It's day 16 of the Family History Writing Challenge and I'm feeling grateful that I'm not a vegetarian. It's bad enough to have to face the dire fates of various family members while exploring the past; I'm not sure I could cope with feeling guilty about the fact that they were butchers. My ambivalence --nay, blatant hypocrisy -- when it comes to meat eating is a topic for
Jewish Vienna
Emigration Questionnaire Raises More Questions
This is Day 10 of the Family History Writing Challenge, 2018. The search for Adolph and Bertha Schweitzer continues with the introduction of a document that raises more questions than it answers. One thing you've got to say for the Nazis. They kept good records. In August 1938, the Central Agency for Jewish Emigration in Vienna (Zentralstelle für jüdische
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,
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
10 Things I Want to Know About My Family & Freud
Focus, focus, focus. That's been my mantra ever since I realized my genealogical research was meandering in all directions. So I came up with a couple of goals: To flesh out the lives of my mother's immediate family members -- both to understand my mother better and to make the acquaintance of relatives I never met -- and to figure out the family's place in history. The