Speaker: Jill Culiner

When Moldavia and Walachia united to become Romania in 1858, the new constitution granted citizenship to Christians only. Jews became foreigners in their own country. Forbidden to be market traders, artisans, innkeepers, evicted from villages, twenty thousand were soon on the streets and starving.

In 1899, 78 unemployed Jewish artisans from Romania and Bessarabia decided to cross Europe on foot, then continue, by ship, to America. To raise money they would give theatrical performances in Yiddish. Although the authorities forced this group of Fusgeyers (wanderers) to continue on by train at the Austro-Hungarian border, they attracted much admiration. Soon thousands of Jewish men and women were forming Fusgeyer groups, training in long-distance walking, and leaving for North America in the search for freedom and respect. When they arrived, they worked as peddlers in mining towns or founded Jewish farming communities.

One hundred years later, photographer, artist and writer Jill Culiner crossed Romania on foot, looking for lost Jewish communities, searching through European archives, then tracing the immigrant trail from Vienna to Liverpool and across America. Her book, Finding Home: In the Footsteps of the Jewish Fusgeyers (Sumach Press) won the Tannenbaum Prize for Canadian Jewish History in 2005. Copies of the book will be sold and signed following the program.

The Ackman & Ziff Family Genealogy Institute will be open 12:30 to 1:45 pm for networking with other researchers and access to research materials and computers.

Ticket Info: Free to Jewish Genealogical Society members, $5 for others.