Preserving the people in the pages

I'm sure many of you will have seen the media coverage yesterday of Holocaust memorial day, at the 70th anniversary. Most will agree that the Holocaust is something worth remembering, though many will disagree about how - and rightly, as we're all very different people, and some will place commemoration and memorialisation above education and the terrible lessons taught, while others will see it as the ultimate example to use to prevent future atrocities.

Regardless of your standpoint, something horrible happened in the 1930s and 1940s to the people who were Jewish, Communist, Homosexual, Disabled, and likely others who I have unintentionally left out, who were living in Nazi controlled territories. They took their lives, tried to eradicate their identities, their memories, their humanity - but in these latter points they did not succeed.

Projects like those run by the USHMM in conjunction with partners are an attempt to restore that measure of identity, memory, and humanity, that the Nazis did chip away at. The USHMM (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum) holds large amounts of documentation related to the Holocaust - things such as lists of Polish Jews living in ghettos, and applications for the identity cards which all had to carry. You may think that these things are better forgotten - but I respectfully disagree. The Nazis wanted the Jewish people (and others) to be stripped of their names, instead calling them and branding them with numbers. These documents are the pieces they couldn't take - their names, where they lived, what their occupation was, their parents, their birth details, and in some cases even some small passport-style photographs stuck to the middle of the form. And every one of those people is beautiful.

So, when I'm there typing their details into an index on behalf of one of USHMM's partners (the archiving project of a well-known family history website,) people assume that I find it depressing. And yes, there are moments when you feel sad for what was and what could have been, but overall it's a very positive experience. I can help to restore just a little bit of justice to these people - I can let people know they were there, they existed, they were completely normal, they loved laughed and cried. Most importantly, I can help to give them back their names, their identities - and if that isn't positive I don't know what is.

A quick note on a remarkable man

Those of you who saw the One Show last night will know what a remarkable man Freddie Knoller is. If you want to hear his full story of surviving Auschwitz and the Holocaust (surviving the Holocaust - Freddie Knoller's war,) you can see it on BBC2 at 9.30 tonight, and on iPlayer afterwards. Viewers in Scotland can see it on BBC2 at 10pm on Sun 25 Jan, and it will be repeated in all regions except Northern Ireland and Scotland at 23.20 on Monday 26 Jan.

It really is worth a look if you want to know the human story of the Holocaust and encounter this remarkable character.

The Transfixing Tudors

Have you ever noticed that we seem utterly transfixed on the Tudor dynasty? There's no end of plays, books, TV shows, and films on the subject - and every couple of years we seem to go Tudor crazy.

At the moment, BBC has a wealth of Tudor programming on offer (not least the adaptation of Wolf Hall starting on BBC2 tonight at 9pm,) but why is it we keep returning to this family's story again and again?

Well, firstly everyone likes a scandal and a gossip - illegitimacy, mistresses, and who-is-chopping-who's-head-off abounds here, which is as compelling as modern celeb gossip (and we all know about that.)

There's also something of the mafia-style family drama to it; the transfer of power, betrayal, and political point-scoring. And there's the compelling nature of Anne Boleyn - perhaps the most talked-about of Tudor women, a lady who 'won' a king and was the mother of one of Britain's greatest queens, but lost her head in the process.

Maybe it's all these things and more; but to fans of Tudor adaptations, there's plenty around to get stuck into at the moment.

Tales of Impropriety

People have always been people - and the Victorians were less shocked by what went on in their towns than you might think. For example, I found this quite casual newspaper report from the Cardiff Times on 4 October 1879:



Image courtesy of dan at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

MERTHYR

 

A CASE DISMISSED - At the police-court on

Monday - the Stipendiary on the bench - Mary

Evans, a prostitute, was brought up charged with

stealing a dress, the property of another frail

sister named Elizabeth Jones. As prosecutrix

did not appear, the prisoner was discharged.

'Frail sisters' was a common euphemism, as was 'nightwalker' or 'lady of ill repute.'

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year everyone!

If your News Year's resolution is to learn more about your family's history, feel free to get in touch with me using the e-mail address on my website www.familyhistorybycerys.co.uk

You may be feeling a little overwhelmed with where to start, or got confused by the number of people who share a name with your ancestor - if so help is at hand! My range of services is detailed on my website, and do feel free to get in contact!

So, if genealogy is your New Year's project then I'm here to help!