NATIONAL ARCHIVES OF PORTUGAL : Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo : INCLUDES A WORLD WAR II HOLOCAUST COLLECTION

Portugal has been in the media quite a bit lately, as a good place to move to, but somehow the history of the country seems obscure to me. The country's archive goes back into the mid 1600's and yes, there is a digital archive porthole for your research to begin.  A special note is that Portugal has a World War II Holocaust Collection. I was humored to read that the archive page mentions there are two bars nearby!

PORTAL EHRI PROJECT EU PORTUGAL

Link to the Holocaust Collection : PORTAL EHRI JEWISH HOLOCAUST COLLECTIONS

C 2025 Ancestry Worship - Genealogy BlogSpot

UNIFIED LABELS FOR FILMS and BOOKS : CLICK ON THE LABELS FOR FILM RECOMMENDATIONS and BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS

After fifteen years of blogging here at ANCESTRY WORSHIP - GENEALOGY I decided to go through all the books and films I've posted here and unify the labeling.  I'm using the term RECOMMENDTIONS as I usually wouldn't post if I didn't think the book or film was worth your time.  If you click on the label it will bring up ALL POSTS that have that label.

CELEBRATING FIFTEEN YEARS OF 

ANCESTRY WORSHIP - GENEALOGY BLOGSPOT

12,000 BLUE EYED "ARYAN" CHILDREN TAKEN BY THE NAZI'S ' WHAT HAPPENED TO THEM?

DAILY MAIL UK ; 12,000 BLUE EYED CHILDREN TAKEN TO CREATE ARYAN SUPER RACE  Andrew Malone for the Daily Mail

EXCERPT: 

Folker, then just four, did not know it, but he had been chosen to be part of the new 'breed' of supposedly genetically-superior German beings, who would replace millions of the 'impure'  -  Jews, gipsies, homosexuals, blacks  -  after they had been exterminated in Hitler's death camps.
 
Having being ripped from the arms of his parents when German tanks rolled into the Crimea in 1942, Folker was first taken by SS officers to a German medical institute, where doctors measured every part of his body, checking for any 'Jewish aspects'  -  for example, dark hair, pointed noses, circumcision  -  before he was declared suitable.

He had been selected to be a member of the 'Lebensborn'  -  The Fount of Life  -  Himmler's breeding programme to safeguard the future of the Thousand-Year Reich by providing 'pure' future generations to replace those lost by war.

Devised in 1935, the Lebensborn scheme operated on different levels to provide 'Aryan' children for Hitler's mad schemes of eugenics.

As well as the stealing of blond children from families in occupied areas, another part of the scheme involved special 'breeding clinics' where pure German SS officers were told to mate with suitable German women.


*****

I have a story to tell about this...

I once was introduced to an old Blue Eyed woman and was later told by her house-mate that she had absolutely no idea about her heritage and had no family.  My associate speculated that she was one of the children born in Hitler's breeding program.  She did look "German," to me and was about the right age.  The woman lived alone in a house in Los Angeles, had never married or had children, and was quite isolated. How she afforded anything was a mystery. 

When I read this article I thought about her, and others who have an unknown or unspoken heritage, for which they personally have no responsibility at all.

Sometimes people will challenge me, stating that I could not possible do their genealogy.  Often they are wrong, simply they are unaware of how much public information is out there.  However, in a case like this I would be stymied. 

EUROPEAN DNA - THREE DISTINCT TRIBES MIXED including THE NORTHERN EURASIANS

BBC-SCIENCE - EUROPEANS DRAWN FROM THREE ANCIENT TRIBES by Paul Rincon

EXCERPT:

Blue-eyed, swarthy hunters mingled with brown-eyed, pale skinned farmers as the latter swept into Europe from the Near East.

But another, mysterious population with Siberian affinities also contributed to the genetic landscape of the continent.

The findings are based on analysis of genomes from nine ancient Europeans.
Agriculture originated in the Near East - in modern Syria, Iraq and Israel - before expanding into Europe around 7,500 years ago.

      

Multiple lines of evidence suggested this new way of life was spread by a wave of migrants, who interbred with the indigenous European hunter-gatherers they encountered on the way.
....

When the researchers looked at DNA from 2,345 present day people, they found that a third population was needed to capture the genetic complexity of modern Europeans.

This additional "tribe" is the most enigmatic and, surprisingly, is related to Native Americans.
Hints of this group surfaced in an analysis of European genomes two years ago. Dubbed Ancient North Eurasians, this group remained a "ghost population" until 2013, when scientists published the genome of a 24,000-year-old boy buried near Lake Baikal in Siberia.

C 2016-2025 Ancestry Worship - Genealogy BlogSpot

THE PLAGUE : ANCESTRY WORSHIP GENEALOGY FILM REVIEW

THE PLAGUE : ANCESTRY WORSHIP GENEALOGY FILM REVIEW

ONE THIRD of Europe's population was wiped out when the Plague (otherwise known as the Black Plague) was through killing people off, and the Jews were made scapegoats in some locations.

This DVD by History Channel is excellent. It has a bit of focus on the personal physician of the Pope of those times, a physician who did catch a dose but lived, after refusing to stop doctoring even as so many other doctors ran for their own lives.

Watching it I'm reminded that religious hysteria and scapegoating can go together.

I'm reminded that many of us of European ancestry are descended from those who escaped or survived the Plague, though I don't know if that means we have immunity. (Maybe there will always be a new disease to conquer?)

I'm also reminded of the fear we have in 2012 of biological warfare and the emphasis on end times.

I can say this: I have no fear that the world will end in December of this year. The Mayan calendar is round - a wheel - and I believe it's a wheel that can be given another twirl. However, I meet so many people who are invested in End Times and it's always possible that some humans will cause there to be exceptional times out of fervor and expectation. I hope not.  I hope this too shall pass.

I plan to live through the year because with the 1940 census out, even with all the help of databases, it will take a while for me to document hundreds of people I expect to find on it. (As a matter of fact I have to live many more years because I want to be here for the 1950!)

C 2012-2025  Ancestry Worship Genealogy All Rights reserved including Internet and International Rights

SHOAH FOUNDATION TO INCLUDE GENOCIDE TESTIMONIALS OF ARMENIANS AND OTHERS

The SHOAH FOUNDATION will now be taking testimonials of those who experienced the Armenian Genocide. Funny, I just posted about the genocide and saw an article in the local news about it. The link to SHOAH foundation is at the title - click!

By the way, CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY at NORTHRIDGE has just had an "ARMENIAN GENOCIDE AWARENESS WEEK."  That's terrific!

BOOK REVIEW of NANCY GOLDSTONE'S THE FOUR QUEENS

Browsing through the Getty Museum's Book Store, I spotted a book of interest to those of you who like the Medieval period of Europe when the Knights and Fair Damsels were - well - ruling countries.

Most of us can't trace our family history past the 1600's unless there is some provable documents of royal background, for genealogy was probably then more of an obsession of the rich. Knowing who was who was important too when you were arranging marriages.

NANCY GOLDSTONE'S THE FOUR QUEENS "The Provencal Sisters Who Ruled Europe" is about the four daughters of the count of Provence, who made brilliant (arranged) marriages that made them the Queens of France, England, Germany, and Sisicly. Married young - and we mean consummated sex here - twelve and thirteen - these women were history making in their influence in a male dominated and battle dominated world of the 1200's in Europe, well before Countries as we know them were formed.
"Marguerite, Eleanor, Sanchia, and Beatrice...were as educated and world wise as young women could be ... They were married because their fathers (and mothers) saw material advantage and power as an exchange for uniting families... Death claims children and husbands... And so does God, Crusades, and Batttles."

Of great interest in this book is the story of the first coinage of England and how persons using it snipped bits of metal, hoping to slowly collect a fortune...
LINKING HERE TO A French Royal site that shows some of the key players in this work of history, which will also get you THE ANCESTRY OF GEORGE WASHINGTON

HERALDRY

HERALDRY

YOUR EUROPEAN ANCESTORS WERE PROBABLY SURVIVORS OF THE BLACK DEATH

CHANCES ARE VERY GOOD, if you are from European ancestry, that your genes are survivors of the BLACK DEATH - The Plague. I just read a fascinating article in the travel section of the LOS ANGELES TIMES, a paper copy, about tourism to the OBERAMMERGAU area, for the purposes of the yearly passion play, which has been put on every 10 years since the town promised God it would do so, if it were spared the Black Death.


According to SUSAN SPANO, the journalist who wrote the article called IN THE ALPS, A SAVING GRACE, which appeared in the Sunday June 7th edition, "Before the first Passion was staged and the plague abated, almost 100 villagers -died, relatively few compared with southern Germany as a whole, where the BLACK DEATH killed more than a million people.

ELIZABETH OF HUNGARY