Jewish Genealogy is Complicated

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Jewish Genealogy is Complicated

Anyone who has ever attempted to trace Jewish roots will find a complexity that is unnerving. It drives you crazy. Soldiers of various nations swept through towns and villages, destroying records, homes, libraries, and exterminating entire populations of people. The loss of records is one challenge, but worse is the constant changing of language and names…

Read More June 25, 2014

Writing the Autobiography- Step One: Create an Archive

Technically, I do not write memoirs. A memoir is a first-person account written from the point of view of the memoir subject. I write autobiographies. I create a third-person narrative of a life, based on interviews and research, as in the case of Helga Hofmeier Edmonds, pictured here at the age of nine, wearing a…

Read More October 18, 2013

“I’m Staying Alive for This Book Signing!”

“I’m staying alive for this book signing!” Helga is in her eighties. We have been working on Helga’s memoir for about a year. It has now been through a copyeditor and a proofreader, and Helga’s daughter now is going through it one more time before it goes to our book designer. After the memoir manuscript…

Read More April 29, 2013