My Great Aunt, Her Husband and a Dog

(By the way, you can’t see Eva very well in the pictures,
 but my mom and I look a lot like her).

OK I suck and I've totally dropped the ball on this blog, but I swear I will get back to it!

For now enjoy this article that was recently in a Northern California Jewish newspaper which features my great aunt Eva, my grandfather's sister and the only surviving sibling out of nine children, and her husband, my great uncle Kurt. 

I’ve actually never met Eva and Kurt, though she keeps in touch with my grandmother and both my mother and aunt have visited her in California so I’ve heard many times what a lovely and sweet woman she is.

Enjoy:

Ruff love: Canine Corps brings healing spirit of dogs home to seniors

My Scottish Clan

In 1938, on Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, my grandfather, just 19 years old, was severely beaten by the Nazi's.  He ended up in the hospital, but he was one of the lucky one's because on that night as many as 30,000 Jews, his parents, grandfather and sister among them, were sent to concentration camps.  My grandfather and seven of his brothers and sisters were able to obtain tickets to England and left shortly after Kristallnacht.  They were lucky to get out and lucky to be alive.

Like many other refugees, my grandfather, his brothers and one of his sisters, joined the British Army where he became an interpreter and interrogator.  The British government, or whoever was in charge of these things, feared that if the Nazi's were ever able to capture army records, they would be able to see that refugees were fighting for England and so they changed all Jewish sounding names in to Anglo-Saxon names.  My grandfather, Leo Buchbinder, became Leo Buchanan.  While others reverted back to their given names after the war, my grandfather kept the name Buchanan, mostly because he thought it would be more trouble than it was worth to change it back by that point. 

In 1947 when my grandfather came to New York and married my grandmother she became a Buchanan too.  So my German-Jewish refugee grandparents with their thick(ish) German accents were Ruth and Leo Buchanan.  My mother and aunt, until they were married, were Evelyn and Judy Buchanan.

If you don't know, the surname Buchanan is one of the oldest and most well known in Scotland.  The Buchanan's even have their own plaid!  So that became a running joke in our family, the idea of us having Scottish heritage.  When my parents travelled to Scotland on their honeymoon my mother even brought back a Buchanan plaid kilt and both me and my brother came home from the hospital in Buchanan plaid blankets!

Hmmm maybe that's where my affinity for Scottish men comes from...

Picture 1 is of my grandfather and one of his brothers in the Army.
Picture 2 is an article from a newspaper in the UK about my grandfather and his siblings, though they incorrectly called him Leon instead of Leo.
Picture 3 was taken when my grandfather was stationed in Scotland.

Picture 4:  My grandfather and his brother in uniform       
Picture 5:  My grandfather's enlistment papers                          
Picture 6:  Army rations book

  

Picture 7:   Indentification papers                        
Picture 8:  Official name change documents              
Picture 9:  Instructions for interrogators on what questions to ask German soldiers

 
Picture 10:  Army unit
Picture 11:  Soccer team

  

Picture 12:  My grandfather with three of his brothers in England        
Picture 13:  My grandfather, Leo Buchanan

So They Are Never Forgotten

Today is Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day.  It is common practice on this day that the names of Holocaust victims are read, much the same way as you've seen on September 11th.  It's simple and poignant and important.  So, in honor of Yom Hashoah, here are the names of my family who died during the Holocaust.  May they never be forgotten.

My great grandfather:  Solomon Buchbinder
My great grandmother:  Sarah Sauerman Buchbinder
My great aunt:  Berta Buchbinder
My great great grandfather:  Schaja Buchbinder

The First Find

In reality this happened a month (or more) ago, but as I am so bad about updating let's all pretend that I've just discovered this now.

When I began this quest to find out more about the Lander family, I was prepared for a difficult and arduous process.  After all, my family has always assumed that the name Lander was given to us at Ellis Island.  Lander is a really non-descript name, not easily identifiable to any culture, but certainly not Jewish.  Lander does however, sound close to plenty of fairly common Jewish names; there's Friedlander and Lender, Langer and Lanman.  So, I was sure, one of these more common Jewish names had belonged to my ancestors.

My first stop was to visit ellisisland.org, which is free and allows you to access records easily.  I thought that they might have records of both the names that passengers came with as well as what they were changed to.  Though I felt it to be a long shot, I used what little knowledge I had about my father's grandfather.  That, like my father, his name had been George and that someone on that side of the family had come from Austria. 

I hit the search function and entered "George" where I was asked for a first name and "Lander" where I was asked for the surname.  I set the gender to male, clicked the search button and prayed.  The results came back with a few George Lander's, but they had all come from England and their ages and years of arrival would've made it impossible to be my grandfather's father. I was disappointed and was about to close the page when a thought came to me, "why not simply put the letter 'G' in the first name field," and so, I did.

This time I got a slightly broader list of names and right on the top of the list I noticed a name, "Gedalje (pro: geh-dahl-ya) Lander."  My father's hebrew name is Gedalje, could this be my great-granfather.  I clicked on the records and they confirmed that Gedalje Lander was from the Austro-Hungarian empire and that he was 15 when he arrived in 1903, which would have made him the right age in 1913 when my grandfather was born.

It made perfect sense.  He must've come with the first name Gedalje and anglicized it to George at some point.  In Jewish culture a baby is always given the Hebrew name of a deceased relative so in this case my father, unbeknownst to him, had been given his grandfather's given name, which is Hebrew, as his Hebrew name and the name he went by in America, George, as his English first name.  I felt my whole body tingle with excitement at the find!

Then I noticed a button off to the side labeled, "view original ship manifest."  The original, handwritten passenger lists had been scanned in and was available for viewing.  Now I was doubly excited, if this manifest originated at the ships departure it would have my great grandfather's last name before it was changed.  I was brimming over with excitement as I clicked the button.  The handwritten document popped up and here's what it said, "Gedaljah Lander."  It seems that all of our speculation had been wrong, though it may have been changed at some point in Europe, my great grandfather had come to America with the surname Lander!

My great grandfather's name is on the eighth line down

Just The Facts Ma'am

I'll be at my parents for a few days over this next week for Passover so I'll be taking some notes and looking through old documents to see what I can find.  For now though, it seems like a good time to fill you in on the basics, the stuff I've always known about my family.

My mother's side, the Buchanan side, were refugees from Nazi Germany.  My grandfather, Leo, grew up in Frankfurt and was one of nine children.  His grandfather had come to Germany from Russia.  They were desperately poor.  Both of his parents and one of his sister's, my great aunt Berta, were killed during the Holocaust.  My grandfather and seven of his siblings were lucky enough to get out.  He went to England and fought in the British Army before coming to Brooklyn.  Some of his sister's and one of his brothers, Henry, came to New York too, but by the time I was born only Henry was still living in New York.  My grandfather outlived all but one of his siblings and now, of the nine children, only my Aunt Eva, who I have never met, is still living in California.

My great grandparents, Hanna and Alfred Bendit, and my grandmother, Ruth, lived in Berlin.  My great grandfather worked for a Jewish organization and my great grandmother was a stay at home mom.  My grandmother was an only child.  They lived a more middle class existence.  They escaped to America on the last refugee boat that got out of Nazi Germany and came to Brooklyn when my grandmother was 13.  They joined family who had come here around the same time; my great grandmother's mother, her three sisters and their children.  Most of my grandmother's cousin stayed in the New York area so I've met most of them.  I also have very vague knowledge of meeting two of my great-great aunts, or tante's as we call them using their native German, but they all passed away long before my great-grandmother and they weren't close so I have no real memories of my tantes.

I know story after story about my mother's side of the family, that I'm planning to tell here, detailing where they came from and how they got here.  Off the top of my head can name family from six generations back.

My father's side, the Lander side, is the mystery.  Both of my grandparents on that side were first generation American.  My father is named George, for his paternal grandmother, and my uncle was named Lewis, for their maternal grandfather.  If my dad was ever told the names of his grandmothers, he had long since forgotten them by the time I started this project.  My grandfather, Harry, had three sisters.  He passed away long before I was born as did his sister Leah, but I knew his two other sisters, my great aunts.  I knew that they all grew up in Detroit, that their mother died young and that their father, unable to take care of four children during the depression, had to put the children in an orphanage for a time.

My grandmother, Belle, had a few brothers I knew, but I couldn't remember how many and only vaguely had an idea of their names.  I knew she had two sisters; one who was much older than she who died during the great flu epidemic and another, also older named Rae who lived with my dad's family while he was growing up.  Rae was also long dead by the time I was born.  I knew that my grandmother's father was from Russia and that my grandmother had lived in New York her whole life between Manhattan's Lower East Side, Brooklyn's Williamsburg and finally Midwood, the neighborhood in Brooklyn where my dad grew up.

I don't have many stories about my father's side of the family, but I'm hoping that through this project I can find some.

So, there it is, all the facts I have.  Now, you're all caught up too.

Lucky Little Girl

I love history. I've always loved history. Maybe it's because of my general inquisitive nature or maybe it's because my father is a history buff. Maybe, though, my love of history comes from all of the interesting stories I heard about my own family growing up.
I had five grandparents growing up, a grandmother on my father's side and, on my mother's side, a full set of grandparents and a full set of great-grandparents. Even as a small child, I knew how lucky that made me. Sadly, only my maternal grandmother, Ruth, is still living. All five of my grandparents, though all crazy in their own ways, loved my brother, cousin's and I fiercely and unconditionally.

In many ways my mother's side of the family, the Buchanan side, is a study in modern Jewish history. Are you wondering how a Jewish family came to have the surname Buchanan? Well of course, there's a story there too and I promise you we'll get to it in due time.

As for my father's side of the family, the Lander side, well... err... I know almost nothing. My parental grandfather, Harry, died long before I was born, when my father was 13 and my father never knew any of his grandparents, save one grandfather who died when he was four and so, there were just less people to ask. My paternal grandmother, Belle, who was wonderful and warm and kind, passed away in 1996. I wish I'd thought to ask her more questions before then.

A few weeks ago I watched the series Faces of America on PBS and found it inspiring. The show followed some very well known Americans as Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr. helped to trace their family histories. In some cases he was able to go back 1200 years! It was fascinating viewing and reignited the spark in me to study my own family’s history.

I don't expect to be able to trace my own family's history back very far. As with so many minority groups, it's difficult to trace Jewish roots. The Jewish people were so often expelled from countries, so often the victims of persecution and violence and so often made to live on the fringes, always being considered an "other" that it's difficult to find information. Families moved or were forced out of places; names were changed; records weren't kept. So there will be no 23rd great-grandfather for me and the chances of finding out I'm related to some great emperor of yesteryear are highly unlikely, still I think this project is well worth it.

So that's what this blog, Designer Genes, is all about. It's about my family, both the Lander side and the Buchanan side. This blog is intended to document whatever I find out about the Lander side of my family, but also as a place to write down all the stories from the Buchanan side. They're important stories and they deserve a place to live.

My maternal great-great-great Grandmother Dora Schubert

Germany, year uknown