The Family Tree
By Terence L. Day
Terence L. Day, genealogist and journalist, is on the Washington State University faculty. He welcomes e-mail at genealogy@moscow.com, or regular mail in care of the Tri-City Herald City newsroom, P.O. Box 2608, Tri-Cities, WA 99302-2608.
Internet links new-wave genealogists
This column was published Sept. 18, 1994
Genealogy isn't what it used to be, and thank goodness for that.
A brave new generation of genealogists has joined the old-timers. They are just as friendly and helpful as genealogists always have been, but they have tools at their disposal kings couldn't have imagined a generation ago.
I suppose we might call them new-wave genealogists. Yigal Rechtman is one of these.
I met Yigal (pronounced Ee-Ga-l) on the Internet, the information superhighway where an estimated 200 million people in 137 nations talk to each other through computers connected by modems and telephone lines.
The 27-year-old genealogist was born in Jerusalem, and grew up on Kibbutz Tzora, outside Jerusalem. At 13, Yigal was introduced to computer technology through work on the kibbutz's systems. Eventually, he wrote a computer program for a colleague's genealogy.
This project started Yigal thinking about his own family history. When he came to the United States in 1989 to pursue a computer science degree at New York University, Yigal's new-found hobby blossomed. With the access universities provide to Internet, Yigal discovered numerous on-line interest groups and genealogical societies and became active in them.
They enable him to do genealogical research on an international basis without leaving New York City. (I interviewed Yigal for this column exclusively via this system. We have never talked by phone.)
In a relative few years, young Yigal has accumulated a computer data base that includes the names of about 700 people on his father's side of the family - basically the Rechtman and Fogelman lines - and nearly as many on his mother's side - primarily the Marcus and Wybranczyk families. Yigal not only finds and document ancestors, but also shares his findings with living relatives, who have experienced a family diaspora - scattering to all six of the world's continents.
"My extended family hears from me, typically once every six months," Yigal said. The effort grows increasingly difficult, to say nothing of the expense. Recently there has been a great migration of his relatives from South Africa into England, Israel, Australia and New Zealand.
Yigal's ultimate goal is to publish two books. "I said when I started that I should publish a book after 15 years and another after another 15," Yigal said. "So far it looks like I am on schedule toward 2001."
That would be on the Gregorian (Christian) calendar, or the year 5760-5761 on the Jewish calendar, where the new year begins on Rosh Hashana, which "floats," somewhat like the Christian observance of Easter.
Yigal will have much success to record in his book.
He counts reuniting long-separated branches of his family among his greatest genealogical successes.
His great uncle was exiled from Austria to Siberia during the pre-1917 socialist uprising. His wife died and he returned to Austria after World War I and remarried.
The uncle died before World War II. His second wife, Pola, and a daughter live in Austria, but contact between branches of the family was lost. Yigal tells the story:
"Forty-odd years later, I came along asking questions and trying to communicate again with Pola. The usual efforts and searches did not yield much result, but I knew my letters were received by someone because they were never returned!"
"Finally, Yigal posted a message on the Internet. "I asked around and got two replies, one from Austria from a man named Wolf and the other from the United States, a guy named Fred Rump.
"The U.S. source gave me the current address. I have no idea how he got it," Yigal reports. "The Austrian source not only located the woman, but also went ... and interviewed her."
Subsequently, Yigal telephoned Pola and learned more important facts about the Austrian branch of the family. Yigal also found a New Jersey branch of the family that had been "lost" 30 years or more, and a London branch that had been separated for half a century.
"This Fourth of July we drove to Rhinebeck, N.Y., a lovely countryside where many Civil War sites can be seen. The graveyards are small and well-preserved. Every time we passed one along the curving roads, I thought to myself: I would give a lot to see one of the equivalent graveyards in my grandparents' hometown in Poland, Austria, or elsewhere in Europe. "Nothing is left there," Yigal lamented. Yigal remembers advice from his grandfather, Alec Marcus, who pointed at a tall building and told him, "People will lay out a lot of money just to see their name on a building. That is the most beautiful piece of art in their eyes.
Today all of Yigal's electronic mail carries a message as part of his "signature." It reads, "The most beautiful piece of art is your own name in print: Yigal Rechtman."
And here is to you, my friend, Yigal. Your very name in print.
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