>> From the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. ^M00:00:05 ^M00:00:18 >> Good afternoon and welcome to the African and Middle East Division. I'm Mary-Jane Deeb. I'm Chief of the division and I'm really happy to see you all here and I'm happy that we're having this presentation with the genealogist Daniel Horowitz. This big section is cosponsored with the Jewish Genealogy Society of Greater Washington and we thank the society and its President, Dr. Alpert and its members for their cosponsorship and their continuous interest in our division. In fact, last year the Genealogy Society was also here in May 2016. It was also there for the program on The Blumenthal's of the Upper and Lower Peninsula of Michigan, so we had a program that sort of preceded you in doing this. As most of you already know, our division is made up of three sections, the African, the Middle Eastern, and the Hebraic section and we cover responsibilities for the collections from 78 different countries in Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, the [inaudible] we go off almost to China and sometimes depending on the collections we represent. We also invite scholars and experts who have researched and done work here at the library or elsewhere and who are knowledgeable about areas that we know more generally about and they know more about as experts themselves. Genealogy of course, is of great importance here at the library. We actually have a whole division that deals with local history and genealogy. The library's genealogy collection began as early as 1815, with the purchase of Thomas Jefferson's library. Our digitized materials on US history for example, include first person accounts of 19th century California, the upper Midwest from 1820 to 1910, the Chesapeake Bay area from 1600 to 1925, and other resources for genealogy research. We also have bibliographies, and guides, and local history in genealogy and we have programs such as this one that focus on genealogy. And so now, our very own Sharon Horowitz, no relation I've been told, the Senior Reference Librarian in the Hebraic Section, will introduce Mr. Horowitz and the program, after which you will be enlightened on how to research here at the library and Dr. Alpert will also say a few words, but first let me call on Sharon Horowitz. Thank you. >> Thank you Mary-Jane. Welcome to the African and Middle Eastern Reading Room. On behalf of the Jewish Genealogy Society of Greater Washington and the Hebraic Section, let me thank you all for coming to today's program in celebration of Jewish American Heritage Month. As you heard, I'm Sharon Horowitz and I'm Reference Librarian in the Hebraic Section. The Hebraic Section marks it's beginning in 1912, with the receipt of 10,000 Hebrew books and pamphlets whose purchase was made possible by a gift from New York philanthropist Jacob Schiff. From those humble beginnings, our collections have grown to around 250,000 items in Hebrew, Yiddish, Ladino, Judeo-Persian and other Hebraic script languages. The Hebraic Section also includes an important collection of books in Gz, Amharic and Tigrinya, the languages of Ethiopia past and present. Our section's holdings are particularly strong in the subject areas of Bible and Rabbinic, liturgy, Hebrew language and literature, Responsa and Jewish history. Two of our missions in this division are to publicize our collections and to bring people into the library. One way we accomplish this second goal is by holding lectures and having programs such as the one we are hosting here today. Before I introduce today's speaker, it is my pleasure to call upon Dr. Eugene Alpert, President of the Jewish Genealogy Society of Greater Washington and one of today's program's co-sponsors to say a few words about the society. >> Thank you Sharon. Even though it was stated that Mr. Horowitz and Sharon Horowitz are not related, you never know [laughter]. I went through my life saying I wasn't related to Herb Alpert until I started doing genealogical research. Although I don't know for sure our families came from the same town in Belarus so you never know [laughter]. It is my honor to be here today and to thank the Africa and Middle East division of the Library of Congress for helping to sponsor and support the celebration of Jewish American Heritage Month. I represent the Jewish Genealogy Society of Greater Washington. We are a non-profit organization founded in 1980. Our mission is to help people discover, document, and share their Jewish family history. We have over 300 members. We meet about once a month with a special program and Mr. Horowitz was there yesterday to talk about his work with DNA testing through my heritage and we do help people to help find their relatives around the world using DNA, or using research, or using personal family recollections. We have some membership brochures on the desk over there in the corner. I have one up here so you can always contact us through wwwjgsgw.org. You're really in for a treat today because you're going to be hearing from someone who has given so many different presentations on so many different topics in genealogy. I know Daniel will be probably swamped after the presentation today. He is like a walking encyclopedia of genealogy so you're really going to enjoy the presentation. Thank you very much. ^M00:07:22 [ Applause ] ^M00:07:25 >> Thank you Dr. Alpert, and now a word about our speaker. Mr. Horowitz was a teacher and study guide editor for 15 years of the Family History Project, Searching for my Roots in Venezuela. He was a Founder of the Jewish Genealogy Society of Venezuela. He has a BSC in computer engineering, a specialization in education, and a degree in the management of educational institutions. He's employed at My Heritage since 2006, where he works in product development, customer support, and public affairs, and he speaks at conferences around the world. A resident of Israel since 2005, Mr. Horowitz is on the Boards of the Israel Genealogy Research Association and the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies and others. One item of business before we begin, this event is being videotaped for subsequent broadcasting. There will be a formal question and answer period after the lecture at which the audience is encouraged to ask questions and offer comments. Please be advised that your voice and image may be recorded and later broadcast as part of this event. By participating in the question and answer period, you are consenting to the library's possible reproductions and transmission of your remarks and on your chairs you'll find a flyer about our blogs and Facebook pages from the international collection, so I urge you to look at them and subscribe because you'll be amazed. There are very wonderful things that are being put up on that website. And now, please join me in welcoming Mr. Daniel Horowitz. ^M00:09:08 [ Applause ] ^M00:09:12 >> Thank you, thank you very much. It's really a pleasure and an honor for me to be here after such a wonderful presentation introduction and I really hope that you will learn today more than about my own personal family but the ways and the tasks that I did in order to find them and to research them. I'm going to start with just this very first screen and you can see in the back a family picture, a family picture that probably we all have and we recognize from different houses of relatives that we have visited. I was very young, some day I was very young yes, and I saw this picture and I actually started to ask who these people were. ^M00:10:00 Who is this one, and who is this one, and how they are related, and how I am related to those individuals. I learned very fast that this is my Singer family and immediately I turned out to the salon and I see this object in the middle and I say, "Oh, so we should be famous. Probably we created this machine" and for many years I was very proud in secrecy. Still, some day I asked and they said, "No, this belongs to the other family. Well yes, your mother's side of the family, they were tailor's and your grandfather used this as work", so I very fast learned that we should ask about any object that we have in our houses because there are histories hidden within. Immediately of course, in my mind I made a connection so my mother's family which are from Romania, Chabotaro's [phonetic] are connected to my Singer family who has come from the Ukraine, through this machine. Wonderful story. And then I discover a lot of paperwork. Paperwork made by hand many, many years before by my dear Uncle Lotter [phonetic] from England. By the time I discover this paperwork and I realize that all this scribbling are actually names, dates, and places, my Uncle Lotter passed away and because I was interested in all this family history, all this paperwork passed to me and I'm pretty sure, it wasn't that long about but until today, the first contact people had with genealogy is in this way, probably in a napkin in a restaurant or a family gathering when you start collecting names, dates and places and you think well, there should be a better way to do that than in this blank piece of paper. Well yes, there is for sure and I started using computers, technology. I started to type the names, and the places, and the dates. The technology also allowed me to take the pictures of these individuals so they were coming alive with their faces over there and of course, the technology allowed me to make discoveries. We are discoveries. For example, my great grandfather David Mayer Singer [assumed spelling] was married to Bertha Singer and of course, you would say well obviously, Bertha took the name of her husband when she married. Well no, she was Singer-Singer. Hmm, so when I actually put this into the family tree I realized that they were actually cousins. Their parents were brothers and really, with a very wide family tree in paper was almost impossible for me at the age, I was probably 20 years old, very difficult to realize that these were the same people. So of course, I took more interest in this and I just took my pen and paper, camera, audio recording, video recording, everything I could to interview my relatives and ask questions, questions about things that I already knew but I had to reconfirm, things that I had no idea about it and I wanted to know more, and things that may not be even related and were only in my mind and in my fantasy world. Some of them were confirmed indeed, some of them unfortunately were not real. We didn't belong to the Singer family that had the sewing machine company, no money there. So, when websites came up, I also posted my family tree in a website and that allowed me to share with other people and allow people to see my research and to tell me of course that I was wrong so they thought, but I kept both whatever I have researched and also what they told me and I have then many dates and many places and many names for the same person until I found the paperwork or I made the proper research. I kept all my doors open. But that is a way to collaborate and to find new individuals until one day in 2013, as you can see over there, I received this weird email from somebody called Sattinger. Okay, and Michael Sattinger tells me that he picked on my family tree, he saw a few of my dead individuals that are not privatized in my family tree, and he thinks that we are related. Of course, I get very excited at the beginning, I went to the family tree, I tried to find those names, I found some similarities but of course I said, "I'm sorry Michael, but yes, your people came from the same city Czernowitz in Ukraine from my family but so far I cannot prove that we are related." But then, Michael sends me back and email and says, "Well, I did further research and I am attaching a naturalization paper where you can see all the relationships between the Singers and the Sattingers and this is my great-grandfather David Sattinger, then the name and the dates matches, came out with Haymen Sattinger [assumed spelling] his grandfather" and he tells me a little bit, but this is what he sent me and this is actually the first contact that I have with a paper trail in the US, Petition of Naturalization. I had no idea what this paper was about but of course, I started to read it and I learned a lot of things about not only this person but his family and I found out that David Sattinger indeed was born in Romania, was married to Bertha Singer (not my great grandmother but another one) and of course names repeat across the family tree so that was already a clue. I see other family left back in Czernowitz, I see where and how they immigrated to America, no America was the name of the ship and they came from Hamburg 1913, naturalization intentions, petitions, numbers, couldn't find out what that was for now but then, I have two signatures on this document from witnesses and one is Max Singer, restauranteur in New York and the other one is Samuel Singer, also restauranteur with two addresses. Well, by that time I was already a very techy guy, of course very nice handwriting signature of this person but I have these two addresses so what I immediately did is going into Google, put those addresses into Google Maps, and find out very soon how this house looked. I still am not sure if this is my family but this is nice to have to see the house where they may have been living over there. So of course, by now I'm all excited and I send an email, "Michael this is gold, thank you very much, you opened me a door." Well, what a door because Michael just answered me with a zillions more of documents so I don't have to do any research, documents are just raining down my way, a picture of the vessel, manifest, immigration list, records, and everything, declaration, petition, so for sure I had to do a little bit of homework here. Now, very fast I started to learn something about American immigration and paperwork. There is the Declaration of Intent, which is a court record and it was done mostly immediately after arrival for this period, there is the Petition of Citizenship that has to have five years after the person arrived to the country and requires the witnesses. Remember the two Singer guys that signed up? And then, there is this Certification of Naturalization which since 2006, is centralized by the INS with a form and the Certificate of Arrival, which consists in a fourth document about this paper trail. 1906 to 1956, this is called C files and they are all microfilmed. From 1944 until today it's called the A files and those are not microfilmed, to the best of my knowledge up until today. Oh yes, and you can use the United States CIS.gov research to find the death certificate or the certificate for dead people. ^M00:20:00 This is the family that I put all together through this paperwork. You can see over there David Sattinger that married Bertha Sattinger Singer, father Hein Singer [assumed spelling]. Of course, remember the two brothers that married my great-grandparents? Well, this is a third brother so yes, we are related, we have pictures over there. I have another generation of immigrants coming here and then one little guy, the only and the youngest person from this family. Now, I wanted to learn more about the immigration of this family so immediately I went to the Ellis Island database, the only database I knew about immigration, the famous database about immigration and I typed David Sattinger. No results. Hmm, okay so let me look for one of the second generation, Herman Sattinger. Then, I got two Herman Sattingers. Well, maybe one is my guy in 1920 and the other one is another guy. Let's start exploring. Oh yes, to do that you need to log in and create an account. Well it's free, no problem, let's do it and then it will allow you to actually see the record, see more information. You can actually purchase a nice copy of the immigration record. Not really my interest, I have all the text over there, all the information that I want. He's single, coming from Romania, what he speaks, the vessel that he was traveling, manifest line number. Hmm, okay let me see the manifest. I'm a genealogist, I trust you but I want to see the records so yeah, I can right up there see the ship manifest, I can see ship information, annotation, text passenger list. This is the manifest, here they are, and again an address in New York. Now, do you remember 635 North in New York? That is the information, the address that was in the first naturalization paper that I received so this guy definitely is the one that I'm looking for. Now, what about the second one, 1950? We're having only two individuals here, let's look for it. I went into the passengers, I see the document in the registry and I don't know if you noted something weird with this record. First of all 1950, well I didn't know a lot about American history by now but probably he came through Ellis Island in 1950, but definitely I know from my childhood that Pan American World Airlines was not a ship [laughter]. Well, and then I learned that although Ellis Island was in charge of processing all the ships coming through New York in a period of time, also kept record for planes coming to New York and I learned also that people were put in buses, transported from the airport to Ellis Island, processed in Ellis Island and that is the reason why this flight has his passenger records down there. Now, this still doesn't answer me if this is my guy or not but just by zooming out and reading the whole list, I can read and see that this plane came from Venezuela. Did that ring any bells to you? Yes, I was born there, my family was here so this guy was also there visiting my family over there. More than that, because I'm from Venezuela I know that the identity cards in Venezuela numbers are very similar to the one that is written over there, starting with a V. It means that it's a Venezuelan guy but very interestingly, he was statusless so the guy came into the United States in 1920, it seems never nationalized or got a residence here in the states, flew to Venezuela for what I thought was visiting my family, got an ID over there, and then came back to the United States without any nationality or citizenship. Very strange, but definitely yes, this is my guy. Now, I decided to go with a wider search and look only for the last name. After all, how many Sattingers can me? No worries, I did the same search for the Singers, very fast came back to the Sattingers [laughter]. Well, I found also very interesting information. You remember Bertha Singer Sattinger with her daughter Yetti or Yetta [assumed spelling] Friedman Sattinger from maiden name? Here I found those two ladies coming into America on the same day, on the same ship. They must be my people so yup, for sure I pull out the manifest from the ship, I see that they're listed right there. No other relative, Sattingers, coming with them. Of course, then I browse all these ship manifests for Singer, Sattinger, or any other related. No, they came alone. The mother and the daughter came, mother was 48, the daughter was 16. It gave me the address back in what I said by then Romania where they are coming from, everything and just to make it easier to read, here you have all the transcription of the information. So I decided to use another search engine and try to look for Bertha Sattinger and for sure, I went to the 1930 United States Federal Census because if she came in the 20th, the next census for sure was the 1930 and indeed, I find here over there listed with her husband David Sattinger and I have all the information. They are still living in Brooklyn, New York, the district and the address matches all the places that I had from the paperwork. I could see the census page right there, David, Bertha, Yetti. Hmm...do you see who are below the Sattingers? They are my Singers so not only they are related, they are living at least close enough if not one on top of the other. The next step was of course after 1930, 1940. No record hmm...strange things are happening here. Well, probably they died right? People die, what can we do so I wanted to find their graves. Very famous website, I put over there the name that I was looking for and very fast I get the information in Mount Hebron Cemetery in Flushing, Queens. They stick to New York, good guys. Of course, very frustrating, no photo of the tombstone. I already said I'm a genealogist. I trust you but I want to see the records with my own eyes so I found out the website of Mount Hebron Cemetery. They very graciously have a search engine where I can put the last name and the first name of the person. By now, I look only for last names and not only Bertha, which you already know, not only Herman which you already met, but now we have an Ernestina buried in if not the exact location very close, for sure on the same plot so pretty much sure this is all my family. Of course, I see that there is a link, I try to hit the link. No images, too bad. I know I can go to the New York Department of Records and ask for a death certificate. It's really inexpensive, it has a lot of information, but there is only one problem and no, it's not that I'm in Israel and this is in New York because through the internet you can still ask for the records and get it but it takes time and we genealogists are very impatient. we want everything and we want it now so I did fill that but in the meantime I went to other websites to try to look for more information. So I go to the birth, marriage, and death category. ^M00:30:00 I type by Bertha Sattinger information, for sure I found her over there, I found the find a grave record, I found Jewish chain information about her but I also find her in the death certificate record with a lot of information but no image. Okay, at least I am one step further on my research getting this information but then I learn from a friend that all those images were microfilmed by the Mormons by Family Search and they are also available through their catalog. They have a lot of records. They also have the census' available on their website from your house without any problem but the death records, those you need to go to the library in order to see it and copy them. So well what's the problem? Let's go to the library. I'm fortunate enough to visit Salt Lake City. The Family History Library there is what I consider the Disneyland for genealogists. They have over there every record and every microfilm that they have ever scanned and digitized and if not, because you're asking for a very rare microfilm, no worries, you do a petition, in 24 hours they copy it from their vault and they bring it up to you and you can go and scan it so this is what I did. I looked for the microfilm and there are 11 or 12 corridors just like that, you open the drawer, you take out the microfilm and you sit on one of the microfilm readers and you start making exercise. Well, very soon I found the page that I was looking for and faster than what the New York Office could give me, I have the death certificate of Bertha Sattinger, married to David Sattinger, with all the information, his father Haim Singer from Austria, her mother maiden name, and the signature, the address, everything I know how she died now. Now, she died, she passed away. I already know that Herman that you have over here also passed away. By the year, I assume everybody else also passed away but this has this little guy down the line, probably the only living individual that I know from this family. So I knew that he was married with Sara, he had to be about 65 years old, maybe living in New York because if the family didn't move for so long why he would move? Well again, I went to Rev Google, as my son says, and I type Solo Sattinger, age approximately 60, and I came up with this White Pages website where it tells me that he lives in 1753 63rd Street in Brooklyn, New York. Now how good is your memory? Did it ring any bells? >> Yes. >> Yes, this is the same address from the naturalization record that I had before. Bingo, I have my guy right here. Now of course, I could also go to other places and check his criminal records, his bank account, and all kind of things that don't mind for me, I'm a genealogist not a private investigator so I have here all the information. Now very curiously, they give me the possible related. Now, I have no idea who is Alexandra Sattinger but look here, Herman pops up again. Good, I'm on the right track! Yup, so same Herman that was burned on the cemetery over there so again, Google gives me the picture of the house where he lives and My Heritage gives me the opportunity to travel do New York and what do I do? Ding dong. No, of course I talk first on the phone and I invite myself yes, and then I met this wonderful guy, Solo Sattinger Singer. He gives me all this information, he shows me all the pictures. Of course, he has the very black and white Singer family picture that was passed to every descendent, that was like the sealing that he belongs to my family but then he said, "Do you know Carl Wolf?" No. Well, this guy Carl Wolf lives in California and he's a descendent of someone in the family, you should contact him. Of course I'm going to contact him, give me the phone number. He gave it to me, I have all the information so now I'm in New York, I have some time and I have a car. What would you do? Well, my wife will go shopping sure. I go to the cemetery, remember Flushing, Queens right there, my family's waiting for me so let's go. And then of course I get to the cemetery, I go to the office, I ask for the Sattingers. They gave me names that are not listed on the website, the names that they have on the website are not listed in the office. Very clearly they have no idea who they have buried over there and then of course they tell me well you know, it's 4:15 and we close the cemetery at five. If you're not out by five, you will need to jump the fence. Well that's not a problem but the car is going to be a little bit of a challenge so I have two options, either go to the plot and look for my relative and then take pictures for the cemetery of the tombstones or pull out my smartphone, pull out my billion graves application, and start taking pictures of every tombstone that I see. Now, this is not the first time that I do this, I normally do this in Israel. I can do between 400 and 450 tombstones in an hour very easy, very fast. I will strongly suggest you to try it so I have about 40 minutes to take pictures and take my car out of there. I run into the whole area, I don't read the tombstones, I just make sure I capture all the stone in the picture, I surround the stone, make sure that there's nothing on the sides, I take out a little bit of the bushes. Now this is my first experience also with a US cemetery and this is the first time that I see all this pillars and the entrance of the plot and I learned a little bit of how Jewish groups bought this piece of land and they made a collaborative office to put money into it and benefit everybody over there. And there I start, afterwards of course back home, I start reading those names and do you see those names over there? Singer, Singer, Max Singer, Max restauranteur, also here involved in the community and of course, after I looked into my pictures I have over the Bertha Sattinger, I have David Abram Sattinger, I have Herman, we already know him but then I have Regina, I have Sally, I have Joseph, I have Enya, I have everybody or almost everybody in my family over there. Of course, now if I go into Billion Graves, I can look for more records, I can find other people buried not only in that cemetery but also in other ones and they very great advantage is that if I want to go back, because remember I just took pictures, I had no idea where the location of this stone was. I have the picture with the information on the Billion Graves, it will mark exactly the geolocation of that stone so next week when I'm in New York, guess what I'm going to do? Yes, I'm going to visit the cemetery and I'm going to light a candle in those stones. Now, back to Carl Wolf. Who was this guy? Well, you already knew my great-grand uncle Haim Singer so he had a daughter Hencia Singer, you just saw her tombstone right there so she had also a couple of sons and daughters and I realized that I was actually missing one person here. They have a third kid, a girl in this kid, Sally Singer Wolf. ^M00:40:01 She married Jacob Wolf and they had a son, Carl Wolf so let's get in touch with this guy. I phone him, he's in California, I woke him up. Yes, there's a time difference between New York and California [laughter]. Curious the things you learn with genealogy. He was very gracious to give me all the information. Look how beautiful my family tree looks now. I have pictures, I have dates, I have places, I have everything over there and of course I have more people to research. And then, I went to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum because I learned that all these people didn't leave with the other part of the family, they were in the Holocaust. They were survivors of the Second World War and they were registered somehow, or at least I thought, in the Holocaust Museum Memorial and there's another place which I definitely encourage you to research. The only caveat here is that for better research you should do it physically and there's only 11 countries, meaning 11 places where you can do that. Well, actually 12, in Israel we cheat a little bit. In Israel, you should go to Yad Vashem, which is the Holocaust Museum over there but what not everybody knows is that the Jerusalem one everybody knows, huge museum, huge research over there but there's another branch in a little city called [inaudible] and over there you can go of course, nothing like the Library of Congress but they have computers and they have access to this database and for sure, I went here in Washington and I found Joseph Singer with Henya Singer in a collection named over there. Now, these are what they call DP camp cards meaning, after the war people went to these camps. They were catalogued, they were recorded, not only themselves but also the people that were together in the family so here I learned that Joseph Singer was also accompanied by Nora Malley Wolf Jacob hmm, name starts to appear, Regina and [inaudible]. I found also the dates match, the people match. I found the Nora Singer hmm. Same date okay, that's weird but that's a name I have and then of course I went back to immigration records because I knew that they died here and I found an Anora Singer so it's Henya, it's Nora, it's Anora [assumed spellings] or depending the day of the week she changed her name or probably somebody typed it wrong, but the dates all were together the same, the address was the same so definitely yes, this is my relative so keep an eye on the names. Names change and I'm not taking about last names, I'm talking about first names. So, I have my family here and if you see the people that accompany this Joseph Singer guy I see Jacob and Sally, just as my family tree and Carl gave it to me and I found Beryl, Tepera and Regina [assumed spellings] right there, and I found the cards for the Hollenberg family and Beryl and Tepera right there. Regina Tepera you remember from the cemetery that I took the picture. Now Beryl, it's totally a mystery. He was not buried over there. I haven't been able to find him in any other cemetery. Nobody knows what happened and if you see and if you notice, there is a discrepancy with the last name. He left Europe with the name Hollenberg and he was recorded in the United States with the name Tepera. Hm.. this is a mysterious guy. If you see it somewhere around please let me know, I'm still looking for him. Now of course, the more information I put in my family tree, the more records, the more matches, the more connections I do with other people and with other families. My Heritage is very useful for pointing me in the right direction and of course, I don't take anything for granted. I like to see the records so I go over and I researched all those collections right here and this is only a sample of the US collections where my family is recorded. This is a sample of Bertha Singer and Sattinger, how they appear. You can see the pictures, you can see other family trees that also have the same information. Most of them, my own cousins that are stealing my information but I'm fine with it as long as they said it's coming from me. Now, I also have another branch of my family that I would like to share with you and this is the Menchel family. Now, this family came a little bit earlier to the United States and a little bit different records and experience here. Of course, I'm already kind of an expert with immigration records in the United States, I know the index back and forth, I know the numbers and I very easily find Tessie Menchel and only because she was registered with her married last name of course, because otherwise I would never find her. Well, this is the Petition of Naturalization, you already know those type of documents and if I zoom in, you can see that she was known as Pese Grun. That's why I said I would never find her if she was not kind enough to mention in the same document that [inaudible] and Tessie Menchel is actually the same person and of course, a wealth of information again for me. I have dates, I have places, I have addresses. I'm not surprised already Bronx, New York, the same streets, the same places but I have here also the kids, Donald no, not that one this is another one and the other one Sidney yes, thanks you yes Sidney and Donald with their birth dates and all the information so let's look more into Pese Grun now, I know the name she came before and I have the immigration record and this is another wealth of information. I have Pese Grun and I can see that somebody wrote over there Green, and at certain point somebody decided to correct it to Grun, Grun/Green is actually the same thing. It all depends on the language and the pronunciation and I find more people here. Pese was 18, was a child when she arrived with the mother 48, but she had also two siblings over there and if I scroll to the side of the record, I find actually more information. I know Tessie's grandfather Lev Green, I told you Green/Grun is the same thing. He was left back in Poland, I guess alive for this time of the year. Of course all these numbers, I'm already an expert. It means all the naturalization and petition so I can go to the index and I can get all the information from there. Now remember that she was married to Abram Menchel and of course I found him in the 1940 census with all the information where he lived, the relatives and everybody over there and I found that Sidney in 1940, was 14 years old and Donald was seven. Now I'm very bad with math but I can tell you that if they were 14 and seven, especially Sidney in 1940, by the time of the war he was already available for military duty. So, I went to the National Archive because I heard that they had a wonderful collection of military records so I scan over there, I read all the information, I make a few phone calls, send a few emails and very fast I found that indeed Sidney Menchel was in the military since 31 of October 1943, until at least 31 of January 1945. What he did, he was a raider operator and he was stationed here in the United States so he never went back to Europe to fight. ^M00:50:06 Now if I am already in New York, I don't know how many of you have the knowledge of this, Risen Initiative, Reclaim the Records. New York and other places are being requested to submit those indexes to make them pubically available. My very good friend I have to share, Brook Ganz [inaudible] she is managing this initiative, getting the images transcribed and available to everybody on the internet. She received a few years directly on digital so she made this search page where I just put Donald Menchel, I heard that he was married to Barbara and there she is right on the first line, Barbara Winograd [assumed spelling] with Donald Menchel, married in Brooklyn 1957, and how wonderful! This record is more than 50 years so it's actually open and I already filed a petition to get a copy of the certificate. Now of course, I have many, many more family in the United States but my time is limited because I have a job, because I have another family to take care of and because I'm traveling a lot but don't worry, I'm pretty sure that with a little help of the technology and with a little help of other genealogists and researchers, I will be able to keep track of all this family, all these events that happen across the United States and for sure my very most excited dream is to keep traveling and keep visiting family and knowing those different people over there. Now, here are the techniques to research data I would like you to adopt, or suggestions. First, build your family tree especially with good technology. I have no problem if you start with a pen and paper but move as fast as you can to a good technology. Contact and interview your relatives. Those that you already know please, make phone calls, send emails, the sooner the better because you know people, as I said, life is short. Travel the country. Well, if you can, enjoy. If not, internet is still a good way to at least virtually traveling. Google has not only a search engine but also the places, the Google Maps that you can see where your relative lived. Try to encourage family reunion, which is what I do in every place that I'm going, try to contact my family and gather together to have more information. Share and collaborate with them, tell them what you know, tell them what you don't know, and I'm pretty sure they are going to start telling you stories and facts that you never heard before. It's also very convenient to invite them afterwards to the family tree so they can see. Depending on how many individuals you have in your family tree, depending on how much information you have researched you can either allow them to touch and collaborate. In my case, 7,000 individuals and more than 30 years of research, nobody touches it. You want to add something not a problem, send it to me and I will be more than happy not only to add it but also with the proper source citation, this was given to me by this person, on this date, in this way. And last thing for sure, subscribe to forums and shout out your research. Every time you have the opportunity, every time you have a gathering, tell everybody the last names, the names, your brick walls, the things that you're researching. You never know, as it was said already at the beginning of the presentation, you never know from where and how your brick wall is going to be broken and you're going to discover a wonderful wealth of information over there. So thank you very, very much for having me here again. Now, you have also met my US Jewish family. I really hope that you picked on some of the tips and the research that I have done and you can apply to your family and hopefully you also will find a lot of your family members. Thank you very, very much and I can answer any question that you want. Yes, go ahead. ^M00:55:02 [ Applause ] ^M00:55:08 >> Yes sir? >> I noticed you didn't mention the Jewish online burial records and you didn't mention [inaudible]. Have you had any- >> The question was that I didn't mention the JOBAR or Jewish World Burial Records and JewishGen- >> No, Jewish Data. >> Jewish Data, that's a separate website so let's focus first. Jewish Data, that's an easy one yes, it's a website that collects Jewish information for sure, it's subscribed, it's a paid membership. Some societies some places have it for fee. I did research over there including the Library of Congress, didn't know that, thank you very much for letting me know. I did search over there but didn't find unfortunately I would say a lot of good stuff. Yes, I found the burials and the places but no images and just the numbers or the places depending for the cemeteries. Now, JewishGen and the Jewish World Burial Records Project again yes, I did find a little bit over there, not always with images. I mentioned actually I did mention JewishGen when I was searching through Ancestry because there is a partnership and in Ancestry you can find records from over there. The only reason that I didn't mention it here was because of how I built my presentation. I for sure used them and have a few pieces and beads of my family gathered from there. >> Abraham Lubble [phonetic] is putting on gravestones on Jewish Data and I'm learning, if we're talking about the same thing, any time we find information about graves on Jewish Data, there will be a photograph about the grave. >> Okay so the comment is that photos are being placed in Jewish Data. You mentioned the creator of the website Abraham Lubble, I'm familiar with him and again, I didn't mention a lot of other places and websites available over there. I have to be constrained on the time of the presentation but even more than that just go ahead and Google, you will find a lot of other resources there. Yes? >> You mentioned family reunions. Have you had a family reunion with US family? >> I mention family reunions and yes, I had one in New York with the Menchels. Actually, one of the cousins lives here in DC and I will meet him today. Then yes, Carl Wolf, of course I met him also in California. Interesting fact, I didn't find Carl's mother's burial although by that time she was 102, and the reason is because today she is 104 and kicking so yes, every place I go I try to meet with my family. Unfortunately there has not been a huge United States family reunion, distance here is quite big, but definitely I would encourage you to contact everyone. Yes sir? ^M00:58:58 [ Inaudible Question ] ^M00:59:15 >> So the question is how, if and where I document all the stories that I get from the families so yes, the first thing that I do is I ask permission and immediately I pulled this small device where we used to make calls with it so now I use it to record video and audio the conversations and then I go over it and I transcribe the pieces and the data that I collect for the family tree for the facts but I also have the digital recording uploaded to the website and then I tag that recording with the people mentioned in that recording. ^M01:00:00 The next step of course will be to transcribe the whole conversation and the whole history. Normally, software and websites have places to do that. You have other websites and other software that are specially dedicated into family history recording and you can use them. It all depends on what do you feel comfortable with and you should try a few and you should work with whatever feels more comfortable but definitely record, save, and share for sure. Yes madam? >> Did you finally get an identity for every person in this picture? >> Finally yes for sure, I have the names and the relationship of everyone in this family including that little baby boy that actually gave me the year and the date that the picture was taken. Yes indeed, thank you. Yes madam? >> Were you able to find out which of your family died in the Holocaust in Europe? >> Family that died in the Holocaust yes, both the Holocaust Museum here in Washington, both Vad Vashem also in Israel which you can very easily access through the website, they have pages of testimony over there. I found the people that perished over there mostly reported by those survivors but yes, I could go a little bit further into Europe and again, thankful enough I also visited the places where we lived and managed to gather the information firsthand from there so yes, it is possible. >> [Inaudible] family in the states with DNA tests? >> If my family have taken a DNA test, of course they did and you know how was the second person? Remember that 104 year old lady, well she suffers Alzheimer's, she has no idea who she is and why this guy was trying to open her mouth to scrub her inner cheek but yes, we have her DNA, we have Carl Wolf's DNA as well and I'm encouraging everybody in my family to take a DNA test. The DNA has proven that this is really my family just in case with all of the paperwork was not enough, yes I found relationship between second cousins twice removed and all of this kind of difficult relationships proven by DNA so yes definitely another resource. Yes madam. ^M01:02:52 [ Inaudible Question ] ^M01:02:56 >> The number of the family members I have found? Well, my family tree has now 7,000 individuals, a little bit more than 7,000 individuals but I cheated a little bit. I had also to put boundaries. If somebody marries into the family I may or may not put their parents and that's it. For example, you saw the example of Tessie Green. I have her although I don't have the records, I don't have her grandparents or the siblings and it's just more a personal choice than other. I would say probably a couple hundred I found through research with documents, interviews and immediate family members I didn't know, although the big part of the family I knew from my childhood in Venezuela. Yes please? >> Thank you very much this is very exciting. I had a question, where does Mr. Horowitz come in because you talk about the Singers and the Sattingers but you didn't go into Horowitz. >> Where does my Horowitz come from? My Horowitz came from the town of Chernowicz, same as the Singers. Actually, my grandfather Horowitz married my grandmother Singer in Chernowicz, but then they immigrated either to Venezuela or to Israel. They were not in the United States. I also have done a lot of extensive research about them in Chernowicz, in Venezuela, in Israel. A branch also went with my Uncle Lotter to England and I have found it over there but for some reason they didn't come to United States. One more question and I can stay for later on if you want. Yes madam. >> Do you have a resource for those organizations that you find when the gates to a cemetery, the name- >> A research for the organizations on the cemeteries? I will suggest JewishGen for sure. JewishGen has an extensive list of burial societies and plots that were bought for these societies. There is a word in German [inaudible] thank you very much, it escaped my mind. That's the word that you are going to look for the, the [inaudible] but yes, just Google JewishGen, they should bring you the information. ^M01:05:52 [ Inaudible Comment ] ^M01:05:57 >> Excellent, it was mentioned the [inaudible] Institute in New York has a list of all this. There are really multiple lists of resources out there. I just took a very few, the ones that gave me the most amount of information in my research and the most interesting pieces for my research but definitely you cannot leave any stone unturned to find your relative. Thank you very, very much again for being here and enjoy the rest of your day. ^M01:06:30 [ Applause ] ^M01:06:34 >> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at loc.gov. ^E01:06:40