Family Story Finder

The sweep of family history across the generations

A surprising double marriage in London
  • March 1911 - 2020

Rosa Ringel married Pinkas Twiasschor in a borough of London in January 1911, at the same time that Twiasschor's sister wed another Berlin businessman. What was that all about?

Arnaud Clerc
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Joe Liebman’s son made his own name in the Parisian jewelry trade—and carried on the Rue de Saussaye tradition

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

Edith and Gina — the Ringel cousins in London
  • 1938 - 2007

Betty Ringel's two daughters were able to leave Germany before 1938. They were in the twenties and they settled in London.

If walls could talk—75 years in a Parisian villa
  • 1918 - 1992

Insider dealings in the French jewelry trade. Swank cocktail parties for the Nazi elite. A rough-cut Jewish jeweler and his ebullient new wife. Where Henry Kissinger met Le Duc Tho.

Janis Brenner—a Ratner in motion
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An innovator in modern dance and choreography since breaking in with the Murray Lewis Dance Company in the 1980s. The Ratners moved geographically. Janis moves artistically.

Long Beach—taking in the Klein family
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During the Depression, families helped each other out. The Kleins moved in with the Rubys in Long Beach.

Our family during the Nazi years in Berlin
  • February 1933 - September 1942

During the first five years of Hitler's reign of terror, Jewish families of Berlin faced one repression after another.

Sandy Klein
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A precocious Ratner girl takes on life in midcentury America.

The Klein family in the 1940s
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Leon Klein continued to work for American Spirits as its upstate New York sales representative

The peculiar case of Pinkas Twiasschor
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The estranged husband of Betty Ringel was one of the 1000 war evacuees who found safe haven in the only U.S refugee camp 

Twiasschor family in Berlin
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The Twiasschors settled in Berlin in several waves from Kolomiya, Ukraine

Two Ringel sisters manage on their own
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The Ringel sisters, Betty Twiasschor and Rosa Schattner, lived with their children in adjacent apartments on Lothringerstraße.