Minden Family and Stories: Generation 3: Cousins Beth and Judi Meet as Adults

Starting from Max and Sophie ...

Something happened that scattered the branches of Max and Sophie Minden's family. It was partly the war, partly the Shoa, partly the urge to emigrate and its counterweight, the urge to stay in one safe place. As of the time when this blog is beginning, November 2014, many of their descendants live in the United States yet have never met in person; some of us have met those in France, in England, in Israel, in Australia ... and Canada, South America, and who knows where else we are. This is a space for sharing who we are and what we know about our past, as well as our present and future as a Global Family.

Saturday, November 15, 2014

Generation 3: Cousins Beth and Judi Meet as Adults

Judi Roth (Gen. 3; granddaughter of Henry Minden Gen. 1, daughter of Ruth Gen. 2) and I, Beth Kanell (born Elizabeth Lancy Minden, Gen. 3; granddaughter of Ernest Minden Gen. 1, daughter of Walter Minden Gen. 2), met near Boston on November 8, 2014, for the first time.

Or so we believed at the time. Since then, Judi's mother Ruth has added a detail neither Judi nor I knew: Ruth and her husband visited my parents in 1964, when they moved from England to the US. And Judi and I must have met -- but maybe we were both too overwhelmed by being in the midst of changes in our lives to pay enough attention to that moment 50 years ago.

It's wonderful to connect in person, and to hear each other's stories and begin to catch up on being each other's family members. And the flood of information that we and the other "second cousins" (Gen. 3) and their parents are already providing is why I decided to start this blog, to organize and share the details. More of that, soon. Meanwhile, here is a very special photo: one of Judi (on the right) and me, November 2014, Dedham, MA, taken by Judi's friend Steve. - BK

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A Common Language

This is Beth writing from Vermont (USA). I call Max and Sophie Generation A -- and their 11 children, grandparents of many of us who'll write here, are Generation 1. Ernest Minden (1898-1972) is part of Generation 1 and is my grandfather; his younger son Walter Minden (1925-1998) is my father and is part of Generation 2. I am part of Generation 3, and my sons are in Generation 4.

Working backward, Max Jechiel Minden (1859-1914) and Sophie (Feitler) Minden (1867-1949) are Generation A; Max's parents, Hertz Simon Minden and Sophia (Behrens) Minden, are in Generation B. And so on.

The point of using this blog, for now, is that I anticipate that we'll get to know each other through the stories we tell of our family -- and we can index them using the blog's keyword (tagging) functions, so we'll be able to look things up, gather stories together, and such. It's a workspace, intended for enjoyment, and not too formal, but also a research space where it's helpful to know the full names and dates as we go along.

So ... let us meet and share our stories!