| President - David Blass Hoffman |
| Vice President and Treasurer - Eden Joachim |
| Secretary - Sally Mizroch |
Members-at-large: |
| Judy Baston |
| Deena Berton |
| Rose Lerer Cohen |
| Paul Hattori |
| Dorothy Leivers |
| Howard Margol |
| Sally Mizroch |
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| Online Journal Editor - Judi Langer-Surnamer Caplan |
| Membership Chairman - Gene Alpert |
| Member Site Web Coordinator - Peggy Freedman |
| Webmaster - Webmaster |
| All Uyezd and Project Coordinators |
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David
Blass Hoffman, President
co-founded
and served as co-president of the LitvakSIG. He organized the district
research groups, developed the Online Journal and the Website (with
Trevor Tucker), and served as coordinator for the Ukmerge and the
Raseiniai groups. He traveled to South Africa, Israel, London and
around the U.S. to hold face to face meetings with Litvak researchers
to encourage them to work together to acquire and translate records
for the All Lithuania Database. David brings an analytical research
orientation to the LitvakSIG. He emphasizes that genealogy can
only be completely understood in the context of political, economic
and social movements during any period.
David is also the President of the Jewish Family History Foundation which focuses on 17th and 18th century records of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland [Belarus, Lithuania, Poland and Ukraine]. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Los Angeles. David coordinates the Ariogala, Lithuania Shtetl Research Group and has developed systems for indexing complex records such as inheritance, court, business, and official correspondence files. David has traced his family back to the mid-1600s in Lithuania and Poland. David’s presentations to five International Genealogy conferences reflect that view: Using Mid-19th century Revision Lists to Create a Census of the Jews of Lithuania, The Collection of Box Taxes in the Pale of Settlement, The Recreation of Ariogala: A Lithuanian Shtetl, Finding Your Family in 18th Century Records of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. He has published research papers in Avotaynu: "Collection of Box Taxes in 19th Century Lithuania" (with Vitalija Gircyte) and "Researching 18th Century Census and Tax Lists from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania" (with Sonia Hoffman), Fall 2001; "18th Century Records from the Former Commonwealth of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland," Fall 2003; and in Roots-Key: "Revision Lists in the New LitvakSIG Online Lithuanian Database," Spring 1999; "Genealogists Collaborate to Confirm Family Lore" and "Russian Archival Research: Tracking family in the Russian Empire," Winter 2003; "Social Action, Yiddish Culture and Zionism: Leo Blass and the Eastern European Influence," Summer/Fall 2003; "The Grand Duchy of Lithuania Project: Challenges in Researching 18th Century Records," Winter 2004; "Documenting Family History Stories from 1812" (in Napoleon and the Jews), Summer 2006. David is a clinical psychologist and former professor of Community Psychology and Public Health at Florida State University and UCLA. At UCLA he trained health professionals as agents of health behavior change. He worked in Israel at the Hadassah Wizo Canada Research Institute on Instrumental Enrichment, a diagnostic model used to increase learning potential. |
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Eden S. Joachim, Vice President and Treasurer. Eden has been tracing her family roots since 1991. Her searching has resulted in connections to Aukstadvaris (Visukidvor), Lithuania, Congress Poland, Galician Poland and Prussia. Eden has been the coordinator of the Vilna District Research Group of LitvakSIG. She served as Election Chair in 2006 and was on the Nominating and Election committees in 2008. Eden joined the LitvakSIG board in 2007, and looks forward to continuing her work for LitvakSIG in the coming years. She is on the Executive Committee of JGS Inc (NYC) and is a Co- Coordinator of Gesher Galicia Inc. She was integral in helping GG become incorporated in 2006, and acquiring non-profit status from the IRS in 2008. Eden is the Archive Coordinator of 2 Polish State Archives branches for JRI- Poland, and has helped to raise over $20,000 for the indexing of records for 26 different projects representing 16 towns. Eden was the VP of the JGS of Bergen County, NJ and was on the Conference Organizing Committee for the 2006 IAJGS conference in NYC. Eden has spent 30 years in the finance and human resources fields. She is currently working as a Property Manager. Her experience has allowed her to work closely with people of all walks of life and at all levels of business experience. She has written user manuals, training materials and company policy papers. Eden's latest venture is helping to establish a genealogy program at the Holocaust Museum and Study Center in Spring Valley, NY, expected to have its kickoff in September 2008. Eden's long term membership in the LitvakSIG has afforded her the opportunity to become acquainted with many like-minded people, some of whom now serve on the board of directors. Her outgoing personality, forward thinking abilities and desire to assist others to reach successful goals are all characteristics which benefit the LitvakSIG board. Eden was born in Boston, raised in New York City and lives near New York City. |
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Sally
Mizroch, Secretary. From the time she was a young girl,
Sally Mizroch listened to her father's stories of his childhood
in in Lithuania. He was born in Keidan in 1909 and emigrated to
the US in 1923. In his later years, he yearned to return to visit
his hometown, but because of politics, Lithuania was off-limits
until he was too old to travel. Although he told stories of the
old country, they were from the perspective of a young child, and
much of the family history remained unknown to later generations.
Sally began exploring her Litvak family genealogy in earnest in the summer of 2003, when she answered a posting on the JewishGen Family Finder (JGFF) that requested information about Sarah Mizroch, her grandmother. Since then, she has discovered and visited cousins all over the world. She has used web-based databases and visited archives in Lithuania and South Africa in search of information about her ancestors. She is also a long-standing contributor to the Keidan Vital Records project and a new contributor to the Panevezys Vital Records project. Sally's genealogical research focuses not only on the “where and when” facts of her ancestors. “I am trying to explore our ancestral Jewish cultures and recreate some of the family information that is missing because, like so many Jewish families, I too lost relatives in the Holocaust.” Using the history of her Litvak family as a case study, Sally has been studying the professions as well as the distribution and movements of her relatives in the old country in an effort to recreate the lost Eastern-European-based culture. This also can help to figure out eras of—and reasons for—emigration. Sally is incoming President of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Washington State and continues to serve as Program Chair. In her professional life as a marine biologist, Sally studies large whale populations at NOAA Fisheries National Marine Mammal Laboratory in Seattle, using both photo-identification and historical whaling data to estimate whale life history parameters, vital rates, distribution, and abundance. “The combination of a strong scientific background and my natural attraction to the study of population dynamics allows me to see ‘genealogy' as both an art and a science. This is something that I love to share with others. “As a new board member, I hope to bring to the organization new ideas as well as the capacity to be a hands-on member of a working team. I do a lot of writing and editing in my professional life and I have many years of experience taking notes and writing reports. In addition, my job requires that I be up-to-date with many digital and technical skills, including building and managing databases, digitizing old records and old photos, and using the latest digital technology in remote field locations while studying whales. I believe these tools and skills can be applied to the field of genealogy in imaginative and innovative ways.” |
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Judy
Baston, moderator
of the LitvakSIG Discussion Group, was born in Oakland, California.
Her father was born in Eisiskes (Eishishok), Lithuania, and
a number of photos of Judy’s BASTUNSKI, KAGANOVICH and
KAPLAN grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins from Eisiskes
are in the Tower of Life exhibit at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial
Museum in Washington, D.C. Judy has been researching her family’s
history for 20 years, and she has traveled to Lithuania, Northern
Belarus, and Poland. Since her mother was born in Lomza Gubernia,
Poland (making for an occasional heated discussion about Yiddish
pronunciation around the dinner table), Judy also serves on
the Board of Directors of Jewish Records Indexing-Poland.
Judy has been a presenter on genealogy resources at conferences of the American Jewish Historical Society, American Library Assn. and the California Library Assn. She has published several articles in Avotaynu, including "The Morgenthau Mission to Poland to Investigate the 1919 Pogroms," "Finding Jeremiah," and "Shtetl-Based Jewish Genealogical Research," and in the San Francisco Bay Area Jewish Genealogical Society’s ZICHRONOTE, "From Vilnius to Vilna: Learning About My Father’s Brothers’ Families in the Vilna Ghetto." Since 1992, when she retired from her position as Regional Public Affairs Coordinator of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, Judy has been involved with the Jewish Community Library in San Francisco. She lives in San Francisco with her cat, Malka. |
| Deena Berton has been interested
in genealogy since she was a child when her mother covered all her
bedroom walls with an extensive family tree she made based on her
great grandmother Lena’s memories. However, she didn’t
become active in genealogy research until 1990 when she learned much
to her horror that her mother had thrown away every last scrap of
the family history information she compiled!
Without her great grandmother to guide her, Deena has spent the last 18 years trying to recover her lost family history. Deena is one of the longest, continuously serving people in LitvakSIG. She joined shortly after it’s founding in 1998 as the Telsiai District Coordinator, a role that she still holds and enjoys to this day. The Telsiai District Group has raised over $20,000 and acquired data from hundreds of records representing over 20,000 entries for individual people. In 2008, Deena also assumed the role of Siauliai District Coordinator. As a District Coordinator, Deena has been innovative, building collaborative websites for the contributors with discussion boards and ample space for sharing images, maps, family files, personal research, web links and other resources. She has tried to create context around the records and data we’ve collected so that the researchers get more value out of our data. She has also contributed to LitvakSIG in other ways, writing articles for the online journal and traveling to Lithuania to visit the archives on behalf of LitvakSIG. In her professional life, Deena is the co-founder and CEO of a (US) national IT consulting company that helps corporate clients learn about and deploy technology to store, manage, and protect their data. She hopes to leverage her two decades of experience in the technology industry to help LitvakSIG leverage information technology more broadly to compliment existing resources and benefits for our members. Deena holds a BA in mathematics and economics and an MBA from Cornell University. She really looks forward to serving on the LitvakSIG Board. |
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Rose
Lerer Cohen, Ph.D.
I am a former South African resident in Jerusalem with strong
Litvak roots. My father was born in Uzventis and my mother in
Plunge. I have been involved in Lithuanian family research since
1994. My fathers entire family was murdered in Uzventis in the
Shoah in Lithuania. I have visited Lithuania five times and
during these visits have focused on both family and archival
research.
In 1997 together with Saul Issroff, we founded the Lithuanian Names Project, which I continue to coordinate. The aim of the project is to collect as many lists of names of murdered victims in the Shoah in Lithuania. Researching and locating lists for the project brought me in contact with archives in Israel, Lithuania, Latvia, and Germany. The outcome of the Lithuanian Names Project was the publication of Holocaust in Lithuania 1941-1945: A Book of Remembrance. (Gefen: Jerusalem 2002), co authored with Saul Issroff. I have a keen interest in Oral History and coordinated the International Slave Labour Interviewing Project for the University of Hagen, Germany in Lithuania and South Africa. In Lithuania, Jewish, non Jewish and Roma Forced Labourers who survived the Nazi occupation of Lithuania were interviewed. In addition, the subject of my PhD also related to Lithuania. The title of PhD is Resilience and Achievement: The Case of Jewish Lithuanian Child Holocaust Survivors. For the purposes of research, I interviewed Holocaust survivors both in Lithuania and in Israel. My research and interest in Lithuania is diverse, enabling me to have contact with archives, and individuals world over. A significant portion of the members of LitvakSIG live in Israel, South Africa, Europe and Australia I would like to serve as a liaison between these Litvak researchers, hearing their needs and let them know more about LitvakSIG, thus serving as liaison between LitvakSIG and other Litvak organizations abroad. I would also like to act as the liaison between LitvakSIG and archives in Israel, Germany and other places in the world with Lithuanian holdings so as to enhance and broaden the scope of research. As a resident of Jerusalem, I hope I will be able to bring and international flavour to the board and augment the success of LitvakSIG. |
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Paul K. Hattori Paul works primarily as an independent financial engineer providing expert witness services and consulting in derivatives and wholesale credit. After qualifying as a Chartered Accountant, he worked for US and European banks and managed new business units in credit derivatives. He has spoken at many conferences and seminars to professional and academic audiences. Educated in Britain, with a BSc in Physics and Maths from the University of London, he lives in London. He has been involved with a range of non-profit member organisations both in the UK and internationally. His mother’s family is 100% Litvak and his research interests include shtetls in Vilnius, Ukmerge and Zarasai Uyezds. He became district co-ordinator for Zarasai/NovoAleksandrovsk in 2007 and he maintains a blog for the group at zarasai.blogspot.com. |
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Dorothy
Leivers, coordinator
for the LitvakSIG District Research Groups project.
Having discovered JewishGen by accident the result of an article I read in the
Daily Telegraph in England around 7 years ago, I was excited
by the possibility of learning about my ancestors from Poland
and Lithuania. I did not know then what pleasure the research
was going to provide me with and the wonderful people I would
get to know as a result of that work. Over the years I have
become committed to helping make available as much information
as possible. I love the research and continue to write about
what I have learned. My commitment to finding and saving every
scrap of evidence available keeps growing.
While searching for records relating to my own family, I realised that it would be possible to create a history of the Jewish community of Kopcheve. I have tried to share everything I have discovered because I do not want the little we know of their lives to be lost. I started a web page - www.Kapciamiestis.org and following further research and a visit to Lithuania I wrote the book Jews of Kopcheve, published by Avotaynu. I was born in West Berlin in 1949. In 1951, my parents took me to Canada where I was raised and educated. I have lived in England since 1971. |
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Howard Margol, Past
President. Howard began tracing his family history
in 1990. After retirement, he plunged into genealogy, traveling to Lithuania
in 1993. He joined the newly formed Jewish Genealogical Society of Georgia, and
his research took on a much more serious tone. Howard attended his first
International Conference on Jewish Genealogy in Washington, DC in 1995 and
has attended every annual conference since then.
Howard served a two year term as President of the Jewish Genealogical Society
of Georgia. Under his leadership, the membership in JGSGA grew from 65 members
to a total of 130 members. Howard has continued to serve on the board of JGSGA.
He was elected to the board of the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies (then called the Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies) in 1996 and has served on that board for a total of nine years during which time he also served a two year term as President of IAJGS. Howard was also Chairman, or a committee member, of a number of special IAJGS committees. Howard has lectured in various parts of the world on genealogical topics. He has written numerous articles for Avotaynu, JGS newsletters, and Jewish newspapers. Howard is considered one of the foremost authorities on Lithuanian genealogical research. Over the years he has acquired many thousands of records for Litvak SIG, Belarus SIG, as well as for Jewishgen. Howard has organized and led thirteen different group trips to Lithuania. Seventy five per cent of his group members (almost 300 individuals) were not involved in genealogical research before they took the trip but many of them became involved afterwards. The trips also afforded the opportunity for a number of survivors to return to Lithuania for the first time; something they would not have done on their own. Howard also travels to Lithuania for humanitarian purposes. He and his wife, through their American Fund For Lithuanian-Latvian Jews, Inc. are major supporters to the Jewish soup kitchens in Vilnius and in Siauliai, the Vilna Gaon State Jewish Historical Museum in Vilnius, the Jewish community of Panevezys, and the Bikur Holim Jewish hospital in Riga, Latvia. |
| Eugene J. Alpert, Ph.D.
has been involved with Jewish genealogy since the IAJGS conference in Las Vegas in 2005. Since that time he has attended the 2006 IAJGS conference in NY and plans to attend the next one in Salt Lake City this summer. He is completing his first year as Recording Secretary for JGSGW and is currently the Membership Coordinator for the LitvakSIG. During the summer of 2006, he traveled to Lithuania, Belarus, Poland, and Ukraine to visit his ancestral shtetls.
Gene is currently a senior administrator for a non-profit educational organization in Washington, D.C., where he oversees academic seminar programs and courses designed for college student interns. He holds a Ph.D. and M.A. degree in political science from Michigan State University and a B.A. from the University of Rochester. Prior to this position, he taught political science at the university level in Texas for seventeen years. In 1982, Gene served as an American Political Science Association Congressional Fellow, working for the House and Senate leadership. He is a member of numerous professional associations and advisory committees, including the National Society for Experiential Education (immediate past president) and the Council for the Advancement of Standards in Higher Education (alternate director). Other non-profit board experience includes the Fort Worth Hebrew Day School. |
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| Judi Langer-Surnamer Caplan, Online Journal Editor | |
| Peggy Freedman, Web Coordinator | |
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Don London, Webmaster, is an 8-year member of LitvakSIG. He has been an avid amateur genealogist since 1993 and is a graduate of Yale and Harvard. A television writer and member of the WGA in Los Angeles, Don is the proud cousin of IAJGS Past President Hal Bookbinder. |
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