Researching Our Families: Three Case Studies

Speakers: Avrohom Krauss, Lorraine Korn, and Nina Talbot 

For our fifth annual members' presentations, Avrohom Krauss, Lorraine Korn, and Nina Talbot will each present a case study that demonstrates how they solved a genealogical question in their family own research.

CASE STUDIES:

Avrohom Krauss: Finding traces of an elusive man–Joel Lapidus: my most remote U.S. immigrant ancestor

This case study demonstrates how Avrohom Krauss found genealogical footprints for a man born ca. 1841 in Russia, who emigrated to the U.S. at the turn of the twentieth century, advanced in age, never naturalized and died around a decade after immigrating.

Lorraine Korn: Finding information about my paternal grandmother and her ancestors

Lorraine Korn will show how she was able to learn more about her paternal grandmother, Bessie Korn, born in Komarów, Poland (formerly Russian Empire), who settled on the Lower East Side, as well as her paternal ancestors in Komarów.

Nina Talbot: Who was Sime Lustig?

In this presentation Nina Talbot investigates the trajectory of a distant relative and explains the steps she took to unearth a curious and colorful story. This talk is based on an article published in the 2020 Summer issue of DOROT entitled "Love, Marriage and Divorce Across the Atlantic."

Bios:

Avrohom Krauss is a Jewish educator and genealogist specializing in underutilized resources. He is the creator of the Inventory of Landsmanshaft Material held at the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People (CAHJP) and the Philadelphia Landsmanshaftn Inventory. He has written for Avotaynu, Avotaynu Online, and DOROT on a variety of topics that include landsmanshaftn, immigration, relief organizations, vital records, the Hebrew calendar and name changes. Krauss is a regular presenter, translator (Hebrew/Yiddish) and mentor at IAJGS conferences and frequently presents at Jewish Genealogical Societies in Israel and across the United States. He has been a part of JewishGen Webinar Series and was featured in a three-part series on The Ordinary, Extraordinary Cemeteries podcast. A native of Elizabeth, New Jersey, Avrohom resides in Telz-Stone, Israel.

Lorraine Korn,a long-time member of the Jewish Genealogical Society, Inc., (JGSNY), started researching her family about 35 years ago, after attending a JGSNY workshop. She volunteered for the JGSNY Cemetery Project, helping to document plots of landsmanschaftn and other organizations in Jewish cemeteries in the New York metropolitan area. She has served on the JGSNY's Nominating Committee and was on the volunteer-staff of the 26th Annual IAJGS Conference held in New York in 2006. She retired from a career in social services, last employed by New York State Office of Children and Family Services. Since retirement, she has been a volunteer at YIVO, indexing HIAS, German Jewish Children’s Aid (GJCA), and Landsmanshaftn records, as well as small collections and musical material. Additionally, she has indexed records of HIAS Boston and the Baron de Hirsch Trade School held by the American Jewish Historical Society.

Nina Talbot has been a member of the Jewish Genealogical Society, Inc. (JGSNY) since 2016 and has contributed several articles to DOROT. She is a painter whose works are historical, visual narratives that weave together the depiction of individuals and their stories. Her painting series include portraits of American war veterans, immigrant shopkeepers living in Talbot’s Brooklyn community, a supermarket where people from the world over work and shop and Faces of Dynów— a series of paintings and a corresponding book documenting the lives of Talbot’s relatives, historic rabbis and current townspeople from her maternal ancestral town of Dynów in southeastern Poland. Talbot’s other two books related to her family history include Places in Galicia and The Past is the Present. Her newest series of paintings, Places in Galicia, is associated with Talbot’s paternal branch from the eastern portion of Galicia, which is now part of Western Ukraine. A selection of these new paintings was exhibited at The Rzeszów branch of The National Archives of Poland earlier this year, and at The Holocaust Memorial & Tolerance Center of Glen Cove, NY in 2024. Nina's work has also been exhibited at The Judaica Foundation Center for Jewish Culture in Kraków, The Synagogue Center of the Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage in Poland in Zamość, The Bronx Museum of Art and The Brooklyn Historical Society. Nina worked as a teaching artist in the New York City public schools for thirty-five years and an adjunct professor teaching Arts-in-Education at Brooklyn College and Mercy College.