MY PERSKY COUSINS:
A Drive to Reconnect

“The minute Adam walked into the hotel, I knew he was a Persky by the narrow face, high forehead and the shape of his nose.”

WHO'S GULAN?
Solving a family mystery

“Posting that notice on JewishGen was a shot in the dark - but I have learnt always to take a flier, and this shot in the dark paid off.”

FROM A SHTETL CALLED MICHALISHUCK:
Finding my Palestin Family

"There are now 513 direct descendants of Shmuilo Palestin of Michalishuck on my Palestin/Polstein family tree, going back to the early 1800s."

HEARD ON THE LISTS
Help for a young genealogist

"... he is probably thinking how easy this was. One simple blog entry and presto, all these documents fall into his lap."

Editors' Note

We're excited to re-launch Success!Stories as a more-or-less monthly webzine, featuring stories of ancestor and family connections made through JewishGen.

In the months to come, you'll read more fabulous tales like the Taub story (see the Archives). This time around we're highlighting the success stories that we read about almost every day on the JewishGen message boards - small successes, important and thrilling, that come in as many varieties as there are people searching to reconnect.

The three accounts in this issue all emphasize a kind of “who-knows-who” approach that's made possible by the more than 3000 readers to the JewishGen discussion list, the many hundreds more who read the twenty-or-so Special Interest Group (SIG) mailing lists, and the approximately 86,000 users of the Jewish Gen Family Finder (JGFF).

Allan Karan reconnected with cousins and connected with an entire new family line from a single posting of names and a photo to the JewishGen Discussion List.

Michelle Essers was just starting her research when she sent a query to the LitvakSIG mailing list in hopes of solving a family mystery. A reader working with another researcher “thinks beyond the box” and recognizes a possible connection, and the sleuthing pays off.

Rita Redlich listed her great-grandfather's shtetl in the JGFF and not only discovered cousins all over the world but also met a Holocaust survivor of the same shtetl who showed her where her family's business had been on a map of the town.

Most of the pieces we'll run are edited from email conversations and interviews. The Heard on the Lists column features emails posted to the discussion lists that capture an entire story, or an exciting research moment, in one page, or even a single sentence or two. Be sure to read this month's terrific story-in-an-email.

We're sure you'll be inspired by these stories and hope you'll find more ways to use the resources and community that JewishGen provides for your own journey of connection.

Meredith Hoffman & Nancy Siegel
September 2009