Category Archives: Paris 2012

Europe 2012 – Day 25 – IAJGS Day 4

I took my time getting to the conference with only a late morning session planned. Alla Chastina spoke about records in the Moldova archives. She showed a lot of interesting examples of documents in her slides, but her accent was thick and she read her comments quickly, and I couldn’t concentrate enough to understand much of what she said. But it definitely looked like she had found a lot.

The annual meeting was scheduled for most of the afternoon. The meeting didn’t go the entire scheduled time, but the session I missed because of it was at the beginning.

With trouble finding a dinner companion, I wandered a bit, ending up in the hotel and eating with new friends – I had just met one and the other two I only met then.

This conference was quite short and fell somewhat short of expectations. I was lead to believe that at least one reason it was shorter was because of the translations. All sessions were supposed to be bilingual, but translations only happened in a few rooms. There were some other screwy things they did, like ultra short sessions and no breaks between them.

But I still had fun, saw old friends, made new ones, lost plenty of sleep, and maybe learned a little more about genealogy.

Europe 2012 – Day 24 – IAJGS Day 3

I didn’t see much of interest in the morning, so I went for a walk in a large garden nearby. I saw the Eiffel Tower from a distance, but there it was.

I returned to the conference for the Sub-Carpathia SIG meeting and had an extended conversation with the organizer. He’d been wanting to meet me since hearing about my success in Uzhgorod, without realizing he’d already met me. I learned some secret information from him.

I missed a lecture I thought I’d go to and almost forgot about the Professional Genealogists’ group, which was about as expected.

That was followed by the banquet. I arrived late and hadn’t specifically told someone to save me a seat. How was I to know I’d be so late? It’s not like I planned that. I had to start the last table in the room, but my cousin soon rescued me when someone left and made room at his table. Many interesting conversations ensued.

Europe 2012 – Day 23 – IAJGS Day 2

I went to an interesting lecture about Halacha and Ethics presented by Rony Golan. It was interesting to hear a different perspective about keeping unsavory information from clients, not because you think they might not want to know about the scandal, but because the wrong kind of scandal can essentially curse a Jewish family for generations because of one person’s actions. Although he presented a couple of cases, he didn’t give answers.

The Poland track was in the afternoon. Yale Reisner spoke about the Applied Science, which he described (I’m paraphrasing here) as the part of the research that affects the living. He told stories of people contacting the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw thinking they were the only survivors, and discovering they weren’t.

Other sessions were very beginner level, so my interest waned.

The Bessarabia SIG meeting was later and listening to a long lecture about all the projects didn’t interest me, so I left early. I was practically greeted outside the door by a DNA cousinĀ  – he wasn’t going anywhere, just randomly wandering. He is one of my two close matches, second or third cousin (we can’t find the connection) and we hung out the rest of the night.

Heading to dinner, we picked up a couple more people and had good company for dinner, the klezmer music, and “drinks” until the morning.

Europe 2012 – Day 22 – IAJGS Day 1

Welcome to the IAJGS 2012 conference from Paris, France.

I don’t have much to say about the first day since I didn’t go to any sessions except the opening one. I’ve seen a lot of people I know and met some new ones already.

I found out that I was on the same flights as Alex Dunai and his wife. I thought it might have been him, but my distance vision is getting worse and I wasn’t about to approach strangers in Ukraine if I was wrong – how could I explain it to them?

French is definitely easier to deal with than Ukrainian, so that’s a nice change.