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!

Sunday, August 14 through Friday, August 19, 2011 in Washington, DC

For Jewish Genealogists doing research on family in the United States there probably is no better place than in Washington, DC. And in 2011 that opportunity will come to fruition when the 31st IAJGS International Conference on Jewish Genealogy will be hosted in DC by the Jewish Genealogy Society of Greater Washington (JGSGW); this time at the Grand Hyatt Washington from August 14-19. The cost to attend the entire week-long conference is $310; on-site registration beginning August 14 is $340. Register online at dc2011.org.

The beautiful Grand Hyatt is centrally located on H Street between 10th and 11th Streets. A tunnel from the hotel lobby leads directly to the Washington Metro system for ease in traveling about the city to the National Archives, Library of Congress, Holocaust Museum, and other area sights. Chinatown and theatres and conveniently located. The hotel has 888 rooms and 40,000 square feet of conference space which will be dedicated to the conference.

Three of JGSMI’s board members will be presenting at this year’s conference!

Librarian Gayle Saini will be leading two computer workshops:

Corresponding Secretary Diane Freilich will present:

Past President and Cemetery Project Chair Marc Manson will present:

Conference Highlights this Year:

• Rabbi Shmuley Boteach is the pre-conference scholar
• Walking Tours of Jewish Washington ($15)
• Sara Bloomfield, the director of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, will deliver the keynote address to our conference on the opening night
• Embassy Experiences ($15)
• Washington’s highly-regarded Theater J will perform “The Moscows of Nantucket” at the conference hotel ($12)
• Gala ($65): Thursday evening.  David S. Ferriero, Archivist of the United States, will be the featured speaker. After-dinner entertainment provided by the world-renowned Robyn Helzner Trio will captivate us with their charming wit and evocative melodies sung in Hebrew, Yiddish, Ladino, Russian and English from Jewish communities in five corners of the world.

The conference programs will take place on two levels accessible from the main lobby by elevator and escalator. On one level there will be banquet and kosher food facilities, as well as the cyber classroom, resource room, theatre and smaller meeting rooms. On the other level, a massive ballroom will be divided into lecture halls and a comfortable central lounge for networking and relaxing between events. A vendor room will be adjacent to the lecture halls. The cyber café with sufficient computers connected to internet resources will be set up in the central lounge.

For conference attendees who will be staying at the Grand Hyatt, the guaranteed guest room rate has been negotiated at the same rate as the 2008 IAJGS conference in Chicago – $199. As the conference draws closer, the program will be fleshed out to excite and interest the large group of attendees. Events at venues unique to Washington are planned.

Sunday, October 16, 2011 at 5:00 PM, at the West Bloomfield Public Library

Join us as we host Sallyann Amdur Sack, Editor of Avotaynu, The Journal of Jewish Genealogy as part of:

TELLING FAMILY STORIES
A Year Long Initiative by the Jewish studies Program at MSU on Jews, Genealogy and History

American Jews are always telling family stories: in literature, in memoir, in ?lm, through family trees, and around the kitchen table.

What do these stories mean? What do they reveal—and what do they obscure? How do they help individuals understand their community, their ethnic identity, and their origins? How are these stories different from—and how are they similar to—the stories of other Americans? How has American history affected ordinary individuals’ family stories? How have ordinary families’ everyday decisions shaped American history? Telling Family Stories explores the intersections between personal family stories and academic studies of families. The history of American families begins with your family story.