First of all, thanks to all of you who participated in the win-a-great-memoir contest. Short and long, the family stories posted in the comments were great. I urge you to read all the them if you didn't when you posted your own story or if you're just checking in now. And the winner, chosen by Random.org, is... #11, a story of a family journey from small town
Genealogy
Contest: Tell Us About Your Family’s Journey, Win a Great Memoir
Besides changing their names, one of the greatest banes of family historians is that ancestors move around—and aren't always considerate enough to leave accurate records of their new addresses. They move for a variety reasons—some to strike out and start a better life, others, like many of my relatives, to flee imminent danger. I'm often amazed at how little I knew about
Fleischhauers, Freud & Pez: Vienna’s Famed Berggasse
I was in Vienna's Jewish Records Office last week -- was it really only last week? -- looking to fill in some key bits of my family history. When archivist Irma Wulz showed me the marriage records of my grandparents, Hermann Rosenbaum and Ernestine Kornmehl, I wasn't especially surprised to learn that the wedding witnesses had been David Schmerling,
Cemetery Schlepping in Vienna: A Shaggy Deer Story
I like cemeteries, especially big sprawling ones with famous people buried in them. It's always interesting to see different forms of remembrance and, for the most part, they are quiet, park-like places to stroll and contemplate mortality. Or dinner. Having visited Karl Marx and George Eliot in London's Highgate, Oscar Wilde, Edith Piaf and Jim Morrison in Pere Lachaise
The Harmonie Vienna: Seven Reasons It’s My Dream Hotel
I just got word of where I'll be bunking during my upcoming trip to Austria, thanks to the Vienna Tourist Board: The Harmonie Vienna. As a travel writer, I've been fortunate enough to stay in some of the world's top hotels and resorts. But I can't recall a place that was a better fit for me, personally, since...well, ever. Here's why. 1. Location, Location,
Return to Vienna: Must the Past Be Prologue?
I'm going to Vienna in June. After writing about the city of my parents' birth for the past two years, I'm finally taking the plunge. I'm looking forward to the trip. I'm also dreading it. I was there only once before, in the early 1970s, at the request of my parents. While I was planning a trip to Europe with a college friend, Andrea, they asked me to visit the relatives
Finding the Farbers: Best Genealogical Gift, Ever
I left you in New York so long ago, virtually speaking, that springtime finally arrived in the city. As I mentioned, at the end of that trip I at long last I met Jill Leibman Kornmehl, who has contributed to this blog in more ways that I can detail. At that meeting (the proof is in the picture next to this post's title; Jill is on the right), she gave me copies of
New York Report, Pt. 2: Family & Film, Pastry & Punctuation
I admit it: It sometimes takes me a while to unpack from a trip. On my recent return to Tucson from New York, I didn't need the winter clothes I'd brought with me (nyah nyah); only an underwear shortage inspired me to retrieve the contents of my suitcase. It sometimes takes me even longer to unpack my experiences, since there's never any shortage of stories -- only some of them
New York Report, Part 1: Vienna-on-the-Hudson
Ah, New York. I don't miss winter since I moved to Tucson from Manhattan more than two decades ago -- before I could be mistaken for a snow bird -- but I miss New Yorkers' unabashed grumpiness about the season. If you're going to experience frigid weather, as I did last week, you can't beat a place where kvetching about the cold has been raised to an art form. And where
Family Trek, The Next Generation: Herbert Bratspies
I've been tracing the family of the third of the Kornmehl butcher brothers, Martin, a journey that starts in Vienna (see The Return of Martin Kornmehl) and takes us to Melbourne (see Detention of Jews in World War II: Et Tu, Australia?). Today I finish the story of the newly found Australian branch of my mother's family -- at least for now; in genealogy, you never know -- with
Survival in Paradise: Curaçao
Last July, when I posted an excerpt from Manfred Wolf's memoir, Survival in Paradise, I was pleased -- though not at all surprised -- by the positive response it got. It's a very moving piece about a young boy's coming of age during World War II. So I am doubly pleased to have gotten permission to post another excerpt from the book, this one from Chapter 12, when the
Detention of Jews in World War II: Et Tu, Australia?
I ended my last post about Martin Kornmehl's family with the promise that the continuation of their story will be happier. I'm afraid that I can't entirely keep it. The narrative led me to a chapter in World War II history that surprised me -- and not in a good way. Come to think of it, how often do you hear people say, "The more I dug into the past, the more pleasantly
The Return of Martin Kornmehl
It's hard to believe a year has passed since last February, when I took the Family History Writing Challenge. It was a terrific focusing tool and I highly recommended it -- though I'm going to have to pass this go round. That said, I have stories of two close family members, a great uncle and a great aunt, that I have yet to tell. It would be wrong to give them short shrift
Of Violins, Heroism and the Holocaust
I was going to return to blogging with a post on rolled meat -- and, don't worry, I'll get to that -- but then Manfred Wolf, whose moving memoir I excerpted here, sent me a link to a wonderful film called the Return of the Violin. Directed by Haim Hecht, it's a documentary that tells the story of a 1731 Stradivarius that was once owned by Bronisław Huberman, the founder of the
Nathan Kornmehl (1916 – 2013)
I was saddened by the recent news that Nathan Kornmehl had died, initially in the way you are saddened by the passing of a historical figure -- almost a fictional one. As Linda Chalmers Zemel, who interviewed him for the Buffalo Jewish Review in 2004 -- see Nathan Kornmehl's Story -- said of Nathan, who died last week at the age of 97: His life is the stuff authors draw upon