Shalom Chaverim,
Thank you all for your nice and warm words. You are really a special brand of people in this country.
Polish Jewry deserves a good SIG, and I am honored to be its coordinator. I considered it for a long time, but as I was involved with a hundred different projects, I just didn't have the time to do that as well. Now is the time, and I hope I shall meet your expectations.
There is a wonderful program scheduled for the next few months. The next lecturer will be Benjmain Yaari, who will talk about his life-time project: Israeli youth recording matzevot (tombstones) from various cemeteries in Poland (Czestochowa, Starachowice, Grodzisk Mazowiecki, Zdunska Wola, Gombin, Zawierce, Inowlodz and the latest project: KRAKOW!) - thus connecting the youth to their Polish heritage and helping at the same time, to preserve it.
I want to thank Dani Ophir, the wonderful manager of Beth Hatanach, who agreed to host this SIG in his honorable house. He has been really so specially cooperative and God bless him!
I take the opportunity and invite you (unofficially yet, final details and
announcement will be given by Jean-Pierre at a later stage) for a most unique event:
"Tor Hazahav shel Yahadut Polin 1550-1750" (The Golden Age of Polish Jewery,
1550-1750), organized by the Horowitz Society, IGS, Beth Hatefutsoth and other
genealogical family societies and institutions, on 19 September 2000, at Beth Hatefutsoth,
Tel Aviv.
Time and more details will follow. Mark that day in your calendar!
Last but not least, another small tip, if I may...
Two days ago, I spent a few hours in the new library of Yad Vashem. The
"Hall of Names" now is fully computerized, as you surely know, but it is one
thing to hear about it in the news, and another to touch the holy material with the
tips of your fingers, pressing only "PRINT", "PRINT",
"PRINT"...
This is INCREDIBLE!!! In two hours I printed 530 "Dapei Ed" of all martyrs of
Gombin, my parents' hometown, and about 200 more pages, for the families I research
personally. This means a breakthrough in my personal research, as well as my Gombin
Society's project. It is equivalent to more than 10 years of manual work. Who could scan
thousands of microfilms and review 3 million "dapei ed" otherwise? I now
can bring also solutions to many Gombiners' quest for roots. It is really an
outstanding database. Thank God (and the Swiss Bank issue), that Yad Vashem has
accomplished this (still some minor bugs though and the service is not free, but fully
worth the 50 agorot which one Daf Ed costs to print). The archivists are very
dedicated and one of them, Ester, allowed me (as she understood well the nature of my
work) to use an employee's desk and PC and private laser printer. I thus have
completed the first phase in the Gombin Society project: "GombiNames", which is
aimed to record for generations to come, once and for all, the exact number and list of
Holocaust victims of my hometown: GOMBIN.
IGS member, Menashe Davidovicz's excellent work on his Hungarian shtetl has been my source of inspiration. Thank you once again, for Davidovicz's unforgettable lecture in the Tel Aviv branch some months ago!
Shalom,
Ada
Web Site: http://www.geocities.COM/Paris/Rue/4017/