Sandy Malek is a retired attorney. She has been the President of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Los Angeles (JGSLA) since 2007. She was co-chair of the 2010 IAJGS Conference in Los Angeles.
After years of transcribing information for a number of sites, including JewishGen’s Hungarian database, Italiangen.org, Ancestry.com, and Family Search.org, Sandy became the Coordinator of the Maramaros Vital Records database, a part of the JewishGen H-SIG database.
Sandy also served as the 2014 program chair of the IAJGS conference in Salt Lake City, and the 2015 chair of the selection committee for the Stern and Stedman grants.
H-SIG Luncheon*: “Hungarian Jews in the Great War: Stories from Both Sides” (Weds-149), 11:45 A.M.-1:15 P.M.
Sandy Malek, who, along with Lois Rosen, collaborated on the recent JGSLA publication Jews in the Great War: Family Histories Retold, will speak about the experiences of Hungarian Jews in WWI.
In addition to recounting stories of the Hungarian Jewish immigrants who served in the Allied Forces, she will also talk about the Hungarian Jews who were in the Austro-Hungarian military during the Great War.
The presentation will incorporate and reference a variety of sources, photos and documents that will interest the genealogical community including the writings of David Ignatz Neumann. Born in Western Hungary in 1894, he emigrated to Palestine in 1927 and wrote about the issues that Jews faced during military service under the Hapsburg Dual Monarchy.
Interesting comparisons may be made between the lives and service of these cousins, brothers, or friends who served in opposing forces during the Great War.
Topic: Genealogy and Jewish history related to WWI
*Note: Attendance at SIG luncheons requires registration for the event and an additional fee of $44 (non-Kosher meal) or $54 (Kosher meal) per person.
“Jewish Family Research in Pre-Trianon Maramaros: Resources, Techniques, and Travel Tips” (Weds-121), 3:00-4:15 P.M.
Since the Romanian State Archives began allowing imaging, the JewishGen Maramaros database has grown to almost 60,000 records from areas of the Hungarian county, now in Maramures, Romania and adjacent areas of Ukraine. The collection is ultimately expected to comprise some 200,000 records from Jewish registers plus thousands of civil records created after October 1895 as they become available from the Archives.
Vivian Kahn, JewishGen Hungarian SIG Coordinator, and Sandy Malek, Maramaros Coordinator, both descendants of Maramaros families, will provide an overview of these records and other resources they have used including burial records, Holocaust records, and maps. They will describe techniques they have devised to identify and sort out family relationships in locales where many shared surnames like Kahan, Malek, Teszler, Adler, and others common to Sziget and surrounding communities. Their talk will include tips on research travel to Transylvania drawn from their May 2015 visit to the area. (Presented with Vivian Kahn)
Topics: Ashkenazic research, Cemetery research, Holocaust research, Repositories, Specific countries or geographic areas (Maramures County, Romania; Hungary)