JBlog: Tracing the Tribe

Tracing the Tribe has added a nice orange-colored JBlog Me.

What’s JBlog? It’s the Jewish Blog Network where blog readers can vote for blogs and postings. I hope you will support Tracing the Tribe by voting.

Clicking JBlog Me brings you to Tracing the Tribe’s page, which displays 15 of the most recent posts. Clicking on a post’s title brings you to that post’s page, with a rating box (1-5) on the right, above the title.

If you’d like to find additional Tracing the Tribe posts on JBlog, put the keyword genealogy in the top right search box.

Why should you vote? Blogs and postings receiving numerous votes are highlighted on the JBlog home page. This means a large number of general readers will learn – possibly for the first time – about resources and tools for Jewish genealogy and family history research. Perhaps some new readers will become inspired to begin their own journeys down discovery road.

Enjoy and thank you for your support!

Family Fraud: Misha DeFonseca Holocaust case

The research methods used in exposing the Misha Defonseca Holocaust Fraud case provide lessons for any family history researcher in forensic genealogy techniques.

An overview of this case and the lessons was presented by Sharon Sergeant, in April, at the Massachusetts Genealogical Council Annual Meeting and Seminar.

A film of the presentation is now available to any Public Access Television station, genealogical society or library as long as the program is free and open to the public. It was produced by David T. Robertson (contact robertson.d@rcn.com) and the Framingham, Massachusetts Public Access Televison station, which recently premiered the film.

To order a DVD, there’s A $10 fee covering DVD production and mailing.

Robertson, in this article, talks about his feelings on genealogy.

There’s more to genealogy than dead people.

“Genealogy helps you understand the world around you,” and a professional genealogist’s job can be proving a person’s Daughters of the American Revolution credentials or proving who’s the rightful owner of something stolen in 1938.

“We do things like heir searching. You want to find the person who gets the money,” said Robertson, a former president of the Massachusetts Society of Genealogists. “You’re not working with ancient history,” but “the same methods apply.”

A few years ago, he was hired by a German legal firm to track down what happened to a former stockholder last known to live in Newton. The company was required to make reparations for Jewish clients’ assets that were frozen or stolen during World War II.

After some digging, Robertson found “the only person left is his mistress in Florida,” except for a niece who received “$100 and the residual from his estate” in the man’s will.

The interesting story goes on to detail many of his cases and what he’s discovered over the years, his views on what’s available on the internet “just the tip of the iceberg,” solving problems and finding the paper with the answers.

But if your story doesn’t check out, beware.

“In the business, we have a saying: You can lie to your priest, but you can’t lie to a genealogist.”

The presentation outline:

The Misha Defonseca Holocaust Fraud:
Forensic Genealogy Lessons for Your Own Family History

Connecting the Right Dots … Names, dates, places, events, relationships and activities can create many stories. The true story can be mixed in with other stories.

Forensic Genealogy in the Defonseca Case Study: Photograph Analysis, Database Mining, DNA Analysis

“Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust Years,” By Misha Defonseca.

The Story that Misha Told – According to Misha in the 1997 US Version.

Misha also published a 1997 best-selling French version “Survivre avec les Loups” (Surviving with the Wolves).

In the US 10 Years Later. Finding the Truth – Real Hidden Children, US Public Records, Story Changes, Other Experts, Belgian Archives.

Photo Time Line Focus: Real Name, Age and Family?

Data Mining: Negative and Positive Proofs in the Data Time Line.

The Truth Revealed: Belgian baptismal certificate, naming patterns, school records.

What if Misha had not confessed? Planning for DNA analysis.

Forensic Techniques Can Change the Way You Research Your Own Family History

UK: Name that tune!

Ready for a trip down a musical memory lane? Do your toes tap when you hear
“Rock Around the Clock,” “Bobbie’s Girl,” “You Really Got Me” or “See You In September” ?

And, just in case you were going to ask: Yes, even the beginnings of rock and roll connect to Jewish history and genealogy.

We know these songs because Edward Kassner, born in 1920 Austria, wanted to become a composer but Hitler’s annexation of Austria changed his plans.

“He was tipped off by his friends that they were rounding up Jewish boys,” says David Kassner, Edward’s eldest son and now MD of President. “He fled through Belgium and got caught trying to cross the border at Aachen twice. On the third occasion a German soldier caught him but let him go saying that he hadn’t signed up to shoot young boys.”

His parents both died in Auschwitz. Edward made it to England but was interned before being shipped to Australia alongside his fellow European refugees. Later allowed to return to the UK, he joined the British Army, serving in France and Germany as an interpreter.

The UK’s Independent recently profiled Kassner’s rise to fame, as he and his wife formed The Edward Kassner Music Company Ltd in 1944. Post-war, money was in printing and selling sheet music. Kassner acquired many copyrights and catalogues before buying one song that would change popular music forever, “Rock Around The Clock.”

His son David’s first memory is dancing to the Bill Haley version in the family’s living room. The family moved to New York in the mid-50s and President Records, Inc. was formed in 1955. By 1961, it was a public corporation with Kassner the majority shareholder. He launched Seville Records and his 1962 hit was “Shout! Shout! (Knock Yourself Out)”, followed by “Bobby’s Girl.”

In 1963, Kassner relaunched President and his UK office, in 1964, hit it big with The Kinks and “You Really Got Me.”

One of my all-time favorites – from my Catskill summers (1960s) – was “See You In September,” for which he owned the publishing rights. The Happenings got to #3 in the US with it.

The label still releases reissues and compilations from their catalog.

Read more here.

Wiesenthal office now in Los Angeles

Famed Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal’s office has been transplanted from Vienna to the Museum of Tolerance in West Los Angeles, part of an exhibit examining the Holocaust. Officials say the room is just as he left it at his death in 2005 at 96, down to the last item.

“This is a landmark piece of living history,” said Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder and dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. “In this small office, a man untrained to be a detective or an investigator brought to justice the most destructive mass murderers in the history of human civilization.”

U.S. troops liberated Mauthausen (Austria) concentration camp on May 5, 1945; Wiesenthal was so weak that he collapsed. Just days later, he began on his lifelong quest to “bring to justice the major and minor Nazi killers who had exterminated 6 million of his fellow Jews and millions of Gypsies, Poles and other ‘inferior’ peoples.”

Wiesenthal conducted his searches, for nearly five decades, from behind a dark wooden desk in Vienna, where he studied SS directories, photographs, city phone books and Holocaust survivors’ letters to track offenders to the ends of the Earth. Biographers credit him with catching more than 1,000 war criminals.

Following his wife’s death in 2003, he and Hier began discussing the possibility of moving the office to the museum, operated by the center, designed to teach visitors about the effects of racism and prejudice. Wiesenthal bequeathed the office contents to the center.

Susan Burden, the Center’s chief financial officer, went to Vienna to organize the move; photographed every bookshelf, the desktop, framed commendations and even copies of newspaper clippings, packed about 1,500 books and videotapes, photos and medals. Six crates were shipped by air to Los Angeles, where archivists spent months cataloging the shipment.

“It was the most difficult assignment I ever had because I wanted to do it just right,” Burden said. “It was emotionally tough. A lot of tears were shed.”

The story recounts his search for Karl Silberbauer, thought to be the Austrian SS man who turned in Anne Frank and her family, and his years of research determining that Adolf Eichman faked his death so his wife could receive a pension. This helped Israel to capture Eichman in Argentina in 1960, and resulted in Wiesenthal’s reopening of his Vienna center.

On the wall across from the desk is a giant map of Europe that enumerates the Nazis’ victims by country: 627,000 Italians, 1.5 million French. Volumes by Aristotle and Ptolemy line the bookshelves, along with books about Vienna’s Jews, German synagogues and Gestapo activities. Many of Wiesenthal’s works are also there, including several translations of his 1976 book “The Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness.” Atop one case is a bouquet of cloth sunflowers that have accumulated years of dust — Viennese dust, now behind a glass viewing wall in Los Angeles.

Read more here.

JBlog: Tracing the Tribe

Tracing the Tribe has added a nice orange-colored JBlog Me.

What’s JBlog? It’s the Jewish Blog Network where blog readers can vote for blogs and postings. I hope you will support Tracing the Tribe by voting.

Clicking JBlog Me brings you to Tracing the Tribe’s page, which displays 15 of the most recent posts. Clicking on a post’s title brings you to that post’s page, with a rating box (1-5) on the right, above the title.

If you’d like to find additional Tracing the Tribe posts on JBlog, put the keyword genealogy in the top right search box.

Why should you vote? Blogs and postings receiving numerous votes are highlighted on the JBlog home page. This means a large number of general readers will learn – possibly for the first time – about resources and tools for Jewish genealogy and family history research. Perhaps some new readers will become inspired to begin their own journeys down discovery road.

Enjoy and thank you for your support!