Family Story Finder
The sweep of family history across the generations
Abe Ratner in the seltzer business
The Ratner family became established in the Fifth Ward of Albany, N.Y. Abe bottled soda water and Rose nurtured a brood of children.
Action at a distance
Stan's Mathematica notebooks document his later work and speculations
Edith and Gina — the Ringel cousins in London
Betty Ringel's two daughters were able to leave Germany before 1938. They were in the twenties and they settled in London.
Helga at the Theodor Herzl School
Amid the chaos of the Nazi period, the Zionist school in Charlottenburg taught skills and values that lasted a lifetime
If walls could talk—75 years in a Parisian villa
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
The Ringel family crossed from Lisbon on the SS Guine—but their entry to the U.S. was anything but routine
Mössbauer man—Stan makes his mark in physics
Stan's innovations in Mossbauer spectroscopy.
Motives for mercy—the consuls of Toulouse
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?
Ratner family passage to America
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
Rosa’s fateful choice
Rosa Feidt was the only Lewi sibling who got out, to her everlasting remorse
Sputnik in the backyard
Watching Sputnik at night from our back yard in a suburb of Pittsburgh is one of my earliest memories.
The Eilertsens in Brooklyn
From Red Hook to Gerritsen Beach to Bay Ridge, Jack and Camilla Eilertsen lived the Norwegian immigrant experience in Brooklyn
The physics experiment that went wrong
How and why did Stan Ruby's important post-graduate research go wrong, and what impact did it have on his career in physics?
The problem with anti-ballistic missiles
Stanley Ruby entered the public debate over nuclear missile technology in 1968-69.
The Rabinowitz family in Jewish Harlem
Joseph and Lena Rabinowitz were Russian immigrants who ran a corner grocery in Jewish Harlem. Their nine children were native Americans
The Rubys in Israel—1961 sabbatical
Our family’s amazing year of discovery and connection