Mark Halpern was an international businessman who spent three years in Japan. In retirement, Mark spends his free time working with JRI–Poland, JewishGen, IAJGS, and the JGS of Greater Philadelphia (JGSGP) helping others research their roots in Eastern Europe, especially Poland.

Mark is a Board and Executive Group member of JRI-Poland, the founder of the Bialystok Area Jewish Genealogy Group, and past President and Program Vice President of JGSGP.

Mark has chaired the program committees for the 2009 and 2013 Conferences in Philadelphia and Boston and is leading the team looking into hosting the 2018 Conference in Warsaw, Poland.

“Researching Your Galitzianer Family: Working with Vital Records“(Mon-120), 4:30-5:45 P.M.

A great many Galician researchers have acquired family records from repositories in Poland and Ukraine. Images of many of these records can now be found online. Over the last fifteen years, the work of Jewish Records Indexing – Poland and Gesher Galicia has made these records more readily available to all Galician researchers.

This session, sponsored by JRI-Poland, offers an in-depth examination of vital records along with a strategic framework to help researchers in acquiring Galician records to further their research. We will provide a historical perspective covering the regulations that governed Jewish record-keeping and how regulations covering civil marriages impacted the legitimacy and surnames of children.

Close examination of sample birth, marriage, and death records will reveal the information contained in the records, identify the records having the most genealogical value, and discover surprises found in many of these records.

Topics: Ashkenazic research, Repositories, Specific countries or geographic areas

“Visas for Life: Seven Refugees Journey to Safe Haven” (Thurs-126), 3:00-4:15 P.M.

Japanese author Akira Kitade came upon a photo album of Tatsuo Osako, his mentor and friend from his days working at Japan National Tourist Organization. The album was a remembrance of young Osako’s job escorting refugees fleeing Nazi occupied Europe aboard a ship from Vladivostok, Russia to Tsuruga, Japan in 1940/41. Seven of these refugees provided photos to Osako while on this journey.

This session tells the story of how the Japanese – in addition to Chiune Sugihara, the acting Japanese consul in Kaunas Lithuania, who saved thousands of Jews by issuing transit visas – helped stateless Jews in their epic journey of survival. Five of the seven refugees have now been identified.

This session also follows the paper trail identifying and tracing those five refugees. The refugee stories begin in Bulgaria, France, Poland, Norway, and Austria and all end in the United States. Two have Seattle connections.

Topics: Holocaust research, Immigration and migration over the ages, Jewish history and culture, Specific countries or geographic areas