During a presentation at Congregation Ahavas Achim in Highland Park, Jewish genealogist Gary Mokotoff explains the likely ancestry of its rabbi, Steven Miodownik, based on his surname. Mokotoff was able to pinpoint the area of Poland where the family originated and discovered that they were probably involved in the honey trade.
Photo by Debra Rubin
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February 17, 2009
Speaking in Highland Park, a leader in the field of Jewish genealogy offered tips and encouragement for those who feared their family history was lost in the flames of the Holocaust.
Gary Mokotoff described the Internet tools that have made available a dizzying array of records, while linking Jewish researchers from across the globe.
“If I can do it, you can do it,” said Mokotoff, who has traced numerous family members, many of whom perished in the Shoa. “It’s just a matter of persistence and patience.”
In his three-hour presentation at Congregation Ahavas Achim on Feb. 8, Mokotoff offered sessions on getting started, how to navigate Jewish genealogy on the Internet, and the changing face of Central and Eastern European genealogy research.
Among the new tools he described was a computer system that uses codes and phonetics to untangle the variant spellings of a family surname.
Mokotoff, the author of a number of books on Jewish genealogy and publisher of the Avotaynu International Journal of Genealogy, described his own research projects, which unearthed just how great a toll the Holocaust took on his family, and yielded some pleasant surprises.
“My father always told me that his great- aunt — his father’s aunt — who stayed behind in Poland was murdered in the Holocaust with her family,” said Mokotoff.
After his father’s death, Mokotoff took clues from a family photograph and went to the “Pages of Testimony” section of the Yad Vashem website, where family, friends, and neighbors have filed remembrances of Holocaust victims. A testimony, filed in 1955, revealed that the aunt had survived the war. Although she had since died, Mokotoff was able to locate her son in Israel. The families later met in New York, where Mokotoff gave them the only photos they had ever seen of their grandmother and other family members.
“What I say all the time is that while it’s interesting to find out about your ancestors, the real joy in genealogy is finding a living family member,” he said.
‘A puzzle’
Mokotoff said he has discovered other relatives throughout the world and termed “a myth” the widely held notion among many Jews that their European families were wiped out in their entirety during the Holocaust.
The genealogist also touched on ways to surmount language barriers in dealing with records in Hebrew or Yiddish or those using the Cyrillic alphabet, such as Russian.
Members of the audience, who came from throughout the area, sat with notebooks, eagerly jotting down information and questioning Mokotoff during breaks.
“We brought 10 members of our genealogy club here,” said Lewis Meixler, president of the Jewish Genealogy Club of Beth El Synagogue in East Windsor. Mokotoff “is a leader in the field of Jewish genealogy, and we wanted to hear from the best. His work is really cutting edge. This was just great.”
Afterward, members of the club eagerly took Mokotoff’s advice to network with other local Jewish genealogical groups.
Mokotoff also suggested finding one’s oldest, most direct ancestor who died in the United States and reading his or her tombstone, which will provide a date of birth and death and names of other family members. Many Jewish cemeteries have their records on-line.
Other sources that can provide a wealth of information include old U.S. censuses, military and voter registration records, naturalization petitions, and the manifest of the ship on which a family member arrived. Yizkor books — memorials of those who died — are also available for many European shtetls.
But one needn’t be a detective to begin filling in a family tree.
“The easiest way to get started is by interviewing your relatives,” said Mokotoff. “Then you have to fill in the blanks. It’s like a puzzle.”
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