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.

Eilertsens by the lake
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Ed was the rector at Saint Martin's By the Lake in Minnetonka Beach, Minn. The family was raised in towns around the lake region west of Minneapolis, including in the church rectory

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.

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?

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.

Rosa’s fateful choice
  • 1936 - 1940

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

Sputnik in the backyard
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Watching Sputnik at night from our back yard in a suburb of Pittsburgh is one of my earliest memories.

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

Third Generation Rubys
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First came Walter, then Danny and Joanne. They would carry on the Ruby-Ringel genes.

Twyla's childhood
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Outlooks of a pre-millennial