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

CHILDRENS MEMORIAL YAD VASHEM

YAD VASHEM - SEARCHABLE DATABASES and ONGOING DESIRE FOR MORE INFORMATION : THE RIGHTEOUS AMONG NATIONS

YAD VASHAM ; THE WORLD HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE CENTER

Search by town, by person's name, or if you have it, where they died.  But also a database of the Righteous Among Nations, testimonials, history - so very much.  An excellent site to explore. 

People who provide testimonials often also provide a photo of the person they have added to the database and so there is always that possibility that you'll discover a photo.

USC SHOAH FOUNDATION - LAST CHANCE TESTIMONIALS

USC SHOAH FOUNDATION   'We are currently recording survivors and other witnesses of the Holocaust. If you are a survivor or know someone who is, we would love to hear from you.  We are also looking for interviewers.'

These newly recorded testimonies will be indexed and preserved in the Visual History Archive, along with the testimonies of 52,000 witnesses and survivors of the Holocaust, most of them recorded in the 1990's.  The testimonies are used in educational materials, films, and other resources accessed by 35 million people annually.

***

I've posted on Shoah Foundation in the past and so you may already know that you can use their archive for your personal research by appointment.

HOLOCAUST GENEALOGY - JEWS, JEHOVAH WITNESSES, ROMA, and CATHOLICS and CHRISTIANS TOO - ELEVEN MILLION

The Six Million.  You've heard this term.  I wonder if you know that it applies to the estimated Jewish victims of genocide by the Nazi's prior to and during World War II?  The number is an estimate and based on reportage, concentration camp documents, and the like.  However, another Five Million non-Jewish others were also murdered during the Nazi occupation.  Though the years have gone by, though most of the holocaust survivors are now deceased, though there are holocaust deniers, to this day there are museums and memorials and foundations interested in collecting testimonials.  They were the disabled, children who had African genetics, homosexuals, Jehovah Witnesses.

This month in which the Holocaust Memorial Day is lodged, I'll be focusing on research and education opportunities about the Holocaust that began in 1939 and continued until the allies which included the United States defeated the Nazi's in Europe.

I recently met a man whose grandfather and uncle died being worked to death because they were Jehovah Witnesses. He had recently gone to Europe and toured the camps in Germany as well as Poland.  As a result of doing some research for him, I decided to go forward with the plan to jam this month with information.

USC SHOAH FOUNDATION DATABASES INCLUDE GENOCIDE TESTIMONIALS BEYOND THE HOLOCAUST

SHOAH FOUNDATION USC - LINK TO TESTIMONIALS   Cambodia, Guatemala, Armenia, Syria - man's inhumanity to man.  Shouldn't we be working on LOVE THY NEIGHBOR AS THYSELF?

There are hundreds of "access points" - usually at colleges - to this site for the full collection.

Is it possible that you or a family member should be recording a testimonial?

BENJAMIN FERENCZ - LAST LIVING NUREMBERG PROSECUTOR on UKRAINE : WAR CRIMES : BEGS FOR PEACE

HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL DAY

Today there will be memorials for the innocent people who were killed in a genocide against European Jews called The Holocaust. I'm not a Holocaust denier. I respect and use various web sites including Yad Vashem. However when we hear The Six Million, we should be aware that this is a count of Jewish victims. Many people who were not Jewish were also killed including Catholic priests, people who sympathized or helped Jews hide or escape, intelligencia... The demonic plan was to eventually also kill off people who were of the Slavic "races."

What does this mean for genealogists? I'll be writing more on this subject later in the year.

Today let's think about genocide and how that has changed populations around the world.

Let's think about how vaccines, sanitation, and nutrition help humans live longer and better lives.

THE TOY MONKEY THAT REUNITED A FAMILY LOST BECAUSE OF THE HOLOCAUST

NPR: TOY MONKEY REUNITED HOLOCAUST FAMILY

EXCERPT:  After the war, my father moved to the United States.  He left Sweden for New York as a young man of 22.  He was an orphan.  He had no siblings and he was alone.  Again, he picked the toy monkey to come with him. But by now it was something different: the most tangible connection to his childhood, to a fleeting moment of innocence.

POLISH CATHOLIC NUNS RESCUED HUNDREDS OF JEWISH CHILDREN DURING THE HOLOCAUST

YOUR LIFE IS WORTH MINE
How Polish Nuns Saved Hundreds of Jewish Children in German-Occupied Poland, 1939-1945

By Ewa Kurek
Introduction by Jan Karski
C 1977 Hippocrene Books
Originally published in Poland as Gdy Klasztor Znaczyl Sycie  C Zvak Publishers

The book starts out with a translation of a poster that was posted in German and Polish during the occupation.  It says:

"CONCERNING THE SHELTERING OF ESCAPING JEWS
A reminder - in accordance with paragraph 3 of the decree of October 15, 1941, on the Limitation of Residence in General Government (page 595 of the GG Register) Jews leaving the Jewish Quarter without permission will incur the death penalty.  According to this decree, those knowingly helping these Jews by providing shelter, supplying food, or selling them foodstuffs are also subject to the death penalty.  This is a categorical warning to the non-Jewish population against 1) Providing shelter to Jews 2) Supplying them with Food 3) Selling them Foodstuffs.  Dr. Franke - Town Commissioner - Czestochowa 9/24/42."

This book was first published as a graduate student thesis and it is very detailed, informative, and most importantly strives to show both sides honesty and fairly. So it begins with just what the interaction of most Jews with most Christians was before the Holocaust, and that was minimal, but for the professional classes which would have come in contact with each other mostly in business.  (That would include Doctors and Lawyers.)

One of the reasons I'm posting this book review/recommendation on Ancestry Worship - Genealogy is that sometimes Industrial era immigrants from Poland and other countries effected by the holocaust have suggested to later generations that someone in the family was a convert from Judaism to Catholicism or another Christianity. I then often hear that this had to be "impossible" because Jews and Christians had little to nothing to do with each other in the old country.

Well, now that you've read what the law was, you know that indeed, anyone who helped a Jew survive could be put to death themselves.  Such people, when recognized for their sacrifice are called "Righteous Gentiles" by Jews today.

Page 33
According to the estimates of the Remembrance Institute of Yad Vashem in Jerusalen, of the nearly one million Jewish children in Poland, only five thousand survived the Holocaust.

Page 35
Many Jews refused the offer of help for their children because  they did not want them to be converted.  Conversion was one of the reasons for those offers. "The Catholic clergy has always made use of hard times in the life of Jews (pograms, deportations, etc.) for winning both adults and children."  Additionally, some clergy could offer shelter and hide children under the threat of death but they could not necessary afford to feed and support the child and charged money for this.

Page 45
"On the eve of World War II, there were 74 active convents and11 contemplative ones in Poland, in which over 20,000 nuns lived." ... "The nuns belonging to the active orders in Poland worked among and for the Polish people.  They satisfied Polish society's great needs concerning child care through their work in orphanages, nurseries, kindergartens, primary and secondary schools, and boarding-schools; they too care of the poor, the sick, the homeless, as well as outcasts; they constituted the bulk of the junior medical staff in hospitals all over Poland; they taught religion and helped with the work of numerous Catholic parishes.

Yes, in order to hide the children under watchful Nazi eyes, the children had to learn the prayers, dress differently, and sometimes remain silent in order to hide an accent or the fact that they did not speak Polish, but Yiddish.  Still, most likely some Nazi's knew or suspected that some of the children they saw when they showed up at these nunneries were Jewish.  Perhaps they respected the nuns enough to pretend not to know.

This book contains the testimonials of some of the children as adults as well as some of the nuns.  It also contains a list of the orders of nuns by location, for instance  Baworow was the Albertine Sisters, Chorzow, the Dominican Sisters, Grodzisko, Sisters Servants of Mary Immaculate, Kostowiec, Franciscan Sisters of the Family of Mary.

A valuable book, that covers a part of history that many people's families took part in on one side or the other.

C 2014  Ancestry Worship - Genealogy

BARBRO KARLEN EARNESTLY BELIEVES SHE WAS ANNE FRANK IN HER LAST LIFE

May 2021 :The original three video documentary that was inclusvie of Doctor Walter Semkiw, has been taken off YouTube,

This is what I had written about it:

This is the full mini documentary film.  Barbro Karlen was born into a Christian family in Sweden this time around. She has retained her skill and talent as a writer, like Anne Frank, and published her first book at 12.  Her priest was concerned.  A psychiatrist said she was normal, but she didn't tell him about her memories.

Barbro's parents, especially her mother, believed her after a trip to Amsterdam. Then, around the age of 15 she began to forget the dreams and memories that were with her as a child.  She had a brief marriage at 19 and a son, and needed to find a way to support them besides writing.  She retained a fear of men in uniforms but she trained horses for the Mounted Police, which was her career for 15 years. Her past life memories came back to her.  Why had she remembered a past life when most people don't?  Feelings of persecution on the job brought nightmares that she'd had as a child came back to her  - day and night.  She even considered suicide.

I'm posting this video as a substitute which he also posted:

THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE : DVD and DECISION?

Recently it was in the news that Israel was undecided about recognizing the Armenian Genocide, a Holocaust by Ottoman Turks. I couldn't believe there was any question but I guess politics wins out over recognizing truth. You see officially the country of Turkey says that over one million Armenians died not at the hands of the Ottoman Turks but because there was a CIVIL WAR and so these one million dead people died because they were engaged. This Civil War coincides with World War I, by the way, and as a result many Armenians that had a way out came to the U.S.

Called the greatest story never told, I'm personally partial to the truth that this was a genocide.

You see, like the Holocaust during World War II, civilians were removed or chased from their home villages and marched - men, women, and children, people who were not in any military unit. I learned this and saw the photographic evidence by watching this video, the funding of which came from many Armenian Americans. The primary difference between Turks and Armenians was and is religion. The Turks - Muslims and the Armenians - Christians. Armenians in Turkey were true to their faith and felt the pressure to become more Turkish.

History repeats itself constantly with the violence of Muslims. I'm sorry, I really am, that so many Muslims here in the states say that this is not the essence of the religion and that terrorists are not main stream Muslims but if so, they seem to have little to no influence on their co-coreligionists who are so violent in the name of, or with the permission of, their religion.
Be it the Muslims breaking Pakistan off from India and Holocausting Hindus, the Ottoman Turks Holocausting Armenians, of Middle East Muslim terrorists flying planes into the World Trade Center, the distinction between official military and men, women, and children as common citizens who should not be attacked, marched, violated, starved, killed, or thrown over borders, seems to be a unrecognized. So I think Israel is being weak kneed, and the hell with Israel (or maybe shame on Israel), individuals such as myself CAN RECOGNIZE THE ARMENIAN HOLOCAUST!
For genealogy purposes, watching this film it is to understand the motivation for Armenians coming to the United States as immigrants and refugees.

DANIEL MENDELSOHN : BOOK EXCERPT : THE LOST (A SEARCH FOR SIX OF SIX MILLION) on JEWISH NAMING PATTERNS

page 151

"I know that Ruchele had to have been born after September 3, 1923... I know this because Eastern European Jews only name their children after their dead... I and my four siblings are named after dead relatives, just as my grandfather and his six siblings were, and because of this practice people who are interested in Jewish genealogy have a remarkably reliable method of determining certain dates if the information is otherwise lacking... '

"I know for a fact that Shmiel's daughter Ruchele Jager had to have been born after the death of her father's and my grandfather's sister; The first Rachel Jager born in 1896, the doomed bride whose tragic and unexpected death, also horribly premature, would later become, over the course of many years, my families' greatest story, a mythic narrative at whose heart, or so I believe, stands an even older legend about closeness and distance, intimacy and violence, love and death, that first of all legends, first of all myths, about how easily we come to kill those to whom we are closest. '

(Daniel Mendelshohn is referring to CAIN and ABEL here, from the Old Testament/Torah. His book is masterful and, if he does nothing else in his life, this is an accomplishment of a lifetime.)

THE LOST
A search for six of six million
C 2006
Daniel Mendelsohn HarperCollins Publishers

NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY YIZKOR BOOKS

There are several resources for Yizkor books (Books that Record and thus Remember those Jews killed in the Holocaust of World War II) but I just found this one from THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY, which gives you VIEWABLE books on line... THIS IS AN EXPERIENCE!

Millions of people who were not Jewish were also killed by the Nazis, such as Rom (gypsies), Catholic clergy, and Polish Christian Intelligentsia, and it is my hope that there will be comprehensive memory books for them too someday.

YAD VASHEM SEARCHABLE HOLOCAUST YIZKOR DATABASE

The other night, a friend of mine who is a Christian scholar and I were talking about the Holocaust.

I explained about the memory books that are usually kept under the TOWN or GHETTO name. They are called YIKOR BOOKS...and there has been an ongoing project.

In war, soldiers fight soldiers. In the Holocaust that occurred in World War II, millions of people who were not soldiers - citizens - innocents - were murdered in ways that testify to the INHUMANITY of HUMAN BEINGS - a human capability to commit horror. Today we think that many of these people were insane. I have been challenged to wonder whether or not we all have souls as a condition of being. Perhaps we can loose them.

It is true that the victims of the Holocaust were not all Jewish, but the YIZKOR books are a Jewish project. These memory books are useful to genealogists and family history researchers and historians... and I think anyone who is interested in trying to comprehend the history of Europe ought to do some reading on the subject and take a look at these books.

PERHAPS IT IS BEST TO UNDERSTAND THESE BOOKS THIS WAY:

Testimonials of a life - and a death - give at last a person the RESPECT THAT THEY DESERVE AS A HUMAN BEING. Those who remember them testify to their existence.

"YAD VASHEM, together with its partners, has collected and recorded here the names and biographical details of half of the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis and their accomplices. Millions more still remain unidentified: It is our collective duty to persist until all their names are recovered. Do you know of a Holocaust Victim? Submit Pages of Testimony and send photographs of the victims so they will always be remembered."

GENEALOGY SYNCHRONICITY ? I WOULD LIKE TO SPEAK TO THE SON OF LIPA TEPPER

I was just reading THE BOYS by MARTIN GILBERT and following the holocuast survivor testimony from LIPA TEPPER of Dukla, Poland. Wanting to know more about him I GOOGLED his name and up came a semi private blog (comments limited to members) posted by a man who I believe is his son ? AL TEPPER. There was an announcement there that LIPA had passed away surrounded by family.

I do not presently use Twitter, Facebook, or any of those social networks as I simply do not have the time to keep connections going that way. With my research and writing as extensive as it is these days, I have to make time for yoga class and swimming once in a while, just to move the physical plant my brain sits atop of.

However, I am looking for an e-mail address for AL TEPPER because I would really like to speak with him. I was really excited to see this picture of LIPA TEPPER and one of AL, especially as Al calls himself green and uses NAMASTE!

(Al if you are reading this, please contact me! My comments are set for me to approve first and you can leave an e-mail or other contact information for me on there, sure I will not publish it for the world to see!)

POLISH RIGHTEOUS - COMPILED BY ANNA PORAY

Saving a Jewish person when the Nazi's wanted to deport them to a concentration camp, or otherwise exterminate them, could mean death for you and your family. Yet some people took that chance. In a world where there is so much evidence of man's inhumanity to man let's be reminded that sometimes common people rise up to a moment of sainthood.

THIS DATABASE STARTS WITH THE TRUTH OF THE CONDITIONS OF WAR... and the NAZI's determination to take over POLAND... IT LISTS approximately 5,400 Poles who are known to have taken the chance of being killed in order to help someone else, a list of those who paid with their own life, as well as a MASS EXECUTIONS by village and information on Religious and Monastic Orders Who Rescued Jews.

Take a look even if you don't have a surname to run on this one!

THANK YOU ANNA PORAY for posting this!

update September 5th https://www.savingjews.org/