Genealogy
Genealogy turned out to be an interesting hobby that added a lot of information about my family, the Holocaust and in general about the life of Jews in Poland in the last 200 years. My biggest challenge was that my parents did not tell me about their past and I had to start the investigation from scratch.
However, working with digital tools allowed me to find a lot of information with little effort but it required meticulous work.
The main site I used in my research and even today is: https://www.jewishgen.org
Another site that was very helpefull and I continue to volunteer in, is: https://www.crarg.org which is more concentrated in the area of Poland where my father’s family comes from. (CRARG are acronyms that mean Czestochowa Radomsko Area Research Group.)
See map below:
My father was born in Koniecpol, so most of my initial research was concentrated in that city. My mother was born in Lodz, where my father arrived with his family around 1930.
When I just started my research and posted online that I am a descendant of the Tushinsky family (my mother’s maiden name) I was contacted by a nice lady Susan Kaplan Stone who told me about genealogical research she had done on the Tushinsky family and she suggested that I go to one of her relatives in Ra’anana to get all the information.
The information I received was still on paper so I scanned it and five files are viewable:
As part of my research, I ordered and received hundreds of copies of original certificates which I translated after learning a lot from Judith Fanzin’s book (full copy of the book here).
An example of an original certificate from the 19th century of my family from Koniecpol and its translation:
Koniecpol 1848 M Akt 1 Dykerman Mosiek Original document
Koniecpol Mosiek Dykerman 1848 M Akt 1 document transcribed into Polish and translated into Hebrew