A Note about How This Genealogy Was Made Possible:  

I gathered much information from cemeteries, often paying people to visit cemeteries (such as in Buenos Aires, in Expedit PA, and more) and take photos and send them to me, and from documents that were available from the census and other US archives.  I also gathered much information from JewishGen.  With an account on JewishGen as a "researcher," family members long lost to us are able to contact me and reconnect.  I wrote to counties across the United States to obtain copies of death records, then contact the cemeteries ask them to provide me with photos. Ancestry.com provided additional vital information, including, unbelievably, the birth records of ancestors in pre-Nazi Germany. When others contacted me through JewishGen, we shared information, photos, stories and much more.

Though people often think of JewishGen as a "free" website, it costs a lot of money and effort for JewishGen to run.  Not only do they have to run databases, provide forums for people to reconnect and, a valuable site that has helped me to translate Lithuanian Jewish names into modern Hebrew and Yiddish names in order to help me make connections on our own tree, and the organization itself. They also have a close relationship with LitvakSIG.com and LitvakSIG.org, where information specific to Lithuania is gathered, and translations made.   This has involved, on Phil's and my part, making donations to the translation projects of specific towns and counties of LitvakSIG and JewishGen. People from LitvakSIG often travel from the US, from the UK etc. to Lithuania and visit cemeteries, museums and archives, talk to curators and archivists, and translations muust be done which is a tremendous endeavor in and of itself, and then they make that information available to JewishGen several years lager. 

If you are a part of my family tree and you have learned anything from my website, I encourage you to please make a generous donation to JewishGen.  Thank you.