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JANUARY
2011
To see any late additions to the December 2010 Updates page,
please visit the 2010 Updates page to see what you've
missed. Please sign up to receive the Museum's blog updates, as
those who do are the first to learn what's new at the Museum. You can
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If you do the latter, be sure to respond to the verification email
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receive any updates.
CURRENT EXHIBITIONS:
--A new online exhibition entitled "The Jewish Folk
Style in the Wooden Wall Paintings of Eastern Europe" is now
available for viewing at the Museum of Family History. This
exhibition should be of interest to those of you who are interested
in art history, or the old wooden synagogues that once existed
aplenty in Europe, particularly in the Ukraine.
This exhibition, replete with many black and white and color
photographs, including a number of the exteriors of some synagogues
and more so the interior wall paintings of others. This exhibition
comes to you courtesy of an associate professor of art history in
Kharkov, Ukraine. Professor Kotlyar gives interesting insights into
the paintings themselves, as only an art historian can.
Most of the photos of wall paintings presented are of synagogues
associated with the Ukraine. They represent such towns as (in
alphabetical order): Drogobych, Gorodok, Gvozdetz, Khodrov, Kopys,
Mikhalpol, Moghilev on the Dnieper, Norinsk, Novomirgorod, Smotrich,
Talne, Targoritza, Unterlimpurg and Yaryshev.
The exhibition may be found at
www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/ce/ek/jfs.htm. More exhibitions
are welcome from those on the outside who are willing to contribute
them for display at the Museum. Please contact the Museum if you're
willing to put together an exhibition for online display. THE FILMS OF TOMEK WISNIEWSKI:
--Poland:
---Korycin.
---Zambrow: "The Destruction of the Zambrow Synagogue, 1941." Now there are
eighty-two Tomek Wisniewski films available for
viewing at the Museum of Family History.
--Ukraine: Three films about Dubno, Ukraine (in Poland
pre-1939): "Dubno, 1927, ulica Aleksandrowicza", "The Dubno
Synagogue, 1924", and "The Rynek Market, Dubno, 1929".
POSTCARDS FROM HOME:
--The Schachmeister family from Vilnius, Lithuania and
London, England.
WORLD HOLOCAUST MEMORIALS:
--Memorials of Eastern Europe:
--Ukraine (former Galician towns): Gliniany, Golgory and
Pomortsy
(formerly
Jazlowiec).
--Poland (former Galician town): Lancut (Lanzut).
FEBRUARY 2011
To see any late additions to the January 2011 Updates page,
please visit the 2011 Updates page to see what you've
missed. Please sign up to receive the Museum's blog updates, as
those who do are the first to learn what's new at the Museum. You can
sign up to receive either the RSS feed or you can subscribe by email.
If you do the latter, be sure to respond to the verification email
sent my FeedBurner immediately after you sign up, or you will not
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CURRENT EXHIBITIONS:
--"To Honor and Preserve"-this is a multi-faceted
ongoing exhibition about the many ways we as individuals, who are
interested in preserving the memory of our families, go about it.
The first entry to be presented comes from Rabbi Norbert Weinberg.
His mother Irene Weinberg was born in Lemberg (Lwow/L'viv) in
Galicia.
"Megillat Esther: The Story of Esther" is the account of Irene Weinberg's
survival as an Aryan Pole during the Shoah, compiled by her son,
Rabbi Norbert Weinberg and is based on original documents and taped
and video testimony.
Esther, the Hebrew name of Irene, plays on the theme of " Esther",
referring to the Hebrew word for "Hidden", as both the original
Esther of the first Megillah and this modern Esther saved themselves
and others by living as a non-Jew under the nose of the oppressors
and murderers.
It is part of the family history of Rabbi Dr. Wilhelm Weinberg and Irene
Weinberg that explores the themes underlying the story of the Jewish
people and the courage of the spirit that has enabled this people to
survive over the millennia. The author's father, Rabbi Dr. Wilhelm
Weinberg, survived imprisonment in Berlin, capture in
Czechoslovakia, and Soviet refuge, to return to lead the Surviving
Remnant as the first Chief Rabbi of Hesse (Frankfurt), Germany,
after the Shoah.
You can find Rabbi Weinberg's story at
www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/ce/thp/weinberg-01.htm. Many
of his family photos were originally posted on the website of the Galicia
Jewish Museum of Krakow, He also has a blog which he uses to update
those interested on his ongoing research into the history of the
Jewish people in Europe in the twentieth century. His blog can be
found at
http://karmisheli.blogspot.com.
Look for more entries within this exhibition, "To Honor and
Preserve", in the coming months. More such dedications to family
members are always welcome.
MARCH 2011
To see any late additions to the February 2011 Updates page,
please visit the 2011 Updates page to see what you've
missed. Please sign up to receive the Museum's blog updates, as
those who do are the first to learn what's new at the Museum. You can
sign up to receive either the RSS feed or you can subscribe by email.
If you do the latter, be sure to respond to the verification email
sent my FeedBurner immediately after you sign up, or you will not
receive any updates.
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THE FILMS OF TOMEK WISNIEWSKI:
--A powerful film of nearly thirty-four minutes about the
time of Kristallnacht and later, between 1928-43 in Poland, when
destruction rained down on the Jewish people.
In this film you will see a combination of archival film and
roving scans of still photographs that give one a jarring view of
this period. Included within this film one can see pictures of
many Polish synagogues, both interior and exterior, those relatively
intact, and those destroyed or in the process of being razed to the
ground. Tomek lists the following towns and their synagogues:
Lodź, Lodz-Litzmanstadt, Białystok, Zambrów, Wieruszów, Markuszów, Koło, Bychów, Biłgoraj, Lubaczów,
Lubieszów, Tarnów, Luboml, Biała Podlaska, Jordanów, Częstochowa,
Przemyśl, Żółkiew, Grajewo, Grodno, Mława, Równo, Łęczyca,
Łaszczów,Tomaszów Lubelski,Knysyn, Tomaszów Mazowiecki, Jonawa, Połock
and Czyżew. The link to
this film can be found at the very top of the Tomek Wisniewski list
at
www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/tomek/films.htm .
Be sure to stick around until the very
end of the film past the scrolling Polish-language text as the
English version of the text will follow.
APRIL 2011
To see any late additions to the March 2011 Updates page,
please visit the 2011 Updates page to see what you've
missed. Please sign up to receive the Museum's blog updates, as
those who do are the first to learn what's new at the Museum. You can
sign up to receive either the RSS feed or you can subscribe by email.
If you do the latter, be sure to respond to the verification email
sent my FeedBurner immediately after you sign up, or you will not
receive any updates.
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NEW EXHIBITIONS:
--Where Once There Were Jews: Lapy, Poland. Stories and
photos about this Polish town before and during World War II.
THE SYNAGOGUES OF EUROPE:
PAST AND PRESENT:
--Italy: Trieste.
THE FILMS OF TOMEK WISNIEWSKI:
--A short film about the Jewish cemetery in Wizna,
Poland.
THE YIDDISH WORLD:
--The Yiddish Actors' Union 4th Anniversary Celebration
--a photo of the founding group in 1899 (then the Hebrew Actor's
Protective Union), along with the list of names of addresses of
seventy-five of its members.
MAY-JUN 2011
To see any late additions to the April 2011 Updates page,
please visit the 2011 Updates page to see what you've
missed. Please sign up to receive the Museum's blog updates, as
those who do are the first to learn what's new at the Museum. You can
sign up to receive either the RSS feed or you can subscribe by email.
If you do the latter, be sure to respond to the verification email
sent my FeedBurner immediately after you sign up, or you will not
receive any updates.
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THE SYNAGOGUES OF NEW YORK CITY:
--The Museum has updated it lists of Manhattan synagogues, and this
list now contains more than eight hundred names. It will soon update
the similar lists for the Bronx and Kings (Brooklyn) counties.
THE FILMS OF TOMEK WISNIEWSKI:
--More films will be added within the next few weeks, so please
check the Wisniewski page from time to time.
THE YIDDISH WORLD:
--The Museum has begun a project in which it hopes to translate
(to as great an extent as possible) Zalmen Zylbercweig's
seven-volume (one unpublished) "Lexicon of the Yiddish Theatre".
These volumes were published beginning in 1931 and contain more than
2,800 biographies of those once involved in some capacity with the
once-vibrant world Yiddish theatre. The Museum hopes to make these
available to the public in the coming months. To date, more than 500
of these biographies have been translated into English, each having
its own webpage. Included with each biography, when available, is
the portrait of the person biographied. There are also more than 50
biographies of once-extant Yiddish theatre organizations that are
included within these volumes, and some of them have also been
translated.
The Museum is also looking for volunteers who
would be willing to translate Yiddish text (in printed fonts) into
English. Please contact the Museum if you would like to volunteer.
The Museum is also compiling a list of Yiddish plays once
performed in New York City, and elsewhere in the United States and
elsewhere in the world. Casts of characters for most all plays will
be included on this list, as well as in which theatre it was
performed and when (when known).
JUL 2011
To see any late additions to the May-Jun 2011 Updates page,
please visit the 2011 Updates page to see what you've
missed. Please sign up to receive the Museum's blog updates, as
those who do are the first to learn what's new at the Museum. You can
sign up to receive either the RSS feed or you can subscribe by email.
If you do the latter, be sure to respond to the verification email
sent my FeedBurner immediately after you sign up, or you will not
receive any updates. Also consider joining the Museum's
Facebook page at
museumoffamilyhistory@groups.facebook.com.
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CEMETERY PROJECT:
--The unique surname list for the Odessa, Ukraine plots
located in the New York metro area has been updated, with the
addition of the unique surnames found in the Odessa landsmanshaftn
plot located in New Jersey's Beth El Cemetery. This makes four
cemeteries out of a total of nearly three dozen Odessa plots located
in the area.
You can find the list at
www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/cp-odessa.htm . If you find a
surname of interest, you will need to write to the Museum and ask
specifically for the gravestone photograph for specific gravestones.
Do mention the town association (here, Odessa) within your request.
TO HONOR AND PRESERVE:
--The Memories of Leo and Sylvia Dashefsky" is presented to you
by the Museum through the cooperation of Batya Dashefsky, their
daughter. She has created a lovely twenty-three minute slide show
about her parents, her family et al. I recommend you visit this
exhibition and watch the show (with music and narration) and think
about how you might use your creativity to honor your own family.
The presentation spans many decades, from life in Erope to
immigration, to immigrant Jewish life in America in the 1920s,
Brownsville, Palestine, Syracuse, New York and Philadelphia.
Mention is made of such organizations as Pioneer Women, Shomer
Hatzair, the Labor Zionist Movement et al. Letters of correspondence
are read, e.g. from pre-war Bialystok. Mention is also made of
Grodno, Rezina in Bessarabia and Narewka, Poland.
Also, Batya's father Leo dedicated his retirement to translating
original Yiddish-language poetry and thus within the Museum' Yiddish
Vinkl, if you have a mind to, you can read the English translations
of such Yiddish poets and writers as Sholem Aleichem, Mordechai
Gebirtig, Itzhak Katzenelson, H. Leivick, J. L. Peretz, Avraham
Reisen and Yehoash.
The exhibition begins at
www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/ce/thp/dashefsky-01.htm. This
exhibition is ever-evolving; as the Museum receives more
interesting, creative works of those who have honored their
ancestors, they too will be added to this growing exhibition.
Elaine Rosenberg Miller has also written a small piece about her
father's aunt which is included within the "To Honor and Preserve"
exhibition. You can find it at
www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/ce/thp/graff-01.htm.
THE JEWS OF ODESSA: A SHORT HISTORY:
"The
Jews of Odessa: A Short History": I wanted to present to you a
larger exhibition, but due to the lack of submitted material, it
will be shorter than hoped for. Saying that, what I have to offer
you should be of interest. First, "A Plea From Odessa", a letter
from Jacob Tenenholz written from the Perecyp District there during
the pogrom there in 1905-6. Here is a list of 555 "souls", family
members, including small children, who "possess a capital of 1.1000.
rubles." The list is divided into three pages arranged
alphabetically and includes the names, ages and occupation of many
of those listed. Translated from the original French. You will also
be able to read about the Gerber family who once lived in the Odessa
District. You will also find here information on a number of Odessa
photographic studios.
Within this exhibition, you may also read an article from the New
York Daily Tribune in 1906 about the declaration of martial law in
Odessa. You can find all links to this exhibition at the bottom of
the webpage
www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/ce/odessa/history-main.htm.
The unique surnames list for Odessa, as found within the Museum's
Cemetery Project list, will be augmented with the surnames as found
within the Beth-El Cemetery in New Jersey, hopefully within the next
week. The current list can be found at
www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/cp-odessa.htm. There will be
gravestone photos available for this plot, but not for the others.
If and when I can find volunteers who are willing to photograph the
matzevot at Baron Hirsch and United Hebrew Cemeteries (Staten
Island), as well as those at Beth Israel and New Mount Lebanon
(Woodbridge, NJ) Cemeteries, I will begin to photograph those Odessa
plots found on Long Island, etc. (but not before)
A BINTEL BRIV: CORRESPONDENCES FROM ZEMBROVER REFUGEES AFTER
THE WAR:
Thousands of
survivors of the Holocaust, refugees from World
War II, wrote to their landsleit
(townspeople) from many countries throughout the
world within the first few years that followed the war. In this
exhibition you can read empathetically excerpts from just some of
their correspondences with their landsleit who were located in the
United States. By doing this you most certainly will gain a sense of
the turmoil and feelings of anxiety and uncertainty that existed
within these refugees within the immediate post-war years. These
letters were written by landsleit from Zambrow, which is located in
Northeast Poland.
THE FILMS OF TOMEK WISNIEWSKI:
--More films by Tomek are now online, and now the Museum
has links to more than one hundred of his short films about Jewish
life in Europe.
Links to
twenty new short films from Tomek have been added to the Museum’s
exhibition of Tomek’s works. The following are the towns represented
in these films: Bialystok, Rajgrod, Krynki, Wysokie Mazowieckie,
Hrodna (Grodno), Berestovitsa (Vyalikaya Byerastavitsa), Pinsk,
Vilnius, Pultusk, Grodek, Sokoly, Dywin (Divin), Klewan (Klivan),
Merzhausen, and Minsk.
www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/tomek/films.htm.
THE YIDDISH WORLD:
--Zalmen Zylbercweig's six-volume "Lexicon of the Yiddish Theatre":
The six volumes are being translated, mostly by yours truly at
present, and to date more than twenty percent of the more than 2,800
biographies have been translated into English. It is hoped that I
will find Yiddish-English translators who will volunteer to help me
further this project. I have also created a database of all those
biographied and will soon put online the unpublished seventh volume
as well as Zylbercweig's unpublished "Yiddish Art Theatre in
America". I am hoping that at some point the Museum will be the
greatest online source of information about the history of Yiddish
theatre found anywhere on the Internet. I will announce all as my
project progresses.... THOMAS JEFFERSON HIGH
SCHOOL, BROOKLYN, N.Y. YEARBOOK PROJECT:
For those interested in researching their family history in
Brooklyn, New York--more specifically Thomas Jefferson High School
in its East New York section--more yearbooks have been added to its
database, which can be found at
http://museumoffamilyhistory.com/Jefferson/yearbooksearch.html .
Prokudin-Gorskii:
Photographer to the Tsar:
Some of you may be familiar with these Library of Congress photos.
Interesting to see these sepia and color photographs. Early for
color photography, but the photographer developed a way of doing it.
Six photographs of interest were taken in Samarkand; also a photo of
an Austrian POW camp, as well as a color photo of Tolstoy. You can
find the exhibition at
www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/ce/pg/prokudin-gorskii.htm.
A BIAYSTOKER GYMNASIUM:
The “Gymnasium
of Jozef Zeligman, Jozef Lebenhaft and Jakub Dereczynski”,
Bialystok, 1930, with names of the students and teachers.
www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/ce/gr/gr-bialystok-zld.htm.
AUG-NOV 2011 Please sign up to receive the Museum's blog updates, as
those who do are the first to learn what's new at the Museum. You can
sign up to receive either the RSS feed or you can subscribe by email.
If you do the latter, be sure to respond to the verification email
sent my FeedBurner immediately after you sign up, or you will not
receive any updates. Also consider joining the Museum's
Facebook page at
museumoffamilyhistory@groups.facebook.com.
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CEMETERY PROJECT:
--A map for the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Los Angeles,
California is now available at the Museum.
POSTCARDS FROM HOME:
--Fromhold family photos from Latvia, including a studio photo from
the resort town of Bad Kissingen in Germany.
THE SYNAGOGUES OF NEW YORK CITY:
--The Museum's list of mostly defunct synagogues that once stood in
Manhattan proper has been widely updated. It now includes
information on synagogues from fifteen city directories, ranging
from 1869 to 1933. Hopefully more will be added in the future.
This list is presented to you as an address directory, i.e. the
listing is sorted first by building address, then when available,
the names of the synagogue president, the rabbi, cantor and sexton
are included. You can find this new list by clicking
here.
THE YIDDISH WORLD:
--Zalmen Zylbercweig's seven-volume (six were published) "Lexicon of
the Yiddish Theatre": These volumes are currently being translated, mostly by yours truly at
present, and to date more than 800 of the more than 2,800
biographies have been translated into English. It is hoped that I
will find Yiddish-English translators who will volunteer to help me
further this project. I have also created a database of all those biographied and will soon put online the unpublished seventh volume
as well as Zylbercweig's unpublished "Yiddish Art Theatre in
America". I am hoping that at some point the Museum will be the
greatest online source of information about the history of Yiddish
theatre found anywhere on the Internet. I will announce all as my
project progresses....
DECEMBER 2011
Please sign up to receive the Museum's blog updates, as
those who do are the first to learn what's new at the Museum. You can
sign up to receive either the RSS feed or you can subscribe by email.
If you do the latter, be sure to respond to the verification email
sent my FeedBurner immediately after you sign up, or you will not
receive any updates. Also consider joining the Museum's
Facebook page at
museumoffamilyhistory@groups.facebook.com.
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POSTCARDS FROM HOME:
--The Marks/Markus family from Pultusk, Poland.
THE SYNAGOGUES OF NEW YORK CITY:
--Within the next month or two, the list of former synagogues of the
Bronx and Brooklyn will be updated, as was the Manhattan list some
months ago. Watch for announcements.....
THE YIDDISH WORLD:
--Zalmen Zylbercweig's seven-volume (six were published) "Lexicon of
the Yiddish Theatre": These volumes are currently being translated,
mostly by yours truly at present, and to date more than half
of the more than 2,800 biographies have been translated into
English. These will be made available within the next few months.
It is hoped that I will find Yiddish-English translators who will
volunteer to help me further this project. I have also created a
spreadsheet of all those listed within these many volumes, and on
this spreadsheet besides the person's name is their birth and death
date, town/country of birth and the number of the page on which the
biography appears in the original, hardcover book. I am simply
waiting for someone to step forward to volunteer to create a
searchable database for the museum that will be, when finished,
available to all.
--Zylbercweig and his wife Celia, between the years
1949 and 1969 had their own recording studio in the back of their
Los Angeles home and produced a Yiddish Radio Hour for those many
years. With the cooperation of his stepdaughter, the Museum is
working in cooperation with YIVO (Yiddish Institute for Jewish
Research) to convert nearly seventy reel-to-reel and cassette tapes
(which have to some degree degraded over these many years) into a
format that can be listened to by our museum visitors. The Museum
will be, by the beginning of 2012, launching it's own radio
"station", and will be making available online various radio
programs and other audio segments once broadcast, not only during
Zylbercweig's Radio Hour, but other radio programs as the "Al Jolson
Lifebuoy Program" and others now found in the public domain.
Most of the Zylbercweig radio programs are in Yiddish, but there are
some with English segments that will be enjoyed by those who cannot
translate spoken Yiddish. It is the Museum's wish that a
simultaneous English translation be made available for all
Yiddish-language programs, but alas, such volunteers are very
difficult to come by, so for now it will only be a "fervent wish".
However, those who can understand Yiddish, they will enjoy the
experience of hearing Yiddish spoken (and sung) so beautifully.
--The Museum is also compiling a list of all Yiddish plays once
staged on the American stage. This list will include (when given)
The name of the play (English and Yiddish), the season during which
the play was performed, the date of its first performance, the cast
members, the theatre name and the town and state in which the
theatre was located. All inquiries may be directed to the Museum.
Other such lists are being prepared, including performances at the
turn-of-the-twentieth-century Rumania and Russia, the Vilna Troupe
et al. I am hoping that at some point the Museum will be the
greatest online source of information about the history of Yiddish
theatre found anywhere on the Internet. I will announce all as my
project progresses.... --The Museum is also preparing
a virtual tour of its "Lives in the Yiddish Theatre" exhibition,
which will include tributes by family members of those once involved
with the Yiddish theatre; not only photos and descriptive text, but
also audio tributes. Each family will have its own "room", and it
will be displayed as such, i.e. you will have little difficulty
imagining that you are in a "real" museum and are viewing
photographs, plaques, descriptions, on a rooms four "walls".
Please look for announcements, either posted by the Museum on
different discussion groups or on its blog. You should also consider
signing up for "Perspectives", the Museum's e-newsletter, to receive
the latest news and updates. WORLD JEWISH
COMMUNITIES:
--Czernowitz, Ukraine: On its Photographic Studio pages, its
first images from the E. Richter photographic studio.
--Zambrow, Poland: Within the next month or two, the latest
English-language installment of the Zambrow Yizkor Book, will be
uploaded to the Museum's website. The English translation of the
Zambrow Yizkor Book can only be found at the Museum of Family
History.
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