Family Story Finder

The sweep of family history across the generations

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.

Lisbon to New York—with a detour to Havana
  • August 1940 - May 1941

The Ringel family crossed from Lisbon on the SS Guine—but their entry to the U.S. was anything but routine

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?

Rosa’s fateful choice
  • 1936 - 1940

Rosa Feidt was the only Lewi sibling who got out, to her everlasting remorse

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 Kauflers of Krakow
  • -

Our best documented family line is Feige Kaufler's ancestry among the Jewish families of Krakow.

The Rabinowitz family in Jewish Harlem
  • 1875 - 1917

Joseph and Lena Rabinowitz were Russian immigrants who ran a corner grocery in Jewish Harlem. Their nine children were native Americans

The Yeserskys of Volkovysk
  • -

Joseph Rabinowitz’s mother was Bertha Yesersky. Was she related to Sora Yesersky, the wife of Rabbi Elchanon Spektor?

When Ed Eilertsen "crossed the bridge"
  • -

In a dramatic moment while crossing the Mississippi River, he broke with his parents' austere Lutheranism for a more ecumenical approach