District 2 resident Stanley Diamond is one interesting gentleman. I have known him for many decades.
At the Shaare Zion Congregation on Côte Saint-Luc Road Stanley was asked to "Shaare" his story. He did so in the wake of the Governor General of Canada presented him with the Meritorious Service Medal on behalf of the Queen,
“Squeezing what I would have liked to say into the 15 minutes I was allotted and still include references to my shul history was a real challenge,” Stanley told me. “I obviously had to take liberties and do a lot of paraphrasing and collapse so many parts of the JRI-Poland history into single sentences."
Stanley is the executive director of JRI- Poland. Holocaust survivors and their families, as well as pre-war Jewish immigrants from Poland and their descendants, may be unaware that a remarkable number of Jewish records of Poland have survived the upheavals of history and the ravages of war. Jewish Records Indexing - Poland (JRI-Poland) has created indices/extractions to more than 5 million Jewish birth, marriage and death records from current and former territories of Poland that are housed in that country today.
Indices/extractions to vital records more than 100-years old are searchable on the JRI-Poland online database. JRI-Poland can also direct researchers to detailed information on how to find records less than 100-years old from specific towns now in Poland and in the Lviv, Ternopil or Ivano Frankivsk districts of Ukraine.
In addition to vital records, the JRI-Poland online database includes other types of records such as Books of Residents, censuses, army draft lists, school records, cemetery burials, Polish passports, ghetto death records, birth, marriage and death announcements in Polish newspapers and post-war court and legal announcements in official newspapers (Monitor Polski). The data varies widely by town or region.
Here is a transcript of Stanley’s speech as he “Shaared” his story.
Thank you Rabbi for your generous introduction and for giving me the opportunity to “Shaare” my story. It’s truly humbling to be honored by my synagogue where 71-years ago this week, I celebrated my bar mitzvah.
It was September 1946 and 28-year old Rabbi Maurice Cohen was our new Rabbi… and I was privileged to be his second bar mitzvah. After I finished my haftorah, Rabbi Cohen asked me to stand next to the pulpit, where he addressed his sermon directly to me. I’ve never forgotten the theme of his words…simply “your destiny is in your hands…don’t be a fatalist.” I hope my path through life reflects that advice…but that’s for others to judge, not me.
My life has been touched by the Shaare Zion in countless ways. My first memories go back to Simchas Torah in our Claremont Avenue shul that burned to the ground on February 12th 1939. I’ll never forget my mother’s tears when she heard the sad news. I remember our temporary synagogue in a house on Cote St. Antoine Road and then, starting cheder when the first part of this shul opened in 1941.
This synagogue is where my three siblings and I married, where my daughters Paula, Rachel and Jessika were bat mitzvoth, and where Paula married. This is the shul where my mother was sisterhood secretary for decades and where my siblings and I helped her with the sisterhood’s annual fundraising bazar. I sit in the same seat on the aisle where my late brother Arthur sat before me and where my late father Harry sat before him. My father always sat on the aisle, at baseball games, hockey games, movies and of course, in shul. And in keeping with his tradition, you will find my father – on the aisle - in the Shaare Zion cemetery.
Many years ago, my wife Ruth remarked, “what are you going to do when you retire?” Other women in this sanctuary may have asked a similar question - if they witnessed what Ruth endured for many years…a husband who had a passion for his international decorative ceiling business…and was consumed with it almost every waking hour.
Little did I know that the seeds for my post-retirement had already been sown back in 1977 when my nephew Mark Diamond was diagnosed as being a carrier of the beta thalassemia genetic trait, and blood tests revealed that my father Harry, all four of his children and 9 of 13 grandchildren were also carriers.
I could hardly have anticipated how being a carrier, the fall of the Iron Curtain and the opening up of the Polish archives…the growth of the Internet and the dramatic changes in communications made possible by personal computers and email…and my international business experience - all seemingly unrelated - would come together to play such a huge role in my second career…a new chapter in my life that blossomed into something far bigger than I could have ever imagined.
My family does not suffer from the Thalassemia disease…but we carry the beta thalassemia genetic trait. Only children who inherit the trait from both parents can have the disease known as Thalassemia Major. Children who only inherit the gene from one parent - like the members of my family - live normal lives.
Since the trait manifests itself as mild chronic anemia, carriers in populations where it is not prevalent – like my Ashkenazi family – were never or rarely tested for the trait. Although Thalassemia trait is widely seen in Mediterranean and Southeast Asian families, and a very small percentage of Sephardic Jews, we were one of the first among Ashkenazim diagnosed as carriers in 1977…and that’s where my story begins…
Dr. Arthur Cooperberg, head of hematology at the Jewish General was fascinated to learn about our family as he had only seen the trait in Greeks and Italians in Montreal. Cooperberg’s 1977 study of our family revealed that my father was the carrier…as were the families of his sister Ray Steinhouse and brother Barney Diamond. Many of us had been misdiagnosed over the years as being anemic and had been prescribed massive doses of iron which are totally ineffective.
But where did it come from? We were naturally curious about the source of the trait…and we knew the potential danger to future generations as well as relatives near and far who were likely unaware that their mild chronic anemia could be something else. But, we knew little if anything about genealogical research and no one bothered to learn.
In 1991, I became both the family genealogist and beta thalassemia detective. But to build a family tree of carriers, I first had to discover if it was my father’s father or father’s mother who had passed the trait to him. This was a challenge because my grandparents came to Montreal from New York in 1898 and left their siblings’ families behind.
Fortunately, my sole living aunt finally remembered a distant cousin in Florida, a descendant of my grandmother’s brother Aron Hersz WIDELEC. After identifying myself and discussing how we’re related, I hesitatingly asked, "Is there any incidence of anemia in your branch?" "Oh, you mean beta thalassemia, it's all over our family!" In that one moment I knew I had to concentrate my research on my father’s mother’s branch from the town of Ostrów Mazowiecka – halfway between Warsaw and Białystok.
My luck continued when I learned about Michael Richman, a remarkable young lawyer in Washington who also has roots in my ancestral town. Using the Mormon microfilms of the 1808 to 1863 Jewish records of the town, Michael not only documented the early generations of his own early family but out of curiosity, two hundred other families – including my grandmother’s WIDELEC family. Within a year, after hundreds of phone calls and countless letters, I had connected the main branches of the WIDELEC family in the United States to the earlier generations in Poland documented by Michael. But to research the other branches of my family from Poland, I needed access to the post-1863 records in the Polish State Archives and the pre-war records in the city hall archives.
In May 1994, it was bashert that the keynote speaker at the International Conference on Jewish Genealogy in Jerusalem was Jerzy Skowronek, Director-General of the Polish State Archives. Skowronek immediately grasped my humanitarian quest and offered his full cooperation. Eighteen months later I made my first visit to Poland.
But before leaving, I sent letters to a fourteen genealogists with an interest in my town and nearby towns. I suggested we do joint research of the microfilmed records and avoid senseless duplication of effort. The reaction to the letter was swift and just months later, in the spring of 1995, it led to the birth of Jewish Records Indexing-Poland in its early, rudimentary form.
With the support of our fellow genealogists, Michael and I organized an indexing project of our town’s records. With the invaluable help of a researcher in Warsaw, index pages from the record books were copied and data entry started…even before we arrived.
Three months later, I returned to Poland and handed a thick printed copy of the index to Director Skowronek. He reacted with enthusiasm, so much so that I impulsively asked “wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could do this for all the Jewish Records of Poland?” That moment changed my life and, I am proud to say, ultimately the lives of countless others.
One year later, following a trial period during which we raised funds to index four more towns, we signed a long-term agreement to index all the Jewish vital records of Poland.
As our database grew – and it now has more than 5 million records – the success stories have become endless. But few match the story of Eli Oren in Israel who discovered a half-brother he never knew existed…living just 20 km away. Imagine also what it has meant to countless others, children of Holocaust Survivors, growing up without any relatives and then finding that family members did survive…and suddenly they have scores of new cousins.
In a video of the 2013 signing ceremony of a new long-term agreement with the Polish State Archives, the director commented: “I’m convinced that the results of our mutual efforts will be of great help to many people interested in centuries-old Polish-Jewish shared history and family history research." To emphasize his remarks, a banner across the opening scene of the video on the Archives website says…“It’s the reason for our cooperation. We are deeply aware that countless numbers of Jews from around the world who trace their origins to Poland. We take notice of this and feel obligated to continue this relationship with JRI-Poland.”
In 2013, there was also an historic decision by the Polish State Archive to scan the vital records of all denominations in their thirty (30) branches…and make them freely available on the Internet. JRI-Poland volunteers then started creating internal links in our database to connect the search results to the record images. Who could have forecasted the astonishing evolution - from first learning that records actually survived to now seeing record images online; it’s difficult to imagine that it all happened in just one generation.
I’ve already mentioned anecdotal success stories but as testimony to the broader impact of the JRI-Poland database, it’s satisfying to note that are more than one million searches of the data each year. While originally foreseen as a genealogical research source, the database is being used by families looking for links to relatives caught up in the Holocaust, by academics using the data in never-anticipated ways, by individuals needing a father’s birth record to apply for a Polish passport to give them entrée into the European Community. And we are repeatedly contacted by search companies, government departments and lawyers working on inheritance cases.
We have helped researchers learn their original family names or locate a record of an ancestor whose Hebrew name was then given to a new-born baby in the family. We did that for Adam Atlas, right here in Montreal…not once, but twice. And of course, there are the countless survivors who trimmed years off their ages when they arrived in their new countries…and who many years later, needed our help to prove their real age and collect retirement benefits. Our database has more than 200,000 burial entries making it possible for many people to visit graves of ancestors, an impossible dream until now.
We’re collaborating with the United State Holocaust Museum in Washington, Beit Hatfutot the Museum of the Diaspora in Tel Aviv, and the new Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw. For Yad Vashem, our records are a source of information about countless victims whose existence is clearly evidenced by our data but whose fates are unknown.
Last year we helped a woman in France with records proving that her maternal line is Jewish so that she could get married in a Jewish ceremony in Israel.
And, of course, I can’t omit mentioning that JRI-Poland has contributed invaluable research for two TV series “Finding Your Roots” and “Who Do We Think We Are” about famous personalities like Gwyneth Paltrow, Carole King, and Alan Dershowitz.
Yes, we have received thousands of emails expressing heartfelt thanks but I will never forget one we received many years ago from Esther Minars, a lady in Florida. Esther wrote:
“Discovering JRI-Poland on the Internet was like winning a lottery. My mother, a survivor recounted the names of her immediate and extended family going back to her great-grandparents. I found them all in the database...I couldn’t believe my eyes. For years my mother talked about people in her vast extended family but could not tell me how they were related. Over and over, I was able to tell my mother, “I just discovered more records online – now I can finally explain how you are related to all of them. They are no longer just names!” Finding family relationships in the JRI-Poland database was truly the best gift I could ever have given my mother.”
In the end, my greatest satisfaction has been in building an international team. Our executive committee and board are made up of volunteers from five countries. They are all very gratified that their personal interest in family history ultimately led to becoming experts and teachers… Each has made a difference in the lives of others.
While our leadership is proud of what has already been accomplished, we accept the responsibility to not only continue our journey, but to ensure that our mission will endure for many generations to come.
We’ve been asked why we and so many other volunteers became so deeply involved with JRI-Poland. We believe it’s our passion for what we see as a sacred mission… and the joy that we know we bring others as we ourselves benefit from our combined efforts. The successes that unfold each day give us great satisfaction. What more could I want in these golden years of my life.
And that brings me to a tongue-in-cheek question Rabbi Cohen posed after one of my early trips to Poland. We were having breakfast following morning services and after describing what I had been doing in Poland, this erudite gentlemen…with a distinguished Bostonian accent… leaned forward and with a big smile said, “Stanley, from this you make a living!” (Said with a Yiddish accent!) Perhaps not…but I am certainly having a wonderful time spending my kids’ inheritance!
When I graduated from the Shaare Zion Hebrew School in 1949, Rabbi Cohen wrote a brief speech for each of the graduates. I would like to close with the words of the speech he wrote for me. It said “Albert Einstein was once asked to prepare a brief statement outlining his philosophy of life. The great scientist wrote a credo in which the initial sentence said “Man is here for the sake of others.” Which brings me back to what Jerzy Skowronek, the then director of the Polish State Archives commented after I told him of the remarkable growth of the JRI-Poland database. “Mr. Diamond, he said, I think G/d gave you the beta thalassemia trait for a reason.” Who am I not to believe those words?
I would like to say thank you very much Stanley.You did and do wonderful things for us Jewes from all over the world.
Stay well Stanley.
Lucy Lisowska Bialystok Poland
Posted by: Lucy | 04/17/2019 at 11:27 AM
Hello Stanley. My name is Froma Rose, new Saxe. Don't know if you remember me. I would like to find a copy of a letter written by George V to my grandparents when the triplets were born. Not sure where to start looking. Anything you can suggest is appreciated.
Best wishes, Froma
Posted by: Froma Rose | 03/25/2020 at 04:51 PM