic that one of the best tools to investigate our history is almost one of the most modern -- the Internet. With a bit of research and luck, you may be able to shed new light on your family history.

Many sites in one

Unlike most Web sites, JewishGen: The Home of Jewish Genealogy, www. JewishGen.org, is actually many sites in one. In addition to its own extensive resources, it hosts related genealogical Web sites. Start in the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) area. This massive document give you an overview of JewishGen and tell you how to get started in Jewish genealogy with advice from finding ocean liner passenger lists going back to 1800 to locating a local Jewish genealogy society. There are even recommendations for the best genealogical software.

When you visit the JewishGen Family Finder, you can hunt for your family name or your ancestral town from a database of more than a quarter million entries. This incredible database is the work of more than 45,000 Jewish genealogists worldwide. It allows you to search for a name and will even forgive you if you are a bit fuzzy about the spelling. As with many other areas of JewishGen, you are invited to add your own information to the database.

Special interest groups

Even if you think your genealogical search is unique, there is probably a special interest group (SIG) for you. For example, there are SIGs devoted to Jews from specific countries and regions such as Germany, Galicia and one geared toward Sephardim.

One of the newest SIGs is the rabbinic ancestry special interest group. According to this site, as many as one in 50 Jews alive today have a rabbinic ancestor. Also, "for most Ashkenazic Jews, surnames are a relatively recent invention -- less than 200 years old. Rabbinical families are the exception to this rule. The use and adoption of surnames for these families dates back to the 15th century, if not earlier, thus preceding all other family names by about 350 years."

There are some extremely helpful online tools that will facilitate your hunt. The Calendar Conversion page calculates dates to and from Gregorian and Jewish calendars. If you need to know how far it is from Plonsk to Minsk, just plug the longitude and latitude into the Distance Calculator. (It's 94.5 kilometers.) And if you want to find out more about the family's shtetl, then go to ShtetlSeeker -- Town Search.

How to get answers

At some point in your travels, you will have questions about the best way to research your family's history. The JewishGen Discussion Group offers a moderated e-mail list and a newsgroup. Plus there are specialized mailing lists for people with particular interests such as a Litvak, Denmark and South African lists. And because someone may have already asked and answered your question, you can check out the JewishGen Discussion Group Message Archives, which go back to 1993.

Finally, take a look at the JewishGen Projects and Activities section. The Holocaust Global Registry has been set up to help survivors who are looking for family members and for child survivors who are searching for their identity. You will also find links to the JewishGen Online Worldwide Burial Registry, the Yizkor Book Project and a site called Genealogy by Genetics. By using bits of DNA (from a painless cheek scraping) they help "genealogists find lost relatives when the paper trail ends and the brick wall takes its place."

There is much more to JewishGen and that's why this is such an incredible resource. And like all our family trees, the more you probe, the more surprises you are bound to find.

Mark Mietkiewicz is a Toronto-based television producer who writes, lectures and teaches about the Jewish Internet. He can be reached at highway@home.com.