[Genealib] Family History and the Holocaust: A Day of Learning

[Joy Rich]

"Family History and the Holocaust: A Day of Learning"

The Jewish Genealogical Society will present an all-day seminar, "Family History and the
Holocaust: A Day of Learning," on Sunday, April 22nd. Five speakers will cover a wide
range of Holocaust-related themes. The speakers are:

** NOLAN ALTMAN, Coordinator of JewishGen's Holocaust Database. Mr. Altman has presented
his "How to Document and Research Your Family History" seminar to a university Holocaust
history class and numerous adult education classes. He is Technical Coordinator for
JewishGen's JOWBR (cemetery burial indexing) project as well as Project Coordinator for
the presentation of the English translation of the Deblin Yizkor book in an online format.
Mr. Altman has had articles published in these magazines and journals: "Stammbaum,"
"FEEFHS Journal," "Shemot," "Avotaynu," "Dorot: The Journal of the Jewish Genealogical
Society," and "The Jewish Magazine."

** ZVI BERNHARDT, Assistant Director of the Hall of Names and Deputy Director of the
Reference and Information unit at Yad Vashem. A member of the development team for the
user interface for The Central Database of Holocaust Victims' Names, Dr. Bernhardt has
been instrumental in the provision of Yad Vashem's interdepartmental and interdisciplinary
services to the public. He is also credited with administering the digitization of names
of Shoah victims from Yizkor books, resulting in the addition of 250,000 names to the
Central Database. As Yad Vashem's liaison to genealogical organizations, Dr. Bernhardt has
addressed numerous genealogy workshops and seminars and has worked closely with JewishGen,
the 24th IAJGS Conference on Jewish Genealogy in 2004, and groups in Israel, such as the
Tapuz Family Roots forum.

** JAN TOMASZ GROSS, Norman B. Tomlinson Professor of War and Society at Princeton
University. Dr. Gross was born in Warsaw and is now an American citizen. He has held
academic appointments at the University of Haifa, New York University, University of
Vienna, University of Paris, and Yale and Harvard universities, among many others. He is
the recipient of many honors and awards, including a Senior Fulbright Research Fellowship,
a fellowship from IREX (International Research & Exchanges Board), a Rockefeller
Humanities Fellowship, the Distinguished Humanist Award from Ohio State University, and
the Order of Merit, Knight's Cross from the Polish Republic in 1996. Dr. Gross was
nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award for non-fiction in 2002 and a
National Book Award in 2001 from the National Book Foundation. Among his dozens of
publications are his widely discussed book, "Neighbors: Destruction of the Jewish
Community in Jedwabne, Poland," Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2001,
and his most recent book, "Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland After Auschwitz. An Essay in
Historical Interpretation," Random House: New York, 2006.

** PETER LANDÉ, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum volunteer extraordinaire. Mr.
Landé was born in Germany and came to the United States in 1937. He was a State Department
Foreign Service Officer from 1956 to 1988. Over the past fifteen years, he has collected
and processed numerous lists of Holocaust victims and survivors for the United States
Holocaust Memorial Museum and JewishGen databases. These combined databases now total more
than four million names. In 2001, Mr. Landé received the International Association of
Jewish Genealogical Societies' Lifetime Achievement Award for his work on Holocaust
records.

** ROBERT MOSES SHAPIRO, Assistant Professor of East European Jewish Studies, Holocaust
Studies and Yiddish in the Department of Judaic Studies at Brooklyn College of the City
University of New York. Dr. Shapiro has been a Fellow of the Max Weinreich Center of the
YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and both a Fulbright Fellow and a Yad Ha-Nadiv Fellow
at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He has edited two volumes: "Holocaust Chronicles:
Individualizing the Holocaust through Diaries and Other Contemporaneous Personal
Accounts," Hoboken, NJ: Yeshiva University Press in Association with KTAV, 1999, and "Why
Didn't the Press Shout? American and International Journalism during the Holocaust,"
Hoboken, NJ: Yeshiva University Press in Association with KTAV, 2003. In 2006, Indiana
University Press in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum,
published Dr. Shapiro's translation from Yiddish, Polish, German, and Hebrew of Isaiah
Trunk's classic "Lodz Ghetto: A History." Dr. Shapiro is currently completing the editing
of his translation from Polish of the new catalog of the Ringelblum Archive of the Warsaw
Ghetto at the Jewish Historical Institute in Poland. Other projects under way include
translations of diaries from the Lodz ghetto.

The seminar will take place from 9:15 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. at Hebrew Union College, located
at 1 West 4th Street at Broadway in Greenwich Village, Manhattan. Registration starts at
9:15 a.m. The first lecture starts at 9:45 a.m. Further details about the lecture topics,
along with a complete time schedule of the speakers, will be announced on the JGS website
at http://www.jgsny.org/dayoflearning.htm .

The early registration fee is $25 for JGS members registering by March 31st; late
registration costs $30. The early registration fee is $35 for non-members registering by
March 31st; late registration costs $40. A kosher buffet lunch is included.

The seminar takes the place of JGS's regularly scheduled April meeting. The last two
seminar lectures will be open to all JGS members. Payment of a registration fee is not
required to attend those two lectures. The fee for non-members for the two lectures is
$10.

The seminar flyer and registration form can be printed out from
http://www.jgsny.org/Family_History_and_the_Holocaust_Flyer.pdf .

If you have any questions about the seminar, you can e-mail dayoflearning at jgsny.org or
call (212) 294-8326.


Joy Rich
Editor, "Dorot: The Journal of the Jewish Genealogical Society"
http://www.jgsny.org