Karoly is a well-known Hungarian Jewish genealogist and military historian. Besides his native Hungarian, he is fluent in English, Russian and also speaks Hebrew, Yiddish, German. This and his Jewish background made him start his professional genealogy company HungarianRoots 13 years ago. He was the editor-in-chief of two Jewish genealogy related books.

As a military historian, he has been researching the Soviet air force presence in Eastern Europe since 1991 and is now the only researcher studying this topic. His research covered Jews in the Soviet Army, too.

“Lost treasure – The Guide to Elusive Hungarian Jewish Records” (Weds-107), 4:30-5:45 P.M.

During family research in Hungarian Jewish records, most of us will likely bump into a situation where the information that should be there is not there. Either because the register is gappy or there is simply no register to search in at all. Or at least this is what we think when we encounter such a case.

This positive presentation brings back hope even when we think we have hit a genealogy brick wall. The lecturer shows you possible ways of finding registers that have not been microfilmed, catalogued or that have been put under the wrong fonds, and so forth.

You will learn the reasons and will understand the logic underlying why so many of these registers have not been made available to the general public.

The presenter will share general ways to find such records and also bring a couple of examples in a well-organized and really interesting presentation.

Topics: Ashkenazic research, Jewish history and culture, Repositories, Hungary

“From Mano Kaminer to Mihaly Kertész – Impacts of Assimilation on Hungarian Jewish Naming Traditions” (Thurs-106), 1:30-2:45 P.M.

From the mid-1800’s most Jews of Hungary started referring to themselves as Hungarian Jews and this gradual process lasted for almost a century. It had several quite distinct states where new traditions were introduced.

This patriotism introduced a lot of changes in naming patterns, such as, but not only, Hungarianization of both last and first names. Typical Jewish names had become less common when Germanic names like Herman, Hermina became popular for a short time, just to be replaced by old style Hungarian names like Bela, Arpad, Tibor.

In this presentation covering almost two hundred years up till current times, you will get acquainted with how and why Jews in Hungary became loyal Hungarians and how this affected their naming patterns in the multilingual environment they had lived in. You will learn about this with the help of life stories of famous personalities and unique pictures.

Topics: Ashkenazic research, Jewish history and culture, Jewish surname adoption and naming patterns