A Vanished Village

Today's Washington Post has a fascinating story about a unique Polish town.

Trochenbrod, founded in the early 19th century as a way for Jews to avoid long mandatory service in the Russian army, was one of a kind. While there were large Jewish communities in many cities and tiny Jewish farming villages scattered across Eastern Europe, Trochenbrod was an all-Jewish town the likes of which had not existed since ancient times.

The town prospered until the Soviets invaded in 1939, followed two years later by the Germans.

A handful of skilled tradesmen were taken to other towns by the Germans and worked to death or executed. A Jewish historian writing in April 1945, shortly before Germany surrendered, said only 33 of the town's residents were still alive by the end of 1944. By then, the town had returned to Soviet control.

The survivors had nothing to return to. Germans and Ukrainians had burned some of the buildings in the village. Other houses had been looted, disassembled and destroyed by partisans and farmers in the area. After the war, the Soviets bulldozed what remained and turned the land into a collective farm.

Trochenbrod had ceased to exist. [Link]

No Room on Her Bookshelf for Hate

Melissa O'Brien's decision to dispose of an unwanted family heirloom led to a really touching piece in the St. Petersburg Times.

On my grandmother's bookshelf, wedged in between Katharine Hepburn's Me - Stories Of My Life and Ernest Hemingway's The Snows of Kilimanjaro was a copy of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf. It is a 1939 German edition, and inside the front cover, neatly scrolled like a wedding invitation, are the names of my grandparents and the date of their nuptials. My grandparents told me that this book was issued to every newly married couple in Germany in the late 1930s and early 1940s.

When both my grandparents had passed on, my mother decided to sell some of their things. I specifically asked her not to sell Mein Kampf. I wanted to find a way, short of burning the book, to dispose of it properly. The place I finally found for it may come as a surprise. I donated it to the Florida Holocaust Museum in St. Petersburg. [Link]

Making Do With Too Few Jews

Poland boasted a Jewish population of 3.5 million before the Holocaust, but only about 10,000 Jews live there now. Nevertheless, Poland is experiencing a Jewish revival.

"Jewish-style" restaurants are serving up platters of pirogies, klezmer bands are playing plaintive oriental melodies, derelict synagogues are gradually being restored. Every June, a festival of Jewish culture here draws thousands of people to sing Jewish songs and dance Jewish dances. The only thing missing, really, is Jews.

"It's a way to pay homage to the people who lived here, who contributed so much to Polish culture," said Janusz Makuch, founder and director of the annual festival and himself the son of a Roman Catholic family. [Link]

A Mixed Marriage

From Ynetnews.com, posted Nov. 12, 2005:

Himmler relative marries Israeli

Catharine Himmler's six year-old son is a brilliant and curious child, but she is afraid of that day that he will begin to ask about his family tree. "I'm petrified when I think of the moment in which I will have to tell him that one half of the family tried to murder the other half," said Himmler, a political scientist whose grandfather was the brother of S.S. commander Heinrich Himmler.

Catharine married an Israeli, the son of Holocaust survivors who survived the Warsaw Ghetto, which was burned to the ground by soldiers acting under the command of her uncle.

[snip]

[Read the whole story]

Dunking 'Do Nots' Denied

From Salt Lake City (Utah) Weekly of Oct. 20, 2005:

Font of Frustration

After years of prodding the LDS Church over its baptismal records, Helen Radkey alleges she’s been locked out of the church database.

by Jamie Gadette

Just call Helen Radkey obsessed.

The local independent researcher spent the greater part of 11 years monitoring The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints’ baptismal records for names of Jewish Holocaust victims, survivors and famous Jews. During that period, she found evidence that church officials have repeatedly broken and renewed promises to stop “dunking,” or subjecting the names of deceased Jews to the Mormon practice of baptizing the dead.

[snip]

This May, Radkey discovered that, among other prominent figures, Anne Frank is still on record for posthumous cleansing under God. Then, shortly afterward, Radkey alleges she was blocked from accessing the LDS Church’s database of posthumous baptisms, the International Genealogical Index (IGI). Prior to the alleged lockout, however, she collected evidence supporting claims that, when it comes to respecting Jewish requests, the LDS Church is all talk.

[snip]

[Read the whole story]

The Census and the Senseless

Most of us use census data in our research without giving a thought to why it was gathered. Anyone curious about the United States' decennial census quickly learns that a census is mandated every ten years by our constitution, for the purpose of apportioning seats in the House of Representatives. No ethical issues there, so long as you ignore the apportionment calculations that undervalued non-white persons.

Other censuses require a second look. The United States gathered information on Native Americans throughout the 19th century. This information was ultimately used to displace Indian populations. The 1940 census was misused—against the wishes of the Census Bureau—to track down and detain Japanese-Americans after Pearl Harbor.

The most egregious examples of census-abuse come from Nazi Germany. Special censuses and registrations of Jews and other minorities were conducted in Germany and occupied nations for the purpose of expediting Hitler's "Final Solution." The ethnicity of their victims was established, the demographics of a potential slave workforce were provided, and convenient routes for deportation were found with the help of these censuses.

Now comes the ethical question for modern genealogists: Should we use these censuses in our research?

The question parallels one which confronted scientists and physicians in the past. The Nazis conducted inhuman experiments on their victims—experiments which could not be replicated without violating codes of personal and professional ethics. The question to be answered was, Should we use data derived from these experiments?

In genealogy the question takes on a special significance, because the people who would benefit from the use of this census data are the very people Hitler targeted for extermination. The 1939 census is an invaluable source of information for Jews tracing their ancestry to pre-war Germany. For many families, it is indispensable.

As genealogists we are historians, and as historians we cannot afford to overlook useful data. An African-American genealogist who refuses to use records created by slaveholders will find his path blocked at every turn.

Perhaps the proper approach to such records is to consider their use a protest against and repudiation of their original purpose. Using Nazi census records to perpetuate the history of a family once marked for destruction may be the best way to spit in the eye of evil.

More Reading:

• Population Council: Population Statistics, the Holocaust, and the Nuremberg Trials
• U.S. Federal Statistics and Statistical Ethics: The Role of the American Statistical Associations — Ethical Guidelines for Statistical Practice (PDF)