Maurice & Louise Indig at Asilomar, Pacific Grove

My parents, Maurice & Louise Indig learned adventure and travel during their lives, and they really enjoyed it. They travelled the world, and countless trips closer to home; seeing new sights, and revisiting many that were special to them. This video shows a few brief moments of one off their visits to Asilomar, near Monterey. They stayed their a number of times, some with the Bay Area Brooklyn College alumni group that they becacme friendly with. They also took all of us there to celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. This is a from a New Year’s Eve gathering with the Brooklyn College group, and you can tell how they enjoyed the good times with with their friends, and each other. 

Memorial video tribute to my mother, Hermene Louise Indig

At this time of this posting in October 2020, it's a year ago this month that my mom passed away, just short of her 88th birthday. We held two lovely memorial events for her, that featured this video tribute to her beautiful life. Here is her obituary:

https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/eastbaytimes/obituary.aspx?n=hermene-indig&pid=194316596&fhid=2094

To view the video, click on the preview image below, or this link:

https://vimeo.com/372640100#video_1

Joseph Indig interview about working for fortune teller Mrs. Pollack on Manhattan's Lower East Side

My grandfather Joseph Indig lived a very full and fascinating life. He was born in 1904 in New York City,  and lived with his family in the Lower East Side of Manhattan in the early years of his life. He later moved to Brooklyn where he lived most of his life, until very late in life when he and his wife Ruth moved to Fremont, CA to be near his son Maurice and his family. Joe died in 1999.

This is a small piece of a long video interview my dad Maurice did with her father Joe, in approximately 1999. As I plan how to share more of the material later, I start with this unedited clip of grandpa Joe telling how he came to work for fortune teller Mrs. Pollack, his friendship with her son Izzie, and listening to phonographs in Izzie's bedroom on an RCA Victrola. He was a great storyteller, and recalled great detail, even close to 90 years later.

[video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOD7TMYiaiI ]

 

Like my grandmother Ruth, we are all immigrants.

I posted this on Facebook today, on October 15, 2020.

ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO!..my grandmother Ruth (15 years old), sisters Lillie (18), and Bertha (20) arrived on Ellis Island, ready for their new lives. I came across this landmark fact when talking to a cousin yesterday. Now a century later, the Indig family home for almost a half century has a new family originally from India, and those Jewish immigrant sisters have dozens of descendants now part of our nation. WE ARE ALL IMMIGRANTS!...except of course for the Native Americans who deserved and deserve better. In any case, I'm sure all in my circle share my sentiment to remember our own immigrant roots, and to welcome newer immigrants to our society. No immigrants from any country, or any time period, or any better than others - in this way, we're all the same.

The picture here is from 4 years later, 1924, at Bertha's wedding. 

More on the sisters from an oral family history:

Their father Morris Ezra Ehrreich (Rich) left their Jewish shtetl Dukla, in what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire, for the U.S. in 1913, with plans for his children to follow, but when war broke out, they could not travel. Lillie went to Hungary, and the other children remained in Dukla. Bertha and her friend, Chara, made whiskey illegally to stay alive. When they were about to be discovered they got rid of everything. Ruth went to another town as a househelper near the end of the war. After the war the family reassembled. A man named Block from Dukla gathered all the families that wanted to emigrate and financed the cost to come to the U.S. The girls first journeyed to Vienna and stayed in a hotel because of a transportation strike, then to Switzerland where they took showers for the first time, and then to Paris, France. In Paris they stayed with wealthy families and were well treated. They left Southhampton, England for the U.S. on the ship SS Philadelphia. At the time Ruth was 15, Lilly 18, and Bertha 20 years of age. They arrived at Ellis Island on May 10, 1920.

 

Intro to Indig / Guritz family history

 My name is Stephen Ernest Indig, aka Steve Indig. I'm starting this blog with the goal of finding an easy way to share family history details with family and friends, and anyone who may be interested. One of my inheritances from my parents and their ancestors and relations is a large amount of content about our family members. My mother, Hermene Louise Indig (maiden name Guritz) delved into family history as a hobby, and became quite an expert researcher. She accomplished this in the period before so much was available online. I was fascinated by much of what she was finding and archiving, although for many years, didn't find the time to spend much time with it. Research like this is ongoing, and doesn't really have an end point, but at some time after she had so much detail on her own Guritz & Kalmbrunn family tree, she undertook similar work on the family history of my father, Maurice Ezra Indig. Attached on this introductory post is a partial family tree. I'll experiment with this blog, and hope to publish more. 

For anyone actually related to me, I can send you an invite to my ancestry.com family tree. My email is my full name "SteveIndig" with no spaces, followed by the number "1" at gmail-dot-com. You can also find me via my social media accounts which are linked via my professional website: www.steveindigpr.com