Budapest Jewish Project

We can make it whatever we want. Take a look at some of the other larger town-based projects.

http://www.geni.com/projects/Jewish-Families-from-Prague/7995
http://www.geni.com/projects/Prominent-Jewish-Families-of-Vienna-We...
http://www.geni.com/projects/Jewish-Families-of-Krak%C3%B3w-Poland/...

Hi Randy.
We certainly can make what we want of it, but to do that, the project's aims must be clearly stated in the opening text. What seems to have been provided at the moment looks to be rather nonsensical.

Taking the three other Jewish communities you have listed as an example, after the initial introduction followed by a simple list of Hungarian Jewish family surnames in alphabetical rather than random order, the project could then develop further by incorporating a few subheadings that will allow submitters be more informative about noteworthy individuals from their respective families, or those that they find specifically interesting.

Roy

Please feel free to edit the project page.

I would certainly like to see the introductory page edited Randy, so that it opens with the aims of the project being concisely stated, for that would bring it more into line with the introductions that you have used in other projects.
e.g.
Relaxation of the nineteenth century legislation on Jewish settlement, land ownership and education gave greater freedom for Jewish families to relocate to major cities and trade from there. Many were attracted to Budapest where they established successful businesses thereby making a major contribution to the prosperity of the Austro Hungarian Empire. This project aims to identify some of those families and highlight specific individuals who history continues to recognise.

A short intro of that nature however, would require the substantial text presently available which goes into more detail about the Jewish history of Budapest, to be reproduced elsewhere after being restructured chronologically. I view it as most unfair on the original submitter to do anything like that without prior consultation. Roy

Me again Randy,

The wording of the project just got to me this morning, so I just had to have a go at restructuring the original lay out without making any major alterations. Now I would like you to oversee those changes in case there are some aspects that you personally would be unhappy with. This is especially relevant because I am a non-Jew and therefore not fully aware of all the religious intricacies.

As I have written, there have been no major changes made, the only significant changes are to the opening preamble and the historical order in which some of the data has been presented.

I have revised the opening text and tried to set out a very brief introduction followed by the aim of the project. Is that OK.

I have then amended the title on 'Families' for the listing was not families at all, its focus was on individual profiles. I also wanted to put all the surnames into alphabetical order, but did not know how to do that.

I then felt the section showing the situation in the 21st century should not come next, for it is the norm in any document to list everything chronologically. I therefore moved that entire chunk of more recent information to the end of the document.

My only other significant alteration was to the section relating to Jewish cemeteries, for the supporting text read as though there was only one of these. I amended that to show them all and then added a few personal comments of my own.

Can you now read the revised document through yourself, and in the process make token adjustments, re-editing anything you feel is ambiguous or incorrect.

Regards Roy

Roy - looks quite good, but I am sure Randy will add his comment.

As far as the names being sorted - yes, it would be nice if they could be sorted by surname - but currently it is Not an available feature. You would have to:

a) Remove them all from the page
b) sort them by Surname in Excel, etc.
c) re-post them to the page

*and any New names added by Users later - would be again added out of sequence

If you want to re-post the names in sequence, go ahead - but it is quite a task :)

Looking good. I would still love to have an alphabetical list of surnames for the early families, like we have for Krakow and Prague, and somewhat for Vienna. But it's a ton of work and i don't have the resources.

Pity an alphabetical listing would need such constant attention. I wonder how the other sites overcome the problem. I presume a similar problem would occur if the Hungarian site was able to incorporate a search box. Roy

Well done Roy.
It's a huge undertaking documenting all jewish families from Budapest. Pity many profile don't even indicate where the person was born or died.

Dont jump the Gun Ilana, I have not taken on the sorting job, but I did find the intro to the project so wooly and unstructured, I felt I had to do something. I believe my very brief input in that area has at least now got that part of the project a little more organized.

I believe the next step (which I am not capable of) is to divide the profile data into two separate fields, one being a simple alphabetical listing of the Jewish families in Budapest c1873-1910, the other being more detailed profiles of noteworthy individuals from those families. The latter need not be in any order providing there is a supporting note in the family listing to inform the reader there is also a more informative profile. At the moment the two fields mixed up together which is rather unsatisfactory, for anyone who just wishes to submit a family surname does so without feeling the need to attach any additional data.

So as I indicated, the project still needs further refining. I have suggested augmenting it in some way with a simple spreadsheet (complete with sort function) for submitters to add very basic (BMD) information on the patriarchs of their Jewish families from Budapest and a link to their family trees that are hopefully also on Geni. Providing that would not only be a useful addition, it would facilitate the abstraction any less informative entries in the present list of individual profiles that have little right to be there.

Any computer boffs willing to take it on?

Roy

How are you defining "jewish families from Budapest". Does this include families who moved to Budapest from elsewhere? Individuals who lived in Budapest who had families elsewhere in Hungary such as students? What period of time? You mention 1873-1910 in today's message.

Vivian Kahn

Projects are flexible and can be organized however we want. it is also easy to make subprojects. Curator Bjorn Brox has a tool to make an excel spreadhseet of all profiles added to the project.

Somehow I feel that Roy needs some more good words about the significant changes which he started, it is a really a good work. Although I can value an alphabetic list, we have to admit that Geni is much more suitable for other kind of (associative) referencing. I thing the usability would be much increased by connecting subprojects. I mean for instance Nobel prize winners born in Budapest (it is 7!), great mathematicians, components chess players, etc. Looking at families many of the families overlap other collections such as families of Vienna, etc.
I think all periods are interesting it also could be a subtitle if we want to emphasize a specific periods. I would be glad also to have the possibility to see profiles of the presently in Budapest living persons, whom i would glad to be able to communicate with.
it would be great to have an alphabetic spreadsheet, and it seems to be easy to make (for Curator Bjorn Brox), If I got this excel I would make a subproject from it he names with only the reference to the Geni profiles. I think I can make and also manage it.
regards

rg

Glad to have got everybody thinking on this. As the project is still in its infancy, corrections or adjustments are more manageable, which may not be possible in later years. (note the Polish equivalent website now has thousands of family names)
Special note to Vivian
I fully appreciate your points and yes, place of origin and years of arrival (a Freudian slip of mine based on the year FAMILY migration to Budapest is thought to have escalated) certainly needs to be more flexible. Those Jews Born, Married or who Died in Budapest, or the city as a major place of work or trade could be the criterion. Regrettably this would rule out many students who just happened to get an education in the city before moving on. Roy

BMD or major work seem to be good criteria, even though that means few if any of my closer relatives will qualify.

Sorry about excluding some rellies, but unfortunately, outside that rather basic criterion, the category of Budapest Jews becomes Hungarian Jews, which could then stand the risk of developing into Austro-Hungarian Jews, until the task develops from being complex to prohibitive.

Side note.
By the way, I also looked at the possibility of providing a link to some existing databases that are also relevant. One on Jewish gen was a Budapest Holocaust database, but that just focused on the Dohany Street Synagogue and only has 566 names on it. Rather unfortunately, it is not representative of the overall picture.

There is a directory of Jews living in Budapest in 1946 that was created by the World Jewish Congress called Counted Remnant: Register of Jewish Survivors in Budapest. List was previously searchable at Nevek website and is now searchable at US Holocaust Memorial Museum website. Includes address, mother's name, and birth place.

Yes, they have a rather dogeared copy of the same register at the Dohany Synagogue offices here in Budapest, but I did not know there was a website link to a searchable copy in the US. Do you know how to access it on the Internet?

The 1946 directory is included in the survivors and victims database at http://www.ushmm.org/remember/the-holocaust-survivors-and-victims-r...

Much like the Krakow project, I have tried to use an alphabetical listing of surnames on the Kozienice project

http://www.geni.com/projects/Jewish-Families-of-Kozienice-Poland/16261

It has almost 3300 profiles in it and while I admit that I have some catching up to do with adding surnames to the list, having when you add surname list with hyperlink to the tree top for the surname in a given town it is very helpful for finding people in a way that sometimes the profile list or even the general search is not- e.g. when you have alternate spellings of a last name within a surname's tree.

Yes, Seth has politely hit upon another problem with Hungarian record keeping and finding details in indexes. Unlike the LDS that have a rather flexible Soundtex indexing system, Hungarian indexes seem to be pedantic about the way people and place names are spelled, and will not recognise alternatives unless all the correct accents have been used in all the right places. That, in a country that can opt to switch from a Germanic, Serbian (Cyrilic), Slavonic, or Latin form of the same name whenever it suits them. Any database of names (whether listed alphabetically or not) certainly presents humungous problems to the programmer.

Roy, I have found it a problem with the search engine on geni.com where a search for Sora does not get you Sara or Sura. On one of the discussions someone suggested using google to find people on geni. That seems silly, but sometimes is neccessary. Alphabetic indexes of surnames in projects can be very helpful particularly if you list some alternate spellings in parentheses - Eg WAJNBERG (Cwajgenberg, Wayneberg, Weinberg, Wainberg) (assuming these are used interchangably in a tree- otherwise listed seperately). This can also help avoid duplicate entries and help when people are not familiar with alternate spellings of names.

I made a link to an alphabetic list ("Profiles in alphabetic order") in the project description. If you suggest changes I'll realize or anybody can change,,,,,.

"............ Hopefully they will also impart more detailed information (a profile) on a specific Jewish ancestor from Budapest whose unique achievements had a major impact on the wider community.

Profiles of significant Budapest Jews and links to their family trees

Jewish Virtual Library

Profiles in alphabetic order <<<<<<---------

If someone with better knowledge than me on designing web pages we could have such lists on an external site instead of projects. That would allow us to semi-automatically keep them updated and could also make the list more interactive.

I have a domain that was planned to host such tools and data, but lack of time to work on it have just parked the site, but I can move it to a server if someone want to start the www design http://worldtreetools.com/

Private User, that was also my first idea - I think we should consider it for future use. I think we can still play a little bit with that (sub)project.

thanks

rg