In memory of other relatives and friends (from Conservative Mazor):

May God remember the soul of ___________ and of all relatives and friends who have gone to their eternal home. In loving testimony to their lives I pledge charity to help perpetuate ideals important to them. Through such deeds, and through prayer and memory, are their souls bound up in the bond of life. May these moments of meditation link me more strongly with their memory. May they rest eternally in dignity and peace. Amen.

Welcome…

…to the Kaufman, Krieberg, Lande, and Schwartz family genealogy page. I hope you enjoy this website.  Please explore both the main headings and the subheadings in the bar at the top and in the left column – there is information under both in some instances.  Then log in to go to family specific (and more secure) data. If you do not have a username and password and would like to request one, please contact me using this form.  To log in, click on “Username” and “Password,” and type them in using only lower case letters.

This project started from a desire to find out who I was related to but has evolved into what will be an extensive and life-long study, including not only our ancestors and relatives, but the worlds they came from and moved to, involving history (e.g. Eastern Europe, early 20 C America, the Depression, WW II), geography (Eastern Europe, much of the United States), and Jewish culture.

This project started in 2005 when I visited my paternal uncle, Fred Kaufman, in Las Vegas. Uncle Fred brought out a shoe box containing pictures and records of my paternal grandfather which started a journey of discovery which appears to have just begun. Parenthetically I was an only child and I left home at the age of 12 for schools and camps and as a result knew only a few of my family members.  The pictures and records Fred showed me stimulated my interest to learn more about my family, which in turn led to many calls and visits to people I had never met, almost all of whom have been unimaginably kind and helpful.  And many of them brought out their own shoeboxes.  From them I learned much about my ancestors as well as our extended family, and I have begun a great many friendships which I have come to greatly value.  I began to learn about genealogical research, genealogical software, and digital cameras, as well as the history and culture of the Jews of eastern Europe, their language, made particularly real by contemporary Yiddish films, their immigration to the United States, and what happened to them after their arrival, including information about our own family.  This now involves the stories of about 900 people in 7 generations spanning 150 years, and it is growing continually.  I have over 1,200 photographs of people, places, gravestones, and censuses inter alia, including three of four great grandfathers. It is a story to be shared and passed down to future generations, and I hope you all enjoy learning about it.

In this website is information about where our ancestors came from, when and how they reached the United States, and how they rapidly scattered throughout the country, a process that continues to this day.  There is information about towns of origin, birth dates, immigration, marriage, and death.  There are family trees and time lines. In addition, there will be charts for each family about what information has been found, including ship manifests, naturalization records, and censuses.  There will also be a newsletter with headlines in the public section and details in the family sections, updated as indicated and in any case every three months.

Your involvement will help determine the scope of this site. Collecting and cataloging genealogy information is an ongoing pursuit and a family affair!

  • Send anecdotes, photos, documents, obituaries and other articles
  • Help organize reunions – for each family, to be announced and organized for each family line
  • Contact me to volunteer
  • Send missing information
  • Send corrections to existing information

Please help!

I hope that some of you may even be inspired to join me in this quest. I would be pleased to teach anyone interested in how to do genealogic research, and obviously someday hope to pass this project over to individuals from each family.

Visit often

The site will be updated every three months or so with:

  • Births
  • Bar mitzvahs
  • Graduations
  • Marriages
  • Occupations
  • Honors / Awards
  • Deaths
  • Etc.