Random Genealogy

Political Cortex, normally a very political website (as evidenced by the name) has a very interesting genealogy story:

What follows is a very personal account of a non-political project I have been working on. It began as a quest I started some three years ago, delving into my genealogy and finally actually visiting the town in Latvia where one branch of my ancestry came from. What I found there was a Jewish population that had almost been wiped out by the Nazis and that may yet die out, fulfilling, in part, Hitler’s dream of eliminating Jews from Europe. There is one surviving synagogue in that town, though it is now a condemned building. That building has stood through 160 years of weddings and pogroms, hope and the Holocaust.

This is the story of my family’s roots in Latvia, my rediscovery of the synagogue where my great grandparents probably were married, and my ongoing attempts to save that synagogue.