Meetings
JGSWS meets in the auditorium of the Stroum JCC on the second Monday of each month, September through June, at 7 PM, unless noted otherwise. Admission is free for JGSWS members, $5 for nonmembers.
MEETING LOCATION: Stroum Jewish Community Center
3801 East Mercer Way, Mercer Island, (206) 232-7115
Driving directions >>
The JGSWS library will be available before and after the presentation.
WiFi also will be available—bring your laptops.
NEXT MEETING: Monday, June 8, 2009
Doors open at 7 PM.
Presentation starts promptly at 7:30 PM.
"Lady Luck on the Hungarian Archives Roller Coaster,"
presented by Theodore Grossman
ABOUT OUR PROGRAM
Theodore Grossman will talk about researching Jewish Family History in Hungary and Slovakia, where his father was born and raised. His dad lived the first 15 years of his life in what is now Slovakia, but the town was a part of Hungary for nine of those years and part of Czechoslovakia the other six. His father’s story is similar in many respects to those of the thousands of Jews who had to adapt each time the borders in Eastern Europe changed.
Jews living outside Austria-Hungary proper but inside the empire – Slavs, Czechs, Poles, Ukrainians, Rumanians, Serbs, Croats, etc. – were subjects of a Hungarian government that demanded that they speak the Hungarian language and embrace Magyar culture. Many were thrilled to be rid of Hungary when the borders changed at the end of World War I.
But there was no joy among Hungarian Jews, among them the members of his father’s family. They were super patriots who spoke only Hungarian, opposed the Zionist movement, and shared their countrymen's contempt for the other ethnic groups within their borders. "We used to laugh at those who spoke Yiddish," his father once told him, adding that he and his friends waved Hungarian flags and sang songs that disparaged the non-Hungarians. What a shock it would become when these super patriots were forced to watch many of their non-Jewish countrymen join with the Nazis and attempt to kill all of them.
This story is important to those doing genealogical research in more than one country, and therefore must read documents in more than one language. Because the author can read and speak some Hungarian, he has been able to do the research there by himself. But in Slovakia, he needed help every step of the way. The different strategies created some very interesting developments – some lucky, others not.
ABOUT OUR SPEAKER
Ted Grossman is a retired newspaper editor and publisher, most recently at The Islands' Sounder, on Orcas Island. After about 30 years in which his heart and soul was journalism, his obsession turned to learning about his father's ancestry. For the past three years he has been taking classes in the ungarian language in Seattle and New York City, auditing classes about Eastern Europe, and doing research at the Family History Libraries and at the Jewish History Library in New York City.
During this time he made two research trips to Hungary and Slovakia, each lasting about three months. He wrote a paper about those trips entitled "Riding Lady Luck on Archive Roller Coaster." (See www.transartarea.com, a bilingual website in both English and Hungarian.)
At the archives in Hungary and Slovakia, he could never be entirely sure how he would be received. Some archivists were willing to give him the shirts off their backs, while others only gave him the runaround. A man at the Holocaust Museum suggested that he would be more successful if he could obtain a letter of recommendation from a Hungarian scholar. Here, he was lucky. A cousin of his who is a professor and author of several books agreed to provide him with such a treasure.
For more information, please e-mail programs@jgsws.org.
FUTURE MEETINGS
September 2009: Topic TBD
OTHER LOCAL EVENTS
See the Events page.