This is Day Three of the 2018 Family History Writing Challenge. I have said from the onset that this blog is intended to focus on how members of my family lived in Vienna, not on how they died. But for a long time, all I knew about my great aunt and uncle Bertha and Adolph Schweizer was that they perished at Treblinka: A Bit About Treblinka Death
When Genealogical Search Leads You Back to…Your Blog
This is Day 2 of the Family History Writing Challenge, 2018. As I noted in my last post, I have been out of the genealogy blogging game for a while. As a result, I'm not as tuned in to family history resources as I might be. Then again, I didn't rely on traditional sites like Ancestry.com or MyHeritage.com early on because my mother's branch of the family tree was not yet
It’s the Quinquennial Family History Writing Challenge!
Like many writers, I thrive on deadlines. That's not to say I don't rail against them and say many bad words when they close in, but without a strict time frame I tend to dither my time away. When I am paid to write, the incentive for meeting my deadlines is clear. When I am not...well, I have to come up with an artificial construct. Like the guilt or public shame that follows
America’s Pioneer Jewish Congregations (Including One in Tucson)
No question, social media can be a time sink, but sometimes you meet really interesting people on line. Today's guest poster, Julian Preisler, falls into this category. Because the subjects he's writing about are of great interest to me -- as I think they will be to you -- I'm turning my blog over to him. Also, I was one of the people he enlisted to take pictures for his book.
A Grave Concern: Help Restore the Tarnow Jewish Cemetery
Fanning out. Contracting back. In my last post, I explored the story of a family member who fled halfway across the world from Vienna to escape Hitler--only to have to escape another dangerous dictator in his adopted home. Here I look back to my ancestral roots in a town I'd never heard of until I started this blog, and certainly never knew most of my mother's family came from:
A Tale of Three Dictators: The Farber Family, Revisited
Since I first started exploring the roots of my mother's family here, lo these many years ago, my sense of who I am and where I came from has shifted. So too has my view of the Jewish diaspora. Forced from Europe by the Nazis, members of the Kornmehl family fled to Curaçao, Singapore, Australia, and Brazil, as well as to more common destinations like Palestine/Israel and the
Crowdfunding Freud: Help Give Vienna’s Most Famous Jew His Due
In his introduction to Berggasse 19, a compilation of photographs that Edmund Engelman took of Sigmund Freud's home and office just before the father of psychoanalysis fled Nazi-occupied Vienna, biographer Peter Gay detailed Freud's symbolic absence from Austria's capital after World War II. Noting the lack of tourist brochures, street names, and statues celebrating Freud in
Why a Historically Oriented Genealogist Took a DNA Test
Those who pursue genealogy do so for a variety of reasons. To find a particular relative. To determine whether they're descended from royalty. To occupy time that might otherwise be devoted to earning a living. Me, I was interested in learning about my mother's family, the sixteen men and women in the picture topping this blog. I wanted to know how they lived,
The Jewish Museum Vienna: A Personal Look
I know, you can’t go home again, especially if home is a country your family was forced to flee. I was under no illusion that a lilting Strauss waltz would be the soundtrack to my visit to Vienna, where both my parents were born. Still, I’d traveled to the city earlier this summer to see how my relatives had lived, not to dwell on their victimization. Which is why I was looking
Return to Vienna
There's so much to report about my recent trip to Vienna, hosted by the Jewish Welcome Service, and so little time to do it right now as I prepare to leave for a book tour. But I won't bury the lede. I'm thinking very seriously of returning to Vienna next year for a much longer time -- a minimum of three months, the length of a tourist visa. If I can get a work or study
Opening Up to Elijah: A Passover Story
Call me a seder skeptic. I'm fond of the Passover story, its message of exile and redemption. I especially like the ritual of saving a place at the table and a glass of wine for the prophet Elijah. Like Santa Claus, he is required to visit millions of homes in a single night. Opening the door for him to come in after the seder meal is a simple act of faith that often gives
Grief, Food, & Nudity: A Story About My Mother & My New Book
Not long after my father died, I went to Martinique with my mother. I remember three things about that trip. My mother's grief. The profiteroles. And the topless beach. Grief, food, and nudity My mother was in a raw stage of mourning, subject to fits of literal wailing. But no one in my family was ever too upset to eat, especially dessert. And Martinique is a French island,
Of Chutzpah, Kickstarter, and Keeping a Low Profile
When I was growing up, my mother always implied that my sister and I should keep a low profile. We were supposed to excel in school, sure, but not to stand out because otherwise "they" would find us, even though we grew up in America, even though "they" found everyone they wanted to find in Vienna -- i.e., anyone who was even part Jewish, no matter how low a profile the
A New Journey
Dear Freud's Butcherites Friends of Freud's Butcher, As you may have noticed -- at least I hope so -- I haven't been around much lately. The short version of the reason: I'm not a very good multitasker. For many years, I've had a travel memoir on my back burner. And I finally decided to finish it and publish it after raising the money to do so through crowdfunding, a
Of Genealogies and Possibilities: A New Year’s Musing
Happy 2015. It's that time of year when all the possibilities seem to open up. January 1 is an arbitrary date, of course, but who doesn't want to believe in fresh starts, in learning from our experiences, even if those experiences sometimes seem arbitrary too? I ended last year on a sad note, with the accidental death of a friend, Jean, who had become very important to me