Events

Harold Rhode has been researching his Litvak family roots for more than 30 years. using vital document analysis and rabbinic texts,he has been able to demonstrate that the Jews were very mobile and that our Eastern European ancestors actually resided in localities that covered large geographical areas, not single communities. A former president of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Greater Washington, Rhode has published many articles in Avotaynu and is author of "Jewish Vital Records, Revision Lists and Other Jewish Holdings in the Lithuanian Archive". He holds Ph.D in Middle Eastern History and is a foreign affairs analyst at the U.s. Department of Defence.

In this new lecture presented as a play in 2 acts, I will describe a tricky genealogy brainteaser that involves the convoluted records of my BAUM and KUMEC ancestors. In the first part I solve a complicated family puzzle involving a number of factors: early deaths followed by multiple marriages within the same families, confusing spellings of first names, and an abrupt surname change. This exposes, indeed, a rather fascinating picture of the hardships of Jewish life in a small Polish town of the 19th century. However, one important issue is left unanswered, as follows. I found 1830s records for two separate KUMEC clusters in Konskie: the family of Rabbi Mendel KUMEC and his wife Dwojra, and the family of Uszer KUMEC and his wife Frajdla. These two families had to be related somehow but I couldn’t figure out how. Mendel and Uszer could either be unrelated (the least likely option but a possibility nevertheless), or brothers (Mendel being the older brother), or first cousins. As we see in the second part of this lecture, the correct answer turned out to be a fourth option! The genealogical approach to solve this was rather unconventional, and there were a number of surprises along the way…

The late Erela (Marisha) Goldschmidt dedicated her life to searching her name, her identity, who were her parents, where and when was she born. Her life was full of question marks, but at the end most of her questions were answered. Ayelet Reich – her daughter, tells about her mother, a sad and painful story, but still, with the joy of finding answers to her questions.

Yom Hashoah programme. Screening of documentary film Shanghai Ghetto. Many Jews were saved from the Holocaust by fleeing to Shanghai, where they established a community and lived alongside the Chinese during the Japanese occupation. This is 'their story', with one of the Shanghai refugees answering your questions at the end of the screening.