The Ackman & Ziff Family Genealogy Institute is staffed by a cadre of volunteers who are experienced family history researchers. Volunteers help patrons, answer genealogical inquiries, conduct research for fact sheets, and work on projects with the Center partner organizations.

Many thanks to our volunteers! They are: Wendy Almeleh, Stew Driller, Arnold Feldman, Hanna Gafni, Aaron Rosenberg, Howard Sedlitz, Gerald Weiss, Paula Zieselman, and Aurora Zinder.

The requirements for volunteering with the Ackman & Ziff Family Genealogy Institute are experience in Jewish genealogical research and access to email. If you are interested in volunteering, please contact Julie Kaplan, Coordinator of Volunteers, at 917-606-8226 or via email.

A Volunteer's Story: "Ro," or How I Found My Family at the Center for Jewish History by Jane Loewenkron Foss

Many years ago, my father told me a story about his father, Sam Lowenkron. Sam had been contacted by some sort of Jewish agency, my father recalled, about sponsoring his nephew—the only member of the family to survive the Holocaust. Sam's nephew—my father's cousin—was the son of Sam's sister, herself a victim of that disaster. The nephew had been born around the turn of the century, after Sam had left Europe for the United States. My father could not recall his cousin's name, only that his surname began with the letters "Ro."

Searching through some old family papers one day, I found a letter postmarked "Mosty Wielke," written to Sam's niece Rose in the U.S. The town Mosty Wielke, I learned, was in Poland, and is now in Ukraine; it was the birthplace of many of my ancestors. The letter was from 1939, and mentioned a cousin of Rose's, Leon, proudly saying that he had just found employment in Lviv, a big city. The letter said that Leon was the son of Aunt Clara Rosengarten. Perhaps this Leon Rosengarten was the "Ro" for which I was searching!

I had since learned that HIAS, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, helped many survivors come to the United States, and that some of the records of HIAS New York are located in the YIVO Archives. I searched for a Leon Rosengarten in the HIAS records of arrival, but could not find him. Then, an elder cousin suddenly remembered the correct surname of the Leon who came to the U.S. which begins with "Ro," but is not Rosengarten.

Back at CJH, searching through YIVO's HIAS arrival cards, I found cousin Leon, and learned the ship and date on which he arrived in the United States. With that information I was able to locate his passenger arrival record at the National Archives and Records Administration. I also wrote to the Immigration and Naturalization Service to request a copy of Leon's "C-file," or naturalization file. The day it arrived in the mail was a good day... I confirmed he was our relative, as the file included his mother's maiden name and birthplace, the last concentration camp in which he was imprisoned (Gross Rosen, a lesser-known camp), and other biographical data. The papers also mentioned a cousin of his, Leon Rosengarten. This was the cousin from the letter, who unfortunately did not survive.

Leon had been born in Beuthen, Germnay—it's now Bytom, Poland. At the Leo Baeck Institute at CJH I found a small archival collection on the Jewish community of Beuthen, including an etching of the lovely synagogue. At the Center I also examined yizkor books from the YIVO Library collection, learning about many relatives in the book on Mosty Wielke.

My cousin Dena learned from the Social Security Death Index that Leon was no longer living... but she was able to contact Leon's daughter, who responded happily to a phone call with an invitation to lunch. We saw old family photos her father had found when he returned to his birthplace, Bytom, and heard the sad and awful details of our family's demise during the Holocaust. But our family had not been destroyed—we had been able to reconnect.

To learn how to do the research mentioned in this story, consult our fact sheets on the YIVO Library, the YIVO Archives, the Leo Baeck Institute, Immigration Records, Naturalization Records, and Finding Your Ancestral Town in the Pale.