Family Story Finder

The sweep of family history across the generations

Betty Wohlgemuth's last years
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Following Isaak's death in 1929, Betty lived comfortably in the cosmopolitan Bavarian Quarter—until the Nazi repressions made life unbearable

From Rezitsa to Rostov
  • 1875 - 1892

Sholom and Sophie Tulbowitz left their ancestral town in the 1870s to settle for 20 years in Russia near Rostov-on-Don.

Ghosts of Weißensee—the cemetery played on
  • 1929 - 1942

How did Betty Katz meet her end in February 1942?

Louis Katz of Kolberg
  • 1839 - 1918

Betty’s father was a prosperous merchant who came to Pomerania from East Prussia.

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.

Ratner family in Albany
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Rearing eight children in Albany’s Third Ward

Ratner family passage to America
  • July 1890 -

Abe Blokh became Abe Ratner to avoid conscription and get out of Russia. With his young wife and her mother, they voyaged from Bremen to Leeds to New York

Rose Ratner's scar—the 1881 pogrom in Rostov
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The Tulbowitz tavern in Novocherkassk was overrun by Cossacks during the Rostov pogrom of 1881

Shtetl life in Russian Rezhitsa
  • 1790 - 1875

Today it is Rezekne in Latvia. In the 19th century, it was the village in Vitebsk Province where our Tulbowitz clan lived in the old Yiddish way

The Wohlgemuths in Danzig
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Before moving his family to Berlin in 1912, Isaak Wohlgemuth prospered as a mover in Danzig. His family roots were in nearby West Prussia.

Tulbowitz in the USSR—an alternative history
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If Sholom Tulbowitz had gone to Dvinsk instead of Rostov, as his cousin did, his Ratner descendants might have grown up in Perm instead of Albany.