Genealogy Services

Posted on April 22, 2020 by admin

Please contact me if you’re in the need of Genealogy related services (research, preparations, trips, etc).

You may contact me for any country
(such as Belgium, The Netherlands, Germany, Poland, Israel, etc).

Contact me and let’s discuss fees and further details about your request.
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CABR files in Hague

Posted on March 2, 2020 by admin

The original article first appeared in AVOTAYNU, the International Review of Jewish Genealogy, Vol. XXXV, no. 2, Summer 2019.

End May 2018 I made contact, through MyHeritage (which is a very valuable tool for at least first contacts if not more), with descendants of one of my great-grandmother’s siblings from the Strauss family.

During one of our conversations via e-mail, the resistance work of a mutual relative during the second world war in The Netherlands came up. I knew through one of my uncles notes that his name was Edgar Kan, he fought in the Dutch resistance and he was born in 1928, Edgar was my maternal grandmother’s cousin. My new-found cousin wanted to know more about the resistance work, and how Edgar came to be murdered.

Useful session at the Famillement conference:
I was lucky to have joined a conference in the same week as Continue reading →

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Passenger lists from the Holland-America Line (HAL) at the Rotterdam City Archives

Posted on May 29, 2019 by admin

Between 1900 and 1969 millions of people traveled and emigrated with the ships of the Holland-America Line.

The Holland-America Line (HAL), originally a Dutch transatlantic cruise company, offered full trips, but emigrants also made use of the HAL. Many Dutch people do have relatives who have migrated to the United States or Canada. There is a good chance that they have used the HAL services.

Also, many Polish Jews traveled via Rotterdam to New York. Between 1880 and 1920, approximately one million Eastern Europeans traveled to America via Rotterdam. The Holland America Line had offices in Bulgaria, Latvia, and Russia where tickets could be purchased for the train to Rotterdam, the boat to America and again the train to every station in the New World. The list also shows that they booked their trip in their native country.

These passenger lists (“passagiersstaten”) are handwritten lists with information about who made the crossing to the promised land with which ship and when. It was also recorded how much the passengers paid for the trip and in which class they traveled.

These sources are one of the most consulted Continue reading →

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Mini-expo at FelixArchief in Antwerp: “Foreigners in a foreign city”

Posted on February 3, 2019 by admin

The FelixArchief (the City Archives of Antwerp: https://felixarchief.antwerpen.be) announced in their recent newsletter from February, sent out via email, that the subject of the mini-expo which will run from February 12, 2019, until Friday, April 5, 2019, will be about “Vreemdelingen in een vreemde stad” (Foreigners in a foreign city). I think that it is worth sharing, hence this post with a translation of the original announcement

(please note, the translation is my responsibility and was not specifically endorsed by the FelixArchief. I’ve included the full URL with the original announcement below the translated text.)

In 1839, the then Sûreté Publique (State Security Service), was commissioned to check all foreign nationals on Belgian territory. In order to gather the necessary information about each foreign national, the State turned to the cities and towns. They were instructed to keep a close eye on every stranger and to forward documents with information to Brussels, where they were kept in a central file.

Antwerp started in 1840 with the Continue reading →

Posted in België, Events, Genealogy Related Articles, History and Culture Related Articles | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

The Joodsche Almanak / Almanach Juif issued in 1934 by J. Fuss and J. Salpeter

Posted on December 9, 2018 by admin

In 1934 an almanac in Yiddish, titled “Joodsche Almanak” / “Almanach Juif”, was published by J. Fuss and J. Salpeter. Edition “Progrés” was issued in Antwerp at Lange Kievitstraat 66.

In the publishers’ introduction which was originally written in Yiddish, they explained the intention of the Almanac.  For your convenience I have translated it into English (not word-for-word):

In our young Jewish community we felt already for a long time the need for a handbook which will help the Jew in Belgium to get oriented in the new setting and to get to know more about what Belgium has to offer regarding Jewish life which is developing continuously.

Now with the closure of the Belgian borders for new immigrants, and with the

Continue reading →
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Updated website for Antwerp City Archives (Felixarchief)

Posted on November 27, 2018 by admin

The city archives of Antwerp (known as Felixarchief) has updated its website. On their website you can read, among others, the following about the update:

Thanks to the new search function you can find a relevant search result faster and more efficiently. Filters allow you to define a relevant time period or limit a search to a few specific detail entries. […] Thanks to a new algorithm, results are not returned in a randomized order, they appear higher in the result as they become more relevant.

In the search guides you can read briefly how you search in certain popular archive series and you will always find a direct link to the series.
(Source: https://felixarchief.antwerpen.be/nieuwspagina/welkom-nieuwe-site, Retrieved on November 27th, 2018)

Innovation is (always) fun, but it will certainly require some adjustment from the users because the new website is now, compared to the earlier version, completely overhauled.

Visit their website through the following URL: https://felixarchief.antwerpen.be

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Solving Cold Cases – An Attempt

Posted on October 14, 2018 by admin

Photo by Fulvio Spada from Torino, Italy (Cold case) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

I am currently in the middle of reading the book on my Kindle “I’ll Be Gone in the Dark” by Michelle McNamara which tells the story about, what is, or better was, considered a cold case. The book tells the gripping story about a mysterious and violent predator, later nicknamed the “Golden State Killer”, who committed fifty sexual assaults in Northern California before moving south, where he perpetrated ten sadistic murders (see https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0792LVP7T). 

Thanks to the possibilities which DNA later offered, in combination with similarities of different M.O.’s the investigators learned about, it became possible to link multiple cases to the same perpetrator. In 2018 they nabbed a suspect, Continue reading →

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My recent visit to the Alsace

Posted on September 20, 2018 by admin

Last summer holiday I stayed with my family in the French Alsace.
Since my children don’t have yet a real interest in musea, I have attempted to squeeze in visits to musea and other (not only Jewish) Points of Interest, which I have mostly succeeded in doing so.

Places I have visited are:

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Rosheim (Photo taken 2 August 2018)

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The vineyards on the outskirts of Rosheim (Photo taken 2 August 2018)

Rosheim – We went there to hike between the vineyards the Alsace-valley is known for. I hoped to reach Rosenwiller, but since also France, like a big part of the rest of Europe, had to cope with an extremely hot summer, we gave up. We just walked a bit in the town of Rosheim. I knew that there was supposed to be a building in Rosheim, which stems from the middle ages and served as a synagogue. Continue reading →

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Interview in Quarterly of the Flemish “Familiekunde Vlaanderen”

Posted on May 23, 2018 by admin

“Familiekunde Vlaanderen“, which is a Flemish genealogy organization, has published in their quarterly, “Vlaamse Stam“, an interview with me.

They have kindly given me permission to republish it on my website, I hope that you’ll enjoy reading it (in Dutch):

(Click on the image below in order to read all pages on the PDF)

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List of Jews living in Pre-War Charleroi

Posted on July 20, 2015 by admin

Vincent Vagman has recently published an important  list of Jews who have lived in Charleroi before the outbreak of WWII .

Charleroi, which is in the Southern part of Belgium, is a very industrial city, which I’d not consider a particularly attractive city. Charleroi used to have a very active Jewish community, mainly thanks to the coal-mining industry.

Vincent Vagman specializes in genealogical researches, as well as in the history of Charleroi and its Jews. The list which he has published for free on his website, contains names of 1641 Jews, of whom 507 were deported between 1942 and 1944.

Mr. Vagman explains in the introduction of the book his methodology and the sources he has used in order to compile the list. The list can and should be considered as an invaluable source if you had any relatives living in Charleroi.

Visit the following website to gain access to the list (an English version of the website is in its planning stages):
www.zakhor-belgium.com/fr/genealogistes/ancetres-juifs-a-charl

2015-07-20 09_11_09-Liste

Posted in Genealogy Related Articles, History and Culture Related Articles | 2 Comments