I did my final project on my paternal grandmother’s family tree. I am only posting my concluding text and preservation onto this blog. There is more analysis and information on the final project’s website.
Project Conclusion
Jewish life in Germany did not always have a darkened history. From Frances Rosenstock’s autobiography we can see that life in Germany before the Nazis gained power was prosperous. Unlike the Jews of Eastern Europe, Jews in Germany were assimilated into society: they spoke German, attended German schools, and worked side-by-side with German counterparts. Herz Low dates back to eighteenth century Germany. His family had been residing in Germany for close to 200 years by the time Hitler took office. Anywhere else, they most certainly have been considered citizens, but prejudice plagued the Jews no matter where they settled.
Frances’ problems began in 1933. Joseph Goebbel’s propaganda turned Jews into the villains of World War I and the reasoning behind Germany’s defeat. He also convinced sums of people that the Jews were plotting a Bolshevik revolution in Germany. Her story of troubled times is corroborated by Messersmith’s reports to the Secretary of State that Jews experienced increased anti-Semitism in 1933. In 1936 Frances, her siblings, and her parents left Germany. Months earlier the Nuremberg Laws were implemented. By law, none of Herz Low’s descendants were considered German despite their almost 200 year history in the country. They lost their citizenship and legal rights.
From Herz Low’s family tree, the fifth and sixth generations were those mainly affected by the Holocaust. Of the information I had, I made a spreadsheet of the descendants who either perished or fled Germany. From this we can see that the majority of those who perished during the Holocaust were from the 5th generation born before 1900. By the time deportation began in 1939, this would put many of them at age 40 or older, most likely making them viewed as unfit to work in Nazi opinion. Those who were able to flee did so in the mid-late 1930’s.
Security and Preservation
To preserve the information on the site, I have taken several steps, mainly to have multiple copies stored in different places. All textual information is currently saved in my computer’s harddrive, an external harddrive, on the cloud service Drop Box, and the biographies on Google Drive. The maps are saved onto Google and I have a KML file stored on my harddrive and external harddrive. The original information regarding the family tree and biographies is saved as a PDF in the same location and is also available in its original paper form. Losing the information is not currently cause for concern. If WordPress or Google were to suddenly go offline, the information is stored in multiple locations. If my computer were to suffer a freak accident and no longer be accessible, the data is stored on cloud services and on an external drive.
If someone wanted to contribute to the site, they would need to gain access from me. The site is secure in that I have created a username and unique password containing numbers and symbols needed to log-in. I have changed the settings on my internet browser so that the username and password are not stored and inserted automatically when visiting WordPress. If someone were to steal my computer, the would not be able to access the stie. The password to log into the site is different from the password needed to log into Google to access the Google Documents and Maps used on different pages. If required, instead of providing my password for Google, I can share the items with specific users and allow editing permissions.
