The Polish Institute of National Remembrance announced the burnt remains of approximately 8,000 victims of the Nazis were unearthed in a mass grave outside the town of Działdowo, a town in Northern Poland, located on the historical Prussian-Mazovian border, today belonging to the southern part of the Warmia-Masuria voivodeship.

The bodies are thought to have been dug up and burned in a Nazi operation to hide traces of their murders. The Nazis murdered Jews, political opponents and members of the Polish elite at Soldau.

The concentration camp was built in 1939 for transit, internment and extermination and used throughout the Nazi occupation.

Up to 30,000 people are thought to have been killed there and researchers hope to carry out DNA analysis of the remains to find out more about the victims. Among the Poles who were murdered were members of the clergy and intelligentsia. Mr Jankowski said two pits had been found near Soldau, now known as Dzialdowo, and further excavation would take place to search for more. The estimate of 8,000 victims is based on a person’s body weight estimated at 2kg.

Archaeologists have found hundreds of traces of clothing, buttons and other items, but nothing of value, indicating the bodies were robbed before being set alight.

To read more see: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-62161018  or

https://tinyurl.com/bdc3xj6z

original URL:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/ashes-of-8000-wwii-victims-found-in-two-poland-mass-graves/2022/07/14/0254b5fe-037b-11ed-8beb-2b4e481b1500_story.html

General view of the excavations on the site of the Warsaw Ghetto.

Photo: Warsaw Ghetto Museum

Jewish Heritage Europe reported on excavations at the site of the Warsaw Ghetto where a child’s shoe, Kitchen utensils, Crockery, Books, Ceramic tiles, Corroded tools, were found during archaeological excavations this summer. The dig is being lead by an archaeologist and historian at the Warsaw Ghetto Museum. together with a team of scientists from Christopher Newport University in the U.S. and the Aleksander Gieysztor Academy in Pułtusk, Poland. The dig has been extended to the end of July.

The Ghetto Museum, currently under development, is due to open in a complex of buildings that was a pre-WW2 children’s hospital in April 2023 — the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

The excavations are concentrated on the site where two pre-war apartment buildings stood; they were located between two streets, with entrances at Miła 18 and Muranowska 39 and at Miła 20 and Muranowska 41. During the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, which began on April 19, 1943, a bunker in the basement that had been used by smugglers housed the headquarters of the Jewish Combat Organization, led by Mordechaj Anielewicz. On May 8, 1943, as the Germans closed in, Anielewicz and scores of other Ghetto fighters committed mass suicide in the bunker. The bodies were never exhumed.

To read more see: https://jewish-heritage-europe.eu/2022/07/12/poland-warsaw-ghetto-archaeology/

The U.S. and the Holocaust will premiere on PBS September 18, 2022. Check with your local cable provider for the station. The U.S. and The Holocaust, a new three-part , six-hour documentary directed and produced by Ken Burns, Lynn Novick and Sarah Botstein, explores America’s response to one of the greatest humanitarian crises in history. Americans consider themselves a “nation of immigrants,” but as the catastrophe of the Holocaust unfolded in Europe, the United States proved unwilling to open its doors to more than a fraction of the hundreds of thousands of desperate people seeking refuge. Through riveting firsthand testimony of witnesses and survivors who as children endured persecution, violence and flight as their families tried to escape Hitler, this series delves deeply into the tragic human consequences of public indifference, bureaucratic red tape and restrictive quota laws in America. The series will air September 18, 19 and 20, at 8:00-10:00 p.m. eastern/pacific 7:00-9:00 PM Central (check local listings) on PBS, https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/us-and-the-holocaust/

To read the release see: https://www.pbs.org/about/about-pbs/blogs/news/the-us-and-the-holocaust-to-premiere-september-18-2022-on-pbs/

Jewish Heritage Eurooe reports that the Oshpitzin Jewish Museum in Oświęcim, the town in southern Poland were the Nazis built the Auschwitz death camp, has launched a digital catalogue of its collection that makes information about its thousands of items available online.  See: https://ajcf.pl/archiwum/en/

“The museum — which goes by the Yiddish name for the town — is part of the Auschwitz Jewish Center Foundation (AJCF) education and religious complex, an affiliate of the Museum of Jewish Heritage in NY, which is anchored by the town’s one surviving synagogue and includes the house where Szymon Kluger, the town’s last Jewish resident, lived.

The digital catalogue project took 18 months to complete and entailed surveying and cataloguing 1,378 artifacts, 8,058 photographs, 18,165 documents, 744 multimedia pieces and 4,096 books. more than 100 selected items also include pictures.

The aim of the Oshpitzin museum is to promote knowledge and understanding of the rich and diverse Jewish life that flourished in Oświęcim for centuries, up until the eve of World War II. “

To access the online catalog go to: https://ajcf.pl/archiwum/en/

To view the online exhibi prepared by the Museum see: https://www.ajcf.pl/online-exhibition/

Here’s a link to tomorrow’s Zoom meeting:

The FHL is open later now (M, F, Sa, from 9am to 6pm; Tu, W, Th, from 9am to 8pm). Perhaps we can consider in-person meetings as well, but we’d have to switch to Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday, and finish by 8pm.

Our next meeting will be a Round-Table discussion. We would like each of you to talk about a great research experience, travel adventure in pursuit of family or research, family reunion or DNA connections, something we can all enjoy!

Also, please remember to keep your membership active (or start it).

We still need chairs for membership and activities committees, and members in all committees. Please participate!

It’s been suggested that we rotate the program responsibility for each month to different members of the group (or interested parties). You can present the program yourself or work with us to locate a speaker on a topic of your choice of benefit to all (or most). Our next scheduled presentation is in March 2023, so there are lots of opportunities!

We have been unable to obtain a speaker for 20 June, so we’ll have a board meeting instead of a regular meeting. We suggest that you take advantage of the GRIP Evening Programs announced earlier by Banai in email to all members. Also, the talks from RootsTech are still available for free online at https://www.familysearch.org/rootstech/.

If you have ideas or are willing to present a talk in July (or any other month), please let a board member know (Kathy, Paula, Josh, Banai, Gary).

Title: Deep Genetic Genealogy: A Survey For Researchers of All Levels

Speaker: Guest Speaker: Adam Cherson, Author of “Historicity of the Tribe of Levi: A Genetic Perspective” (in print)

Part 1: Cultural Genography

Part 2: Rabbinical yDNA Lineages

Part 3: Levi-Cohen Tribal Tree

Part 4: Q & A

Description: In this first-ever presentation Adam will give an overview with illustrations of various unique approaches to genealogical research, including everything one needs to know to get started.

Monday May 23, 7pm Mountain/ 9pm Eastern/ 8pm Central/ 6pm Pacific/ 3am (May 24) UTC/GMT

You are invited to a Zoom meeting.
When: May 23, 2022 07:00 PM Mountain Time (US and Canada)
Register in advance for this meeting:
https://ancestry.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJUoceCspz4uE9ECi34vlYCCBDtBXJ56_GLm After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

Reminder: Meeting on Monday, 21 February at 7 pm, Rabbi Barbara Aiello will present “Heritage Hiding in Plain Sight“. This will be a live presentation, sign in at:

https://ancestry.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJEuc-mgqDkrHdczh682SGonomWgbtTRr6Ep

The (US) National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is looking for  feedback from their catalog users to help them create the Next Generation Catalog.  If you sign up they may contact you to optionally participate in focus groups, usability tests and more.

If you are interested in participating than complete the survey at:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/C6WZNFM

“What Can We Learn about Our Ancestors from Jewish Surnames Adopted in
the Russian Empire?” will be the topic of a presentation by scholar and
author Alexander Beider for the Sunday, Feb. 27, 2022, virtual meeting
of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Illinois at 2 p.m. CST.
Register/RSVP at https://jgsi.org/event-4545169.

Newspapers.com, a member of the Ancestry family of databases, is offering free access to their collection of over 720  million plus pages of publisher extra papers through  21 February 2022 at 11:59 p.m. MT. Registration with name, email and password are required. Newspapers are a way to find birth, marriage, death notices and more about those you are researching. After the promotion access will only be through a paid subscription.  Accessing the database after the promotion time period will result in a request for a paid subscription.

Go to: https://go.newspapers.com/freeaccess

Put the name you are searching in the “search keywords, names dates box” and click on search.  The results will return those articles with the name/phrase you entered. Click on the photo of the article and it will open. You can clip or save to your computer by clicking on the icon on the upper right  clip or print and save. It will appear in yellow highlights.  There is also a magnifying glass to help you find the name on the page.

https://ancestry.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJEuc-mgqDkrHdczh682SGonomWgbtTRr6Ep

Josh will be hosting using his Ancestry Zoom account so our meeting can be the full hour (or more) instead of the 30 minute limit if I host. Here’s the info:

https://ancestry.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJMucuysqzkuHdDqkuYiC9KgvKul84LD2_8K

You probably already know that RootsTech is this week. Some of our members may be attending. Some are working in the Expo Hall.

But if you haven’t bought a ticket to the conference, you can still enjoy some of the sessions. RootsTech is live streaming, as in previous years, and you can watch from home.

The schedule is on their web site: RootsTech Live Streaming.

The live stream will probably be right on that page, or they’ll provide a link from that page. They will stream all of the keynotes, this year called “general sessions”, along with many other presentations

Be sure to check the schedule so you don’t miss something you might want to see. Also, RootsTech usually shares those videos after the conference, so you’ll have another chance to watch them for free later. (Some keynotes in previous years were not shared later, so try to catch them live if you can.)