Family Story Finder

The sweep of family history across the generations

Family History Machine is reborn in 2020
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Machinist Dan Ruby and his team members envision a new future for Family History Machine

Grad-student life in a packet of letters
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Stan maintained correspondence with his closest high school and Army buddies, several of whom went on to prominent careers.

Green Valley Drive—our exurban childhood
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Our years in Pittsburgh were spent in a tract house in a natural wonderland—backed up against a family farm and an equestrian estate.

Helga at the Theodor Herzl School
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Amid the chaos of the Nazi period, the Zionist school in Charlottenburg taught skills and values that lasted a lifetime

Mel Brenner
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Mel accomplished many things in life, but his life’s greatest moments happened during the Battle of the Bulge

Stan at Brant Lake
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Stan summered at a Jewish summer camp in the Adirondacks.

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

The Rabinowitz girls
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Meta, Blossom and Sadie