Family Story Finder

The sweep of family history across the generations

A milliner's daughter in Long Beach
  • 1943 - 1947

Elly worked hard to earn a living as a hat maker while Helga adapted easily at Julia Richmond High School. In the summer, they took a room in a beach town on Long Island.

Dan's 2018 research trip to Berlin and Gdansk
  • July 2018 - August 2018

Dan supplemented his attendance at a Warsaw genealogy conference with a tour of family locations. Read his blog postings and view the post-trip video coverage.

Meeting Harriet Berkowitz
  • 2008 - 2009

Harriet Berkowitz was doubly distanced from her Rabinowitz roots, first by her father’s partial family estrangement and then by his divorce. But she shared a trove of precious family documents and childhood memories after discovering this blog. 

Motives for mercy—the consuls of Toulouse
  • October 24 1968 - December 8 1940

In July 1940, consular officials from three nations conspired to open an escape route for Jews out of occupied France. Why did they do it?

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.

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

Yichus and our relation to the famous rabbi
  • -

Walter thought he had proved the family legend of descent from the celebrated Kovno Rav, Rabbi Yitchak Elchanon Spektor. Later facts emerged that suggested a more tenuous connection.