Phantom Presence: How Past Influences Present

I had always thought of conferences as work perks.  They certainly weren’t a part of what I envisioned post-career, yet now I go to two conferences each year related to personal interests.  What I’ve come to realize is that there are two important parts of reinventing oneself, one is our ability to continue to learn and develop new skills and the other is to deepen our communities. Conferences are designed to do both.

One of the conferences I attend is put on by the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies(IAJGS) and focuses on Jewish genealogy. This year it was in Warsaw, Poland. I’ve been to Warsaw several times, but each time I was there it was prior to the creation of the Polin museum that addresses the history of Polish Jews. I remember looking longingly at the building as it went up, wishing my timing had been different so I could explore it. This time I wasn’t going to miss my opportunity.

 It was a somewhat controversial time to go to Poland as a new law had been passed criminalizing speech that associated Poland with Nazi acts in the Holocaust. The Polish sensitivity arose from the conflation of descriptors of place with responsibility. Concentration camps that were housed in Poland were created and operated by the Nazis and a reference to "Polish concentration camps" failed to capture that distinction. The difficulty with the law was that it painted with a broad brush and potentially silenced any talk of Poles who were complicit. An outcry soon resulted in an amendment dropping the criminalization but retaining civil penalties. This became a topic in several sessions raising questions as to how it might suppress accurate Holocaust education reflecting the fact that some people were complicit, many were bystanders and a small group risked their lives to save Jews. 

There are stereotypes that historically have created distance between Jews and Poles. Stereotypes may arise from actual events but get extrapolated more broadly to define an entire people. So what colors these perceptions? While Poland was originally a safe haven for Jews, state antisemitism arose in 1935 after the death of the statesman Piłsudski and was often fed and condoned through the Catholic Church of that time. The Polish stereotype of Jews was that they were allied with Communism, although pre-1935 only 2-7% of Jews voted for Communist linked parties. 

And after the war?  One need only say Kielce, one of the best known pogroms post-war, to elicit a knowing nod. Many survivors returned from concentration camps to their former communities only to find Poles occupying their homes filled with their belongings. Wanting your property back could be life threatening. In addition to the Kielce pogram which killed 42 Jews, there were reports of Jews being murdered in other Polish cities. These events contributed to Jews seeking to leave Poland.  After the war, some remaining Jews were initially incorporated into visible positions of power within the Soviet government, furthering the stereotype of the Jewish communist, until of course the Soviets turned on them in 1968 with their own brand of antisemitism.

The echos of this history underlie Polish-Jewish relations with property remaining a sensitive issue. At the same time Jews and Poles share a common history across many centuries, something that the Polin museum seeks to capture. We struggled a bit with terminology. Many of the Polish Jews identified strongly as Poles, but the convention in that part of the world is to use the term Jews as a nation, implying one is either Polish or Jewish. Polish Jew is a phrase more consistent with American terminology. Conversely in a Jewish gathering, we found ourselves using terms like non-Jewish Poles.

Three million Polish Jews were killed during the war, a sizable portion of the Polish population. It is a bit like a phantom limb, still exerting influence and a presence even in it’s absence. If there was any overriding theme to the sessions,  it is the idea of phantom presence that takes several forms.

For example, several conference talks were on Polish partitions and explored the various divisions of Poland between Austria, Prussia and Russia. The boundaries kept moving as Poland was gobbled up by its neighbors.Those divisions affect the language and format of documents and the culture. Apparently they even affect the voting patterns today. The division is no longer active and yet it has left its influence. 

A similar phenomenon is found in the former existence of Jews within the country. The Jews represented a significant part of the country in terms of population and in some towns Jews could be as much as 80%. The Jews were often the merchants and entrepreneurs. What happens to the remaining community when you eliminate a significant part of it, and a vital part? 

The past continues to influence the future even in its absence. As new generations come of age without the clouded history of earlier generations, there is a curiosity about this aspect of their history and the opportunity to explore it through fresh eyes. My take away is that there are non-Jewish Poles who feel a deep commitment to the work of re-connection and a growing curiosity about the the former Jewish community. That manifests itself in a sometimes selective interpretation of Jewish culture by non-Jewish Poles. 

While in Poland, I visited a number of museums which added some perspective. The Polin museum does an exceptional job in telling the story of Poland and of the Jews and the Poles in connection. It doesn’t have the story of the Jews in isolation, nor does it focus on the Holocaust to the exclusion of all other Jewish history. That’s a story that interests multiple audiences and is presented in a way that draws the viewer in.

The other museum which I found particularly noteworthy was the Warsaw Rising museum which tells the story of the Warsaw uprising without neglecting contemporaneous events that affected the Jewish population. And it underscores that discussion of this event was suppressed by the Soviets. This museum gave me a greater appreciation of the Polish experience. It is a country that was sliced and diced by its neighbors and despite its efforts fighting in the war against the Nazis, it was handed over to the Soviets. The Soviets then proceeded to persecute those who fought in the Polish army and were active in the Warsaw uprising and ultimately the Jews who stayed to rebuild their country. While I knew pieces of that history, I had never truly knit it together nor fully appreciated the role of the Soviets in suppressing aspects of Polish history. 

And the final takeaway, we need to appreciate the experience of each other if we are to find the common ground that we all share. Museums offer us a gateway through which to do that.

Using Our Whole Self

You know I'm intrigued by a speaker when I attend more than one of their sessions. At the recent IAJGS Conference on Jewish genealogy, I made sure to stop by several sessions offered by Ron Arons. Ron is a frequent speaker and writer with a broad range of interests including dissecting underlying process. As my interests seem to follow on some parallel tracks, I was hopeful that I might pick up something of relevance to me.

Ron taught a session on Mind Maps for Genealogy. A mind map is an alternative to an outline or a spreadsheet for organizing information. Spreadsheets work well for structured data while a mind map can work for either structured or unstructured data. It is a visual tool designed for the non-linear visual thinker.

A mind map begins in the center with a central theme. Ron gave us an example of his plan for 2016 and rather than record his plan, I began to design my own. I had reading, blog writing, travel for both business and pleasure, painting, working on a book, genealogy for self and consulting for others and public speaking as spokes around the central hub of plan. I began to branch them out to identify more specific components. Then I looked at how they connected to each other. An outline would have each discrete subject, but the mind map acknowledges that often these subjects are not discrete, but rather interrelated. I read topical literature relevant to my travels or on the topics I am exploring in my artwork so reading and travel would be connected as well as reading and artwork. I speak about my artwork and genealogy so there would be additional spokes from speaking on topics which in turn would attach to the artwork and genealogy nodes. Travel leads to artwork and often is tied to genealogy research. Soon I had an octopus of a map. My next step would be to link related nodes.


Now I was beginning to see the connection to genealogy where things are often not discrete. If you are searching for when someone came to the United States there are multiple places that you can search. Census records may reveal that information as could oral history or naturalization records and the data may conflict so you can use the mind map to try to reconcile the sources to arrive at what you believe to be the best data.

What name or names did they go by? You can identify names used from different sources then lay them out in chronological order to see how they evolved over time. Maybe you have a node for transcription errors so you can isolate those that were the invention of a transcriber rather than a name actually employed by the person.

It occurs to me that I do a similar approach when I work out how to paint story in my artwork. In a session that I taught last week, I talked about how oral history was reflected in painting the story of a woman who was on the Kindertransport. She had spoken of the Red Cross letters she received from her parents, the fact that you didn't write much because other eyes were watching and the names Mutti (mother) and Vati(father) that were found in the letters. If I were to do that as a mind map I would have a spoke for visual imagery on which I would list those elements and others. Another spoke might list possible names for the painting. Still another would list the emotions that she felt. All of those elements have to come together in a painting, tying imagery together into an underlying story.

Ron shared information on several programs for mind mapping such as freemind and xmind and I plan to take them for a test drive.

The second topic he spoke on was Critical and Creative Thinking for Genealogists. As an artist who had a long career in finance, I rely on both skill sets so am interested in this topic. His point was that genealogy requires both critical thinking (analytic, convergent, vertical, judgment, detail focused) and creative thinking (generative, diffuse, subjective, possibility, yes and). Not only does it require both, but they need to partner up.

He noted that studies have found that there are myths about creativity that simply aren't true. We often are told that some people are born with it and it can't be learned. In fact in The Innovators' DNA by Dyer et al they note that 30% comes from genetics, but the rest can be learned. Steve Jobs posited that creativity is connecting things. Picasso noted that good artists copy, great artists steal. Kirby Ferguson in a Ted talk speaks to the idea of copying, transforming and combining.

Creativity takes motivation, being unafraid of failure, curiosity, openness, patience, deferring judgment and playfulness. A big part of creativity is asking questions and challenging conventional thought, also a big part of Jewish heritage. In fact Chief Rabbi Sacks notes that there is was no Hebrew word that meant obey when modern Hebrew was created.

When we apply these skills to genealogy we need to avoid questions that are too broad or narrow. They need to be focused, but also open-ended. Sometimes we need to expand the playing field and explore related people to find our answers or imagine alternate possibilities.Ron suggested that we work on several different problems at one time. That allows us to interleave, make connections between different subjects, problems and approaches. The more knowledge we have on different subjects, the more we open ourselves to creative thinking.

Documents are puzzle pieces and just like puzzle pieces they have multiple data points (edges). The more puzzle pieces, the more connections are possible.
Adam Grant in the book Originals writes that we are more conceptual when we are young, but rely more on experiential creativity which involves tinkering and collaborating as we get older.

What Ron said rang true with my experience. I would add that sometimes we need to unlearn some things to open ourselves up to creativity. It operates under different rules than the productivity culture we absorb in our analytic corporate world. And it has its own schedule and won't accommodate ours. We need to create a fertile environment in which to welcome creativity into our life.

Telling Our Stories

I just returned from the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies (IAJGS) conference in Seattle where I got to reconnect with old friends and make a few new ones.  The conference is focused on Jewish genealogy, a subject that originally drew me back into my Jewish heritage.   

I've been at this for some time now so it is no longer that rush of new information from the early conferences.  The low hanging fruit has long been eaten. I am pleased if I  find a few thought-provoking tidbits that inject a new approach into my research or a document in the Resource Room from a database that I've not yet tapped. Our conference days extended late into the evening so I am just now digesting what I learned.  I hope to share a few posts on highlights and some of those thought-provoking ideas I carried home.

Some highlights included seeing the film Woman in Gold, this time with commentary from Randy Schoenberg.  Randy Schoenberg was Maria Altmann's attorney and successfully sued Austria for the Klimt painting of her aunt that had been appropriated by the Austrian state gallery under Nazi control.  His journey included a dramatic stop at the Supreme Court.  In the film Randy is played by Ryan Reynolds who he related showed up on the set at the end dressed exactly the same as he was.  Randy assured us that his character was somewhat exaggerated in the interests of story and some scenes did not occur in reality, such as the goodby scene between Maria and her parents.  Nonetheless, he noted that many have related to that scene as it echoed the experience within their families. I had first heard Schoenberg at the 2008 conference and enjoyed watching the story unfold via the film and his subsequent comments.

I also enjoyed hearing David Laskin, author of the Family: Three Journeys into the Heart of the Twentieth Century.  I had read and loved his book about the three branches of his family, those who were murdered in the Holocaust, those who went to what was then Palestine and those who came to the United States.  Among those who came to the United States was his great-aunt, founder of Maidenform Bras, the early version of the bra as we know it today. David is a long-time writer and his book reads like an engaging novel.  He shared his exploration into genealogy as he researched his book and the very fortunate discovery of 300 letters in Yiddish that informed his storytelling.  

I too came to the conference to share my stories, nothing as dramatic as Schoenberg's or Laskin's, but ones about which I am equally passionate.  I had an opportunity to present about my work on the Jewish Identity and Legacy Project. As an artist and genealogist I had done a series of 17 interviews with elders in Sholom Home, a Jewish residential facility in the Twin Cities.  My interviewees included those who grew up in early Jewish immigrant communities, survivors and immigrants from the former Soviet Union.  These three groups represented those who immigrated to the United States in the 20th century and made up a large portion of the Jewish community.  After completing interviews, I developed artwork on their stories.  I've edited short clips of elders telling their stories and shared both video and artwork.  You can find some of the stories and video at my website  and stay tuned as I am working on a book on this project.

As I worked on this series I learned that it was also an immigration story and many shared either their immigration story or that of their parents.   I explored the immigration laws in force at the time they came to the United States and how that influenced their access to the United States.  For example anti-Semitism and the Red Scare were elements that colored the response to Jewish refugees after WWII, often delaying their ability to immigrate and affecting the environment into which they entered.  The concern of stirring up anti-Semitism resulted in caution about "appearing Yiddish"in early immigrant communities. Fear of anti-Semitism was often a factor driving efforts of the existing Jewish community to help the new immigrants to assimilate.

The one thing all of these talks shared was story, perhaps the most important aspect of genealogy, deepening understanding and connecting us to each other and across generations.

Informing your Search Through Literature

I spent the past week in Boston at the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies (IAJGS) Conference. While I holed up in conference rooms learning about documents and databases, my husband walked the Freedom Trail, biked and whale watched. At the end of each day he shared his adventures and I, somewhat envious, had to ask myself why I chose to do research versus the many other options that life presents. But puzzles engage me and family history is the ultimate puzzle, a field of knowledge that touches history, language, and story.

In the next several blog entries I will share some of the insights from sessions I attended that may be of interest to other researchers. I have to start with one of my favorite sessions which was co-led by Ellen Cassedy and Lois Ogilby Rosen. Ellen is the author of We Are Here, a book that addresses how Lithuania is dealing with their Holocaust history. She had attended the Vilnius Yiddish Institute some years prior to my visit. During the course of that visit she explored both a family mystery and the larger question of how Lithuania comes to terms with its role in the Holocaust, a nation where 95% of Jews were murdered in part because of a high level of complicity. Her excellent book brings a compassionate eye to their efforts. She notes that much anti-Semitism still exists and acknowledges that it is a difficult process to emerge from a half a century under two regimes and confront layers of denial.

One of the session that she and Lois led was titled Calling All Readers. As an avid reader who has found that both fiction and non-fiction inform my understanding of family history, I was eager to add to my prospective reading list. Having greatly enjoyed Ellen's book I am optimistic about her recommendations.

Ellen led off with a brief discussion of what she looked for when reading as a writer, a vantage point that I have typically not brought to my reading, but anticipate applying. Her criteria included:

1) how the story grabbed the reader, 2) how skillfully the writer blends the story with the larger picture so it illuminates the larger story and vice versa, 3) how they created vivid scenes to pull the reader into them and 4) how they created suspense. Using those considerations as their yardstick she and her co-presenter had identified several books in each of five categories from which they shared excerpts.

The categories were 1) Life Experiences in the Old World 2) the Jewish Immigrant Experience, 3) The Quest for Family Roots, 4) For Children and Young Adults and 5)Unique Finds.

While I had read some of those she noted, I realized that much of my reading was of contemporary writings and a number of the books that they recommended were more first-hand accounts. In the first two categories that was of necessity of an earlier time.

In the category of Life Experiences in the Old World they noted three books:

The Memoirs of Gluckel of Hameln. - Gluckel lived from 1646-1724 and was a Jewish business woman and diarist. In the process of telling the reader how to live their life, she tells the story of what life was like in her day.

The Wandering Jews by Joseph Roth. Roth died in 1939 and never saw the outcome of WWII on the Jewish population in Europe. This non-fiction work was written in 1927 and reflects his observations of the Eastern European Jewish community.

Out of Egypt by Andre Aciman - this memoir tells the story of three generations of a Sephardic family in Alexandria.

Three books were recommended on the Jewish Immigrant Experience:

The Promised Land by Mary Antin. 1912. A digital version is available on-line. Mary Antin was a Jewish woman from Eastern Europe and the story is of her immigration from Polotsk, Belarus. She immigrated when she was thirteen and writes about both Russia and the immigrant experience.

A Bintel Brief means a sack of letters and is made up of letters from 1906-1967 sent to the Jewish Daily Forward. Within it we read of Jewish immigrants seeking advice about daily life in the new country.

Bread Givers by Anzia Yezierska. 1925. This story, set on the Lower East Side, is told through the eyes of a Polish Jewish female immigrant in the 1920s. It is a story of struggle between her father of the old world and a daughter of the new.


The third category addressed the Quest for Family Roots.

Within it fell The Hare with the Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal which I've addressed in an earlier blog post. This story explores family history by tracing an unusual family heirloom, netsuke, as they move within the wealthy Ephrussi family of grain merchants.

Miriam's Kitchen by Elizabeth Erlich is a memoir and cookbook that addresses family connections. Her mother-in-law is a survivor and her kitchen is the venue for telling family stories and history.

For Children and Young Adults

The Night Journey by Kathryn Lasky. In this book the great grandmother tells of escaping turn of the century Russia, tales of pogroms and the czar's army.

Letters from Rifka by Karen Hesse. This historical novel tells the story of life in Russia and the 1919 immigration of a young girl. The story is told in letters written to her cousin who remains behind in Russia.

The Power of Light, stories for children by Isaac Bashevis Singer offers a story for each night of Hanukkah.

The final category was Unique Finds

Within this category was Peony by Pearl Buck. This historical fiction is about the Jews of K'aifeng, China. Set in 1850 and published in 1948 it is a story of interracial marriage.

Unfinished People: Eastern European Jews Encounter America by Ruth Gay. This book, winner of the National Jewish Book Award, addresses Jewish immigration to the US from 1880 to the outbreak of WWI. The Table of Contents gives some flavor for the range of topics addressed and includes Floors, Laughter, Chairs, Awnings, Hats, Papers, Work, Food, Corsets, Girls, Winter and Beds.

In addition to these recommendations they solicited favorites from others and provided us with a lengthy list. I've combined the list with my rather extensive list which you can download from my website.

My Parisian Family

In July the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies (IAJGS) conference is being held in Paris.  I've spent lots of time in Paris so am always searching for something new that I haven't yet discovered.  This time I definitely have something new on my agenda, family members who I've not yet met.   A third cousin survived the war and settled in Paris.

Some years ago I went with a group to Bad Arolsen, Germany.  It was my first trip to Germany and I approached it with some trepidation.  I had a strong aversion to going to Germany and the only way I could do the trip was for the purpose of doing Holocaust research.  The International Tracing Service is located in Bad Arolsen and holds the Holocaust records that have since been shared with other institutions.  I went there with a list of fifty family members who were in Radom, Poland prior to the war.  On the first day I discovered that they had no records for them.  As they were sent to their death in Treblinka, no records were maintained.  I then learned that the meticulous Germans only cared about recording the Jews if they represented inventory, workers to be used until their death with a shelf life of months at best.  Those sent directly to their death went unrecorded. 

I had a week to spend at Bad Arolsen and wasn’t quite sure what I was going to research if none of my family members were in the archives.  Then I had an idea.  I went back to the records of Yad Vashem and assumed that if someone gave testimony, they survived and were family or close friends.  I began to research those who provided testimony and it led me to survivors.  My great-grandmother had a sister who generated a sizeable branch and testimony was given on many of them by one survivor.  When I looked up his file I learned that he had gone to Paris after the war.

Then I did something that I could have done from the comfort of my home.  I did a search on the name at the Holocaust Museum website and discovered that this relative had written a book, a Holocaust memoir.  The book was only available on-line and in French so I ordered it and with my bad high school French and some translation software I was able to decipher it.  I took the most direct route and emailed the Holocaust organization that had published the book.  I’m a relative I reported and inquired as to how I could contact the author of the book.  They kindly put me in touch with his daughter who was much braver with her English than I with my French.  We began an e-mail correspondence.  It is usually the daughters with whom I connect.

I went one step further with the book.  Because I do a Kehilalink for Jewishgen.org for the town of Radom, I often take memoirs and ask if I can include the first chapter on the site.  Typically that chapter talks about Radom.  I’ve found that if I offer to provide a link to where the book can be purchased, there is usually a willingness to allow this.  In this case, I had to actually translate the chapter and then type it up to include it.

So on this trip to France, I hope to meet my third cousin, now in his 90s as well as his children who are more my contemporaries.  I will need to brush up on that poor high school French in order to communicate.  Better start now!

Breaking Through Logjams

Ever hit a point where you are stuck in your research and not really sure where to go next?  I’ve learned to trust that new directions will come, but that I have to actively seek out new information and connections for that to happen.  An opportunity to do just that will occur next month. Each summer Jewish genealogists gather for the International Jewish Genealogy Conference.  This year it is in Washington, DC, although many are already planning ahead for next year’s conference in Paris.  I am no exception hoping to meet with a third cousin in Paris who I’ve connected with via e-mail after tracing the family through records from the International Tracing Service.  But first we have one more American conference and DC is a good location as it is home to the National Archives and the Holocaust Museum as well as other resources that I look forward to learning more about. 

I’ve begun to peruse the schedule to figure out what to attend and like many conferences it forces choices between sessions that are often equally appealing.  An excellent film festival accompanies the conference so one could easily attend only films and be quite content. 

A resource center offers many databases that are not normally available without fees and many of my breakthroughs have come at the conference through those resources.  In Chicago an obituary I found gave me information that allowed me to trace a sibling of my great-great grandfather back to Belarus.  At the LA conference the Jewish Chronicle gave me core information on my British and Scottish relatives that subsequently made sense when I gathered one more puzzle piece.  This year I noted that there are several British newspaper archives as well as that very useful Jewish Chronicle to continue my UK search.

The conference also piques my interest in a variety of new areas, continually expanding my knowledge base and sending me off in new directions.  At the last conference I learned how to create search engines that I incorporated into my Shtetlink websites.  I first became interested in learning Russian from a conference workshop a few years ago and later became intrigued with social and political history from a historian’s lecture.  At the last conference I attended a workshop on creating family histories through interviews and committed to doing one in the following year.  With twelve completed between my Jewish Identity & Legacy project and my Radom project, I knocked that one out of the ballpark.  The presenter from last year is now doing a seminar on using visual images as part of family stories, something I know a little about as an artist.  He’s asked to include one of my paintings in his talk so I’ll have to attend that one.

The conference is also a good opportunity to meet with genealogy friends, both old and new.  As I do two Shtetlinks, I frequently am contacted for information by others researching family from those towns.  The conference will allow me to meet several of my correspondents.

For those of us who have had considerable success in our research the challenge is always where to go from here.  The conference is a good way to break through those logjams through meeting with others and learning of new approaches.  I’m not quite sure where this one will lead, but I’ve learned that if one comes to it eager to learn and curious about new information, the unexpected may just happen.  For more information on the conference see 2011 IAJGS Conference.