Finding my way to Vitali

The past few years of delving into my family history have been a fascinating journey. I’ve learned a huge amount, done a lot of research, discovered a new and unusual avocation, and met and reconnected with a lot of wonderful people along the way. This summer has been no exception. I continue to find new documents and articles that paint a fuller picture of my family. For most of the year, I have concentrated on my grandmother. Over the past month, I’ve found myself focusing more on my grandfather.

One of the most unexpected discoveries has been that my quest to learn more about my family is somehow inextricably linked to my learning about and doing hand analysis. I make the most progress when I am involved in both. Often my grandmother’s papers lead me to my grandfather, while my grandfather’s metaphysical pursuits lead me back to my grandmother. Apparently, neither of my grandparents wants to be ignored.

In seeking to learn more about my grandfather, a few years ago I decided to look into hand reading, one of the only things I knew about him. I found my way to Richard Unger and hand analysis through a newspaper article about Josef Ranald which my grandmother had saved – see the January 19 post. During my training with Richard, I had to read at least 100 hands. A few years ago, a friend brought together a few of her friends to get me more hands to read. It turned out that one of the people there was a relative on my grandmother’s side whom I had never met!

During the pandemic, I’ve read a few hands and continued learning about hand analysis by attending Zoom classes with Richard and other much more experienced hand analysts who had been trained by Richard or his graduates over the past 30 years. Earlier this summer, I had a conversation with one of Richard’s former (and current) students, Jena Griffiths, a master hand analyst in Zurich. When I mentioned my theory that Vitali may have known Josef Ranald, she suggested I research Ranald to see if I could find anything. There wasn’t much to find. But my search led me to a fascinating article by Ranald’s granddaughter, Caroline Ranald Curvan. I emailed Caroline and we had a marvelous conversation, granddaughter to granddaughter.

Caroline mentioned that several years earlier she had been approached by Alexandra Nagel, a doctoral student in the Netherlands who was writing her doctoral dissertation on German psychochirologist Julius Spier. Per Alexandra, a psychochirologist was “a Jungian type of hand-analyst. He lived in Amsterdam from the beginning of 1939 until his death in September 1942, having legally fled his home country.” Alexandra and I had a great conversation and have emailed back and forth quite a bit. Early on, she sent me a Viennese newspaper article that mentioned Vitali, in a non-metaphysical context – in 1934 he gave a lecture (in Italian!) at a social club on the subject of “old and new Turkey”:

Earlier this month, I attended the 2021 IAJGS International Conference on Jewish Genealogy. This is the second conference I’ve attended, both of them virtual. The amount of information and number of people involved in genealogy is amazing. I learned a great deal and found new resources. At one session we were encouraged to do newspaper research through the Austrian national library. I have translations of newspaper articles and have wondered how to find them. I have no citation for some translated articles and sometimes the articles do not refer to my grandfather by name – calling him Mr. C or something else impossible to search for. Inspired by Alexandra’s success, I decided to brave the archive myself, despite my lack of German. Incredibly I actually found a few things! I realized that it would be helpful to search using a relatively unusual word so I looked for the German word for mandrake root – “Alraunen”. In addition to a number of unrelated articles, I found one that is similar to a photo I have in the archive — I didn’t realize it had been taken for use in a publication. As often happen when I do not have a translation or have inadequate information, I create a story for myself about the item. In this case I decided Vitali had the photo taken in 1938 or 1939 to be included in his “portfolio” for coming to the U.S., showing that he had a successful business which could be transferred to San Francisco. Instead, this photo was taken in 1934 for an article about mandrake root!

I also found an advertisement for mandrake root sales at my grandparents’ shop:

Translation from Google Translate: “Mandrakes: A meaningful Christmas and New Years present. Real mandrakes are sold from a well-known collection. Get yourself a lucky mandrake now. Himmelpfortgasse 6 and Stubenring 2” — the latter is the address of my grandparents’ stationery store.

At the IAJGS conference, I attended a workshop given by Yad Vashem, the keepers of the Arolsen Archives in Germany. We saw Helene’s requests for information about Vitali’s whereabouts, including one made to the International Tracing Service ITS and to Arolsen, Germany in 1955 in the June 21 and August 21 posts. In the week before the workshop, I looked at the Arolsen archives and found some documents related to Vitali. After the workshop, I searched again and found even more. These will be the subject of tomorrow’s post.

Warning: tomorrow’s post may be difficult to read.