The Research

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       I want to thank all those that helped me with the research for this book. I am very grateful for all you have done to make this book possible.

  BUBBY’S STORIES is my family’s biography, and as such a work of non-fiction.  It is to the best of my ability, and my family’s memories, historically factual and accurate.
          I did a great deal of research to ensure the accuracy of BUBBY’S STORIES, and I could write a book just about the research I did. I went to libraries, museums, and historical societies all over New York City. It was a pleasure to see Ellis Island, the Tenement's Museum on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, my old neighborhoods where we lived in the Bronx, and the Brooklyn neighborhood where my mother and her family lived when they first came to this country.
          Probably the most helpful resource was the terrific website – Jewishgen.org. It is extremely extensive with its information about the East European Jewish world that the Nazis destroyed. Jewishgen.org has online translations of the books that were written about the individual Jewish towns and cities that existed before World War II. These books are called “yizkor books” and were created by yizkor book committees after World War II. The Hebrew word yizkor means “remember.”
          I spent many hours at the wonderful research center at YIVO – the Institute for Jewish Research. YIVO’s archives and library have the entire collection of the more than 1,000 yizkor books that were created by those who had fled Eastern Europe before World War II and those that were fortunate to survive the Holocaust.
         I searched books and libraries in the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Manhattan for relevant information and photos. The Library of Congress and the New York Public Library were an online wealth of information and photos. They both have vast collections of wonderful photographs on almost every subject.    
          I wrote in English, by email (thank G_d for the internet) to libraries and museums all over Europe and the United States, and they all responded to my questions in English. Their answers were always a wonderful surprise. They sent me info, photos, and referrals. If someone didn't have the info I requested, they were always kind enough to give me a referral to someone else.
          When I wanted a map of the railroad route that my family would have taken across Europe, I wrote to the Belarusian National History and Culture Museum in Minsk. They referred me to the Belarusian State University of Transportation in Gomel, Belarus. The University kindly sent me the perfect train map from 1910. Trouble was, it was in Russian. So, I went to the Map Room at the 42nd Street Library. For those not familiar with New York, the 42nd Street Library is the very large library with the statues of lions sitting out front. The Map Room is a magnificent, huge room with beautiful oak paneling. It was worth the visit just to see the room. They gave me the map I needed. It was an old map and required the use of white gloves. I was able to compare the Russian train map with the old European map in English and see the train routes that my family took.  
          My search for my family’s train routes was just one of the many experiences I had. So yes, BUBBY’S STORIES is as accurate as I could make it.           
          Writing and doing the research, and now presenting my slideshow of BUBBY'S STORIES has been an extraordinary, and in many ways surprising experience, and extremely gratifying.
 

Roslyn M. Rothstein