Historical

News of Historical Interest

Saving My Family History and Remembering the Holocaust: The Tale of a Synagogue

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Political Cortex, normally a very political website (as evidenced by the name) has a very interesting genealogy story:

What follows is a very personal account of a non-political project I have been working on. It began as a quest I started some three years ago, delving into my genealogy and finally actually visiting the town in Latvia where one branch of my ancestry came from. What I found there was a Jewish population that had almost been wiped out by the Nazis and that may yet die out, fulfilling, in part, Hitler’s dream of eliminating Jews from Europe. There is one surviving synagogue in that town, though it is now a condemned building. That building has stood through 160 years of weddings and pogroms, hope and the Holocaust.

This is the story of my family’s roots in Latvia, my rediscovery of the synagogue where my great grandparents probably were married, and my ongoing attempts to save that synagogue.

County Record Disposal Concerns Historian

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Yesterday I mentioned an article about some old records found in a high school and donated to a local history organization. In an ironic twist, the Reporter-Times (Martinsville, Indiana) has an article by Amy Hillenburg that is the exact opposite: County record disposal concerns historian. This is one of those areas where even though genealogists and historians (and archivists if we want to get technical) have all of these modern tools for preserving important documents, those documents can still be easily lost forever.

Dusting the Bones of History

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The News Guard (Lincoln City, Oregon) has an article by Karen Vittek about about the North Lincoln County Historical Museum and what exactly is going on “behind the scenes” so to speak, while it’s closed to the public this month. Kind of a neat look at just what happens when museums and libraries close down to clean up and change exhibits, etc., which is something many genealogists occasionally encounter.

Cache Offers Window to Schools’ Past

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Ever work in a place where you might come across old documents, and you wonder what to do with them? The Lebanon Daily News (Lebanon, PA) has an article by Chris Sholly about a bunch of old records found at a high school. They donated them to the Lebanon County Historical Society. More people/organizations should do this when they come across old documents that may show what people were doing, etc. (except they should of course probably donate to their local historical/genealogy societies, I doubt the Lebanon County Historical Society wants a bunch of stuff from all over the place). There’s no telling how many valuable records have been lost because somebody threw them away, thinking nobody would be interested.