<p>ummm, Counting Down, I’m related to two of the three people you mentioned in your post. Are you by any chance descended from one of the people whose names appear on the doors of the Bruton church at Williamsburg VA?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>The book is actually called “A Vanished World,” not a Forgotten World.</p>
<p>If you’re in New York before May, please make sure to visit the absolutely wonderful new Roman Vishniac exhibition at the ICP (International Center for Photography), on 6th Avenue near Bryant Park, which has gotten great reviews. It shows hundreds of previously unpublished and unexhibited photos, and demonstrates how much broader the scope of his work was than most people realize – it’s not just his prewar Eastern European shtetl photography (commissioned by the JDC), believe me. I think there’s a lot of incredibly fantastic stuff there, both historically and artistically, including photos of Berlin in the '20’s and '30’s, wartime photos in New York City of everyone from women working in factories to nightclub entertainers, postwar photos in Berlin and the DP camps, photos in the '50’s documenting the work of various Jewish social service organizations, his blown-up microscopic photos of insects and skin cells, and so on. </p>
<p>Perhaps I’m slightly prejudiced, since I happen to know someone extremely well who’s been working there since September, doing research to identify a lot of the photos, writing a lot of captions and wall text, etc., and is now working on the catalog to be published next year. So I was able to be there for the opening, and got to meet the curator (who extravagantly complimented this particular person, said it wouldn’t have been possible to put the exhibition together without him, etc.! Lots of naches.) Definitely everyone should go!</p>
<p>This is the review in The Economist that Lergnom refers to:</p>
<p>[Roman</a> Vishniac’s photographs: Rediscovered and uncovered | The Economist](<a href=“http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2013/02/roman-vishniacs-photographs]Roman”>Rediscovered and uncovered)</p>
<p>There have also been extremely laudatory reviews in the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, the New Yorker, and Jewish Week. The Times has not yet deigned to cover it!</p>
<p>blueiguana mentioned his son’s name on a headstone. I was named after my ggrandmother, who died the year before I was born. My name was not entirely uncommon in the 1800’s but I know no one with it born after 1900.</p>
<p>So…if I see my name, it means ME. The first time I saw my ggrandmother’s tombstone, with her/my/our name, it was very disconcerting!</p>
<p>It’s fascinating to me that I can go to [Lomza</a> Jewish Cemtery](<a href=“http://www.lomza.org%5DLomza”>http://www.lomza.org) and see my g gparents’ tombstones, or what remains of them.</p>
<p>It’s a tender experience, isn’t it. To be so far and so near. To envision their lives.</p>
<p>re: Mormons</p>
<p>My understanding is that with the exception of extraordinary events like the Holocaust, the general rule is that you can only baptize,marry, etc. people who are your direct ancestors. So, if lots of your relatives have been baptized, and it’s not an exceptional circumstance, you have Mormon blood relatives. </p>
<p>The thing is that since your ancestor can refuse, if it’s possible that it is the right person, the Mormon will attempt the baptism. The standard of proof is pretty low. Someone pretty far back in my family tree with a common name has been “married” to several different people. Obviously, the hope is someone got it right so the couple can be together in eternity.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>There is no exception anymore, if there ever was. Baptism of Jewish Holocaust victims has been prohibited (see above). Whether people pay attention to the prohibition is another story.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>My paternal grandfather’s mother and her family came from Tykocin in the same gubernia; she had lots of first cousins (all with the same last name) in Lomza and in the nearby town of Gac. So I’m sure I have relatives in the same cemetery. [Edited to add that I just went to your link and looked at the name list and saw several names I recognized.] </p>
<p>My paternal grandfather’s father was from Jurbarkas (Yurburg in Yiddish) in Lithuania; the cemetery there survived, and photos of most of the tombstones – including the tombstones of my gt-gt-grandparents – are online as well. A class of Dartmouth students went there a few years ago and did a lot of work photographing, transcribing, and translating as many inscriptions as they could.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Well I am not buying that there were a lot of Mormons above the Swedish Arctic Circle hanging out in Grandma’s log cabin in the late 1800’s…though stranger things have happened…</p>
<p>No, but they may have a descendant who became a Mormon. The descendant stands in for his/her ancestor.</p>
<p>I think it’s also important not to romanticize these ancestors as all being gentle, sweet, kind. For all you know, some of them were real jerks!</p>
<p>My mother refused to tell her age to anyone. This included the DMV, jobs, and her tombstone. She did, in fact, “threaten” me if I ever said her age…not that I knew. I lost both my parents 13 weeks apart. My husband wrote out their tombstone. When we went to the unveiling, and they pulled aside the drapery I saw: Father’s name/date of birth and death…and a few nice words.</p>
<p>My mother? Her name, nice words and the year of her death. I burst out laughing. My husband made sure she that her wish was granted.</p>
<p>I do know that many people immigrated and lied about their ages. Children were “free” from the quota. Many a child who was 15…became 9 at Ellis Island. </p>
<p>And yes PizzaGirl, ancestors were human beings…and I suspect most of them tough. It took guts to leave.</p>
<p>How did she deal with age-related things like Social Security and Medicare?</p>
<p>I don’t know. She got both…and I suppose at the correct time. But I didn’t “know” when she started receiving benefits.</p>
<p>My mother had a friend who had 5 sisters. In those days the wedding “order” went from oldest to youngest. The problem was that the older sister didn’t have a boyfriend and her sisters did. Friend suddenly became the youngest in the family.</p>
<p>Thank you for correcting me on the name of Vishniac’s book. It was an important work and I hate to get that wrong. </p>
<p>Thing is, I don’t identify myself as Belarussian or Latvian or whatever. Partly because there is that thing in Europe where a Christian Pole doesn’t consider a Jewish Pole to be a Pole and the Jewish Pole shares the feeling. Even though my ancestors certainly lived in the same little places for several hundred years or more and they were intimately tied to the place, as Jews they were never identified by the Russians and Poles as being Russian or Polish. That entire “Quiet Flows the Don” mystique of the land - with Grushka (?) opening his shirt so his dying blood mixes into the earth - isn’t there. I’m unclear if that has happened in retrospect or if it was true at the time, if the identification was more with the people and the religion than with the land. </p>
<p>I remember in silent film class watching early Russian movies. Before the Soviet style developed in the 20’s, Russia experimented - as in Germany and less so in France - with hidden camera people on the street movies about life. Amazing films about Moscow and about Berlin, etc. (France also did this but more about objects than people.) I was floored by the number of people who looked like me or family members.</p>
<p>Thank you for this thread…It got me back to doing a little genealogical research which I have done over the years on and off. I never knew the village in Galicia (think Eastern Europe and depending on who was in charge either Poland, Austria, Russia…) and could not find the records of my paternal grandfather though we knew he came through Ellis Island, supposedly on the same ship as his brother. I found his brother’s records because he had an uncommon first name and lo and behold, the last name is spelled slightly different with a double “n” not the single “n” we have. The problem was that his village was listed as Zancut and there is no record of any village, city or town by that name. Only when I looked at the actual ship’s manifest ( and not find my grandfather)did I realize that it was Lancut. Whoever had written it down misread the script letter “l” as a "Z’…Lancut is a village in southwest Poland where the Nazi SS machinegunned down nearly the entire city’s Jewish population in 1942, killing over 2700 men, women and children. But for the decision of one brave ancestor who decided to leave his little shtetl 40 years earlier…</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Those letters are often confused. I was doing some research recently for a friend who has a branch of her family named Zuckerman, and I couldn’t figure out why so few of them showed up in the ship passenger list indexes – until I realized that most of them were incorrectly indexed under “Luckerman”!</p>
<p>OMG, one side of my mother’s family is from Galicia. The rest are from Kiev…Nemerov…</p>
<p>Just to add a jovial tone to this: My mil told me that (during the first year of our marriage) that bil was 436 in line for the throne of England. (Don’t send flowers hoping to get on the tribute list). Not my husband who is the second son…he was 800 or so.)</p>
<p>Yes, my last name is English…changed somewhere along the way to our current name. </p>
<p>…but I/we found out later that my fil was Jewish. Hated Jews, but he was born Jewish. </p>
<p>I have given up any “hope” of being the Queen of England. Although I must say that when we were in England we went to see some of the royal jewels. They really should clean them more often. They are either dirty or have an inferior cut/clarity. But I could get into wearing a petite tiara to the maket.</p>
<p>Figured out the town in Ukraine! The census taker’s handwriting can leave much to be desired. I now have DH’s paternal grandmother and her family tied to Shumsk, a town in Ukraine which was at one point part of Galicia. It was a heavily Jewish town and suffered a great deal in the early- mid-20th century. Looked like “Lehumsk” on the ship’s manifest, but found another link that said Shumsk, and it fits together. Her father came over in 1906 and apparently went back to get his family in 1909, though I have not yet found any manifests. </p>
<p>We think DH’s paternal grandafther’s side is from Kiev. No documentation yet.</p>