A surprising artifact discovered after a parent's death leads to a series of discoveries and an ongoing interest in genealogy.
In July 1940, consular officials from three nations conspired to open an escape route for Jews out of occupied France. Why did they do it?
A newspaper clipping placed Walter Ruby on the scene of an automobile wreck in Hudson County, N.J. Not every lead pans out.
Walter Ruby hustled his way as a traveling silver salesman, with some career side trips into boxing promotion and medicinal alcohol.
How Elly and Helga Ringel were smuggled with SS escort out of Germany and across the Belgian border in August 1938.
The Tulbowitz tavern in Novocherkassk was overrun by Cossacks during the Rostov pogrom of 1881.
When and why did Walter Rabinowitz take on our abbreviated last name? It was 1917, months after the death of his father Joseph..
Lee Harvey Oswald-killer Jack Ruby was not related to our family. He tarnished our name in the history books.
Stan maintained correspondence with his closest high school and Army buddies, several of whom went on to prominent careers.
Our best documented family line is Feige Kaufler's ancestry among the Jewish families of Krakow.
Walter Ruby's boss in the liquor business became an influential figure in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Watching Sputnik at night from our back yard in a suburb of Pittsburgh is one of my earliest memories.
Home from the war, Stan Ruby is a graduate student at Columbia. His bride, Helga Ringel, is a smart, pretty war refugee from Berlin.
During the course of my genealogy work, I have discovered and connected with cousins from all my family branches. Here are some lessons.
From 1880s to the 1930s, the Ringel family prospered in the garment trade in the German capital. Herman made men's outerwear.
How and why did Stan Ruby's important post-graduate research go wrong, and what impact did it have on his career in physics?
Out of the files of the U.S. Patent Office and into the peculiar subculture of corkscrew collectors.
If Sholom Tulbowitz had gone to Dvinsk instead of Rostov, his Ratner descendants might have grown up in Perm instead of Albany.
Schija Ringel and Feiga Kaufler came to Berlin as young people in the 1880s. They had their roots in Jewish Galicia.
The U.S. liquor industry took off after the repeal of Prohibition. Walter Ruby was the marketing manager for American Spirits.
The Tulbowitz/Ratner family originated in the Vitebsk region, lived for decades near Rostov-on-Don, and finally settled in Albany, New York.
Rosa Shatner, née Ringel, and her lovely daughter Margot perished in a Serbian death camp. In 1957, Rosa's son Ze'ev Sharon gave testimony.
Herman Ringel and Walter Ruby wore opposing uniforms in the Great War.
Before moving his family to Berlin in 1912, Isaak Wohlgemuth prospered as a mover in Danzig. His family roots were in nearby West Prussia.
The Ratner family became established in the Fifth Ward of Albany, N.Y. Abe bottled soda water and Rose nurtured a brood of children.
During the first five years of Hitler's reign of terror, Jewish families of Berlin faced one repression after another.
That story about our Rabinowitz family's tie to a famous rabbi is tenuous at best. Here is the true genealogy of Yitchak Elchanon Spektor.
Joseph and Lena Rabinowitz were Russian immigrants who ran a corner grocery in Jewish Harlem. Their nine children were native Americans.
Stan's innovations in Mossbauer spectroscopy.
The home of a French Jewish jeweller was "Aryanized" and became a Nazi salon during the Occupation.