Sunday, February 12, 2012 at 10:30 AM, at the Holocaust Memorial Center

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.

Sunday, March 25, 2012 at 10:30 AM, at the Holocaust Memorial Center

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.

Sunday, April 29, 2012 at 6:15 PM, at the West Bloomfield Public Library

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

Sunday, April 29, 2012 at 8:00 PM
Berman Center for the Performing Arts

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!

Sunday, June 24, 2012
11:00 am, Adat Shalom
$35 per person

This is a glatt kosher event supervised by the Council of Orthodox Rabbis of Greater Detroit. Click here to see menu.

Clued-In: Case Studies from Sherlock Cohn, The Photo Genealogist
Speaker: Ava Cohn aka Sherlock Cohn, The Photo Genealogist

Step aside NCIS and CSI! There are no greater detectives than Jewish genealogists when it comes to loving the hunt for information about our ancestors, and no greater tool to find out about the people and the personalities in our family trees than through our family photographs.

In this fun and informative talk, Sherlock Cohn, the Jewish genealogy sleuth, will explore how and why it is important to find the clues our ancestors left for us in their photographic portraits. The program leads off with a definition of Photo Genealogy and explodes common myths about dating Jewish photos. Participants will learn what clues an expert looks for in photos, how to organize your approach to dating and interpreting photos and how to match photo information with vital records to tell the stories within the photos.

In the second half of the program, Sherlock will present two of her challenging cases, “The Case of the Mistaken Date” and “The Case of the Immigration Snafu.” In the true cerebral style of a Basil Rathbone character, she’ll offer examples of how accurate photo dating, identification of individuals in our photos, knowledge of fashion and decorative arts, and the process of matching photographs with vital records can illuminate our relatives’ lives and the social context in which their photos were taken. Attendance is Elementary, my dears (though all levels are welcome).

Attendees are invited to bring one photo for her to evaluate, as we will have time for Ava to look at between 8 and 10 photos. Limit one photo per person, unless a second photo is brought for the purposes of identifying the person in the first photo. Selection will be done by lottery at the event. Originals are preferred. If the photo is in a frame, be sure to bring it inside its frame, particularly if there is a photographer’s mark or written information on the frame.

Menu
~ Beverages ~

• Assorted Juices: Orange Juice, Cranberry, Apple
• Decaf & Regular Coffee, Hot Tea
• Pitchers of Water, Lemons, Limes & Ice

~ Lunch Buffet ~

• Tuna Salad, Egg Salad
• Sliced Cucumber, Tomato & Bermuda Onion
• Pareve Cream Cheese, Assorted Preserves & Compotes
• Assorted Bagels & Challah Rolls
• Fresh Cut Fruit
• Sour Cream Coffee Cake & Assorted Pastries

Proposed Slate of Officers

Sunday, January 15, 2011 at 10:30 AM, at the Holocaust Memorial Center

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.

Tuesday, December 6, 2011 from 6-8 PM
Burton Historical Collection
Detroit Public Library
5201 Woodward Avenue, Detroit, MI 48202

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)

Sunday, December 18, 2011 at 10:30 AM, at the Holocaust Memorial Center

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.

Join us as we co-sponsor Avrom Bendavid-Val, author of The Heavens Are Empty at the 60th Annual Diamond Jewish Book Fair.

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.

Sunday, September 11, 2011 at 10:00 am, Holocaust Memorial Center

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!