Family Story Finder

The sweep of family history across the generations

Bilingual blogging—my French collaborator
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Historical blogging makes strange bedfellows. A French jewelry critic and I were both interested in the history of the Clerc jewelry business during the Nazi era

Margot Dränger's survival story
  • June 1939 - January 1945

Helga's second cousin suffered unimaginable traumas in and around Krakow from 1939 to 1945. She survived and gave testimony later in life

Stan finds love outside of a 20-block radius
  • April 1946 - June 1947

Home from the war, Stan Ruby was a graduate student in physics at Columbia University. Helga Ringel was a smart, pretty war refugee from Berlin