There is a wealth of useful free resources online for family researchers. It’s a matter of knowing where to look and, sometimes, brushing up on your computers skills. This session will give you instructions on how to find maps, images, and content for your family history. Once you find the documents you seek, how do you share and protect them? A short overview on conservation methods and supplies.

Cecile (Ceil) Wendt Jensen is a Certified Genealogist and owner of Michigan Polonia, LLC. Author, educator, and researcher, Cecile was born and raised Detroit. In 1998 Ceil began a transition for from public education to genealogy and has become a feature international speaker. She has conducted research in Poland at libraries, civil and diocesan archives, and in local parishes. She is the director of the Polonica Americana Research Institute (PARI) on the historic campus of Orchard Lake, Michigan. Her published articles have appeared in National Genealogical Societies Magazine, Ancestry Magazine, FEEFHS Journal, Polish Genealogical Society of Michigan’s Polish Eaglet, and online with Gen Dobry.

She had authored five books to date: Internet Lesson Plans (1994); Detroit’s Polonia (2006); Detroit’s Mount Elliott Cemetery (2006); Detroit’s Mount Olivet Cemetery (2006); and Sto Lat: A Modern Guide to Polish Genealogy (2010).

Refreshments will be served.

Join us as we hear the sucess stories of three of our members!

Alexandra Goldberg, VP of Programming
Recreating ancestors branch based on the databases of the Warsaw Okopowa Street Jewish Cemetery, JRI Poland and Yad VaShem’s Central Database of Shoah Victims’ Names.

John Kovacs, Past President
What’s in a name? A long search about the mystery about my father and his two brothers having been adopted as adults despite the fact that their loving parents were alive, brought them up and continued to be the most important persons in their lives until they perished in Auschwitz. A long search through archives, museum documents, newspapers, phone books, cemeteries, interviewing strangers and finding unknown relatives provided some of the answers to the mystery.

Stephanie Newman, Editor of Generations
Solving the mysteries of people in three photos given to her over thirty years ago through contacting a little-known relative who furnished information about two different branches of the family. One branch was added utilizing Ancestry.com databases, as well as obituaries from the Detroit Free Press archives over the past ten years.

Sponsored in loving memory of Michael “Mickey” Newman and Dr. Robert M. Galin, DDS (ז”ל)

Samuel Brenner was born on June 2, 1922 in Montréal, Canada. He was 9 months old when his family moved to Detroit, Michigan where he was raised.

As the youngest of six children, ‘Sy’ (taken from his middle name, Seymour) was well-protected by his brothers, Saul and Myer. He was also doted on by his sisters, Fanny, Rae and Clara.

Sy’s father, Morris worked for a steel company during the depression and his mother, Rebecca was a devoted wife and mother. As you can imagine, Sy’s life was somewhat typical as the child of Austrian immigrants.

However, in 1942 his life entered a path that would change him forever. This is when he was drafted into WWII. Brenner went into the 410th Infantry regiment of the 103rd Division. He won a medal for Expert with the M1 rifle. Later he was transferred to the 2nd Battalion medical detachment. It was also during Basic Training that he received his United States Citizenship.

On the night of November 29, 1944, while serving in Southern France, Brenner was wounded and taken prisoner by the Nazis. He was involved in a two week death march from Nothalden, France, in the Vosges Mountains to Ludwigsberg, Germany at the height of the coldest winter in European History.

Sy Brenner will join us via Skype and speak about his experiences as told in his book, The Night I Got Killed. Mr. Brenner integrates humor thoughtfully to keep his audience seated comfortably with lessons of war, stress and the industry of his 43 year profession in sales.

Map to West Bloomfield Public Library

Co-sponsored by the
Jewish Genealogical Society of Michigan

AUDIENCE AWARD WINNER AT SAN FRANCISCO’S 16TH BERLIN & BEYOND FILM FESTIVAL, 2011

Inspired by actual events, REMEMBRANCE depicts a remarkable love story that blossomed amidst the terror of a German concentration camp in 1944 in Poland. In a daring escape, Tomasz, a young Polish prisoner, rescues the life of his Jewish lover Hannah Silberstein. But during the chaos of the end of the war, they are forcibly separated and each is convinced that the other has died. More than thirty years later in New York City, the happily married Hannah believes to have seen her Tomasz in an interview on TV. And she begins to search for him again…

Berman Center for the Performing Arts
JCC West Bloomfield
6600 W. Maple Road
West Bloomfield, Michigan

Germany 2011
In German and Polish with English subtitles
105 Minutes

Buy tickets online and support JGSMI!

Keynote Speaker: Ava Cohn, aka Sherlock Cohn, The Photo Genealogist

Family photos are your most valuable records. But sometimes either you are too close to the photos, or lack the time or expertise to detect and interpret the clues that can further your genealogy research.

Sherlock Cohn has the knowledge to interpret the clues for you.

Ava Cohn, aka Sherlock Cohn, The Photo Genealogist, brings a lifelong fascination with heirloom photographs and a multidisciplinary background to photo dating and interpretation. Read more »

Registration form to follow.

This past summer, Ruth Katsnelson and her family traveled to Prague, Vienna, and Budapest and learned first hand about Jewish history in Central Europe.

Despite the summer heat and crowds, it was a wonderful learning experience. Jewish sites visited date from 13th Century Prague to 20th Century Budapest.

Ruth will share her travel stories and impressions accompanied by numerous photos from her 4000 photo collection.

Ruth Katsnelson is a retired school social worker with a passion for geneaology and Jewish History. She is married to Gennady, a former Soviet citizen, and has two teen-aged daughters, one in college and one in high school. She teaches Judaics at Temple Israel Religious School.

Refreshments will be served.

Photo © SNWEB.ORG Photography, LLC 

Created on the foundation of Clarence M. Burton’s private library, the Burton Historical Collection (BHC) incorporates original documents, genealogical materials, a Rare Book Collection, the Ernie Harwell Sports Collection, and a sizable image collection. Read more about the Collection and its holdings here.

• Car pooling:
  Meet at the Plaza Deli at 5:15 PM
  Northwestern and 12 Mile
• Not car pooling:
  Drive down on your own
  Meet at the Burton collection at 6 PM
  DPL parking: free in the employee parking lot after 6 PM (the gates may be up earlier, around 5:30 PM);

Cost: free to JGSMI and JHSMI members; $5 non-members; $36 dues may be paid that evening

Contact: Jim Grey (work 248-540-9070; home 248-553-4999; cell 248-739-9070; email gentrex@aol.com or GreyCo@aol.com)

Description
This penetrating documentary about America’s knowledge of the Holocaust during the Second World War dares to ask, “Could the Jews of Europe have been saved?”

Documentary filmmaker Laurence Jarvik boldly confronts this question, exploring the actions and inaction of the Roosevelt Administration and American Jewish leaders and exposing the political tradeoffs that kept the doors closed to Jewish emigrants fleeing the Nazi regime. Requests were made to bomb Auschwitz, set up a Jewish army and construct rescue havens, yet no action was taken.

Containing previously classified information, contemporary interviews and rare newsreel footage, this film is a unique chronicle of important decisions made by the American political and Jewish establishments during World War II. Who Shall Live and Who Shall Die? provides a much needed history lesson for all who are either too young to know, or who were never told the facts.” (Neil Barsky, Jewish Students Press Service).

Critical Acclaim
“A devastating political story!” – Annette Insdorf, The Los Angeles Times

“There”s never been anything quite like this small, spare independent production.” – David Ehrenstein, The Los Angeles Herald Examiner

Director: Laurence Jarvik
Country: U.S.
Genre: Documentary
Type: B&W
Year: 1981
Language: English
Length: 85 mins.

Trochenbrod was a small village in the Ukraine with a large Jewish community of mostly farmers.

And then it disappeared.

First the Soviets invaded the town; then the Nazis turned it into a ghetto. By the end of the war, fewer than 40 Jews from Trochenbrod remained.

Avrom Bendavid-Val’s grandfather and father lived in Trochenbrod, and the two men often spoke of a charming little town far apart from the rest of the world, a place with seven synagogues, a candy store, bakeries, furniture makers, a restaurant, and where life was happy.

Today, Trochenbrod (the setting for Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything is Illuminated, where it is called Trachimbrod) is only dirt and fields. In The Heavens Are Empty, Avrom Bendavid-Val brings it to life.

Join us as JGSMI members share their experiences at the recently held IAJGS Conference on Jewish Genealogy. We’ve picked our favorite and most interesting conference sessions to share with you!