Cookbook with Recipes from Holocaust Survivors

Ruder Finn Press is publishing Recipes Remembered: A Celebration of Survival, a cookbook with recipes collected from Holocaust survivors, scheduled to be available in May at the Museum of Jewish Heritage and at bookstores.  All proceeds from sales will benefit the Museum.  Author June Feiss Hersh interviewed more than 100 survivors and recorded their food memories and recipes.  The book is organized by geographic region and includes Poland, Austria/Germany, Hungary/Czechoslovakia, Romania/Russia/Ukraine, and Greece.

The New York Times has a review of the book online.

Wordless Wednesday

Passover Musings

As we near the end of Passover, I have been thinking about what Passover means to me.  I am not a practicing Jew, and I did not grow up with Jewish religion as a part of my life.  But I have been hosting a seder dinner for about 15 years now.

My mother was Jewish, but she was not observant.  She married a Catholic (my father) and then a Protestant (my stepfather).  I never saw her anywhere near a synagogue, but I went to Midnight Mass with her more than once.  We had a menorah in the house for Chanukah, but we always had a Christmas tree (which my mother sometimes jokingly called the "Chanukah bush").  We had ham for Christmas and Easter, because my mother's best friend loved ham.  And I knew from the time I was a little girl that when my mother died, she wanted to be cremated.  A lot of things that don't make you think "Jewish!"

But my mother was very close to her family, and we saw my grandparents several times a year.  My grandmother regularly sent cards for Rosh Hashanah, Chanukah, and Passover.  We were kept up-to-date with what other family members were doing, including marriages and bar mitzvahs.  I heard lots of family stories and always knew what our family name was originally.  My mother and her parents sprinkled their conversations with a fair amount of Yiddish.  I sound a lot like my mother when I speak, and people who meet me often think I am from Brooklyn, even though I was born in East Los Angeles.  I grew up feeling Jewish culturally but with no connection to the religion.

Several years after my mother passed away, I was very surprised to find out from my grandmother that my mother grew up in a kosher household.  My grandfather came from a very conservative Orthodox family, and my grandmother wanted her father-in-law to feel comfortable eating in her home.  So she kept kosher until he died.  She had four sets of dishes -- meat and dairy for Passover, and meat and dairy for the rest of the year.

My seders started in an unusual way.  One year my friend Anne and I were invited to seder at a mutual friend's house.  (Anne converted to Judaism for her first marriage and raised her children Jewish.)  We really enjoyed the seder, but by the next year the situation with the other friend had changed, and we were not as close anymore.  So Anne and I decided to hold a seder ourselves.  And now we have a tradition.

The dishes I use at our seders were my grandmother's Passover dairy dishes.  The silverware was my great-grandmother's.  We use a traditional haggadah.  These give me a sense of connection not only to my own family history but to being Jewish.

A Centennial Seder

Marilyn's great-uncle Nathan Siegel

Several years ago, Marilyn Salasky Siegel of Norfolk, Virginia, was reading a book about Norfolk's Jewish community and recognized one of the photos in the book as members of her family.  The photo was of a Passover seder in 1911.  This year, Marilyn and about 50 members of her family commemorated the centennial of that photo by having a special seder in a Norfolk Caribbean restaurant that is housed in a former Orthodox synagogue.  You can read the article about Marilyn and the photo online.

My thanks to Ava Cohn for posting information about this article.

Love of the Irish

You might wonder why I'm writing about Irish research in April, instead of on St. Patrick's Day. I decided to write on the anniversary of Ireland becoming a republic and no longer a part of the British Commonwealth, which took place on April 18, 1949, with the coming into force of the Republic of Ireland Act 1948.

As far as I can tell from my research, I have not one drop of Irish blood in me.  My mother used to claim we were part Irish through her side of the family (the Jewish side!), but I think it was wishful thinking on her part.   Ireland has that kind of mystique about it, that people want to associate themselves with it.  I fell in love with Dublin when I was fortunate enough to visit in 1996, as one of the gaming guests at Gaelcon.  I also managed to pick up an incredibly heavy Irish accent while I was there.

I enjoy the Irish research I've had the opportunity to do, and it's all over the island.  My half-sister's mother's family is all Irish, all the way.  So far I've found that she had family from Carrickmacross, County Monaghan, and Tullamore, King's County (now County Offaly).  A good friend of mine has Irish ancestry on his mother's side.  I've tracked them to Riverstown, County Sligo, and County Roscommon (don't know the townland yet).  And my stepsons have family lines that I've traced to Ballyvourney, County Cork (where there is still a family inn!), and Belfast, in Northern Ireland.

I know that it's important to find out the townland the family is from to be able to move forward with research in Irish records.  Most of the townlands I know about came through family information that was handed down.  I found one listed in a biography in a county history and was able to confirm it through civil birth registrations.  I'm still getting my feet wet with Griffitih's Valuation, which I've been using for the family in Ballyvourney.  I know I have a lot to learn.

National Days of Remembrance

From May 1 through 8, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum will lead the country in observing the national Days of Remembrance.  The Days of Remembrance offer the opportunity to come together as a nation to honor the victims of the Holocaust and keep their memories alive.

The Museum will host memorial programs in Washington, D.C., and many communities across the country will also hold ceremonies.  The Museum has posted an online map displaying events throughout the United States.  You may use the map to find an event near you.

The national Days of Remembrance ceremony will be Webcast live from the U.S. Capitol Rotunda.  Check the Days of Remembrance Web page for more information.

You can also create your own event and add it to the map. To help you plan, the Museum can send you a CD/DVD package of resources related to this year's Days of Remembrance theme, Justice and Accountability in the Face of Genocide: What Have We Learned?  The hope is to encourage reflection on the role of justice in the wake of genocide and what we can do to prevent atrocities now and in the future.  You can request your free Days of Remembrance resource pack here.  There is still time to order your package and receive it before May 1.

Abraham Lincoln, the Titanic, Taxes -- and My Brother

April 15 is an important day in the history of the United States.  Abraham Lincoln died on this day in 1865 (though he was shot on April 14).  The Titanic sank on this day in 1912 (it hit the iceberg on April 14).  Income taxes have been due on this day since 1955 (except for those years, such as 2011, when April 15 falls on a holiday of some sort).  And in 1963 my brother was born.  Hey, it's an important day for my family, right?

It's easier to remember a date when you can connect it with one you already know.  In this situation, the main reason I know when Lincoln died and when the Titanic sank is that the date was one I already remembered.  I remember that Lee surrendered to Grant on April 9 because that's my birthday.

Historically, it was usually not important for people to know exactly when they were born, which is one of the reasons there are often discrepancies between the dates they used and what genealogists discover in records.  You get used to this after a while and anticipate it.

Sometimes you get a pleasant surprise, however.  If a birth occurred at the same time as a more prominent event, it was likely that it would be remembered in connection with that event.  For example, I found a Bible entry once that did not state the child's actual date of birth but said he was born on Easter Day and gave the year.  Something I have noticed with researching Jewish immigrants is a large number of people who said their birthdays were April 15, September 15, or December 15 -- in other words, they were told they were born during Passover, Rosh Hashanah, or Chanukah.

You can find the same phenomenon with years.  Someone was born the year of the great flood, or a couple was married the year of the great earthquake.  You learn to appreciate these clues when you come across them.

So happy birthday to my brother!  Thanks for helping me remember Lincoln and the Titanic!

Free Access to Gale Databases to Celebrate National Library Week

In honor of 2011 National Library Week, Gale, one of the major international information purveyors, is allowing free access to several of its online resources from April 10-24.  The primary database of interest to genealogists will be Gale NewsVault, which includes 19th Century British Library Newspapers, 19th Century U.S. Newspapers, 19th Century UK Periodicals: Empire, Times Digital Archive, and Illustrated London Times Historical Archive.  Other databases available free until April 24 include Powerspeak Languages and Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive.

Wordless Wednesday

Seeking Stories from Jewish Refugees Who Came through Angel Island

Angel Island Immigration Station

Angel Island has been called the Ellis Island of the West.  The immigration station there was in operation from 1910-1940.  The Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation (AIISF) promotes a greater understanding of Pacific Coast immigration and its role in shaping America’s past, present, and future.  Currently, AIISF is asking for help in locating Jewish refugees who came to San Francisco in the late 1930's and 1940, and their descendants.

As restrictions tightened against Jewish people in countries under Nazi control, several hundred Jews applied for entrance to the United States.  After traveling across Russia to China and Japan, they boarded ships bound for San Francisco.  Dozens of people ended up at the Angel Island Immigration Station, underwent medical inspection, and were detained for weeks because they did not have sufficient funds to reach their intended destinations.

On its Web site, AIISF hosts a database with information about 132 Jewish immigrants who were processed at Angel Island Immigration Station.  The database was compiled by volunteers who reviewed files at the National Archives branch in San Bruno, California.  Please contact AIISF at info@aiisf.org or (415) 262-4429 if you recognize any of the individuals listed in the database.  AIISF would like to interview the individuals or their descendants in order to get their full stories.

The database also contains names and short profiles of Jewish refugees who came through Angel Island prior to 1939.  Large numbers of Jews left Russia, Poland, and Lithuania after 1915.  Many were men who left their homelands to avoid military conscription.  Families also fled because of anti-Jewish violence.  Many of the families were able to enter the United States with the help of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society.

"Who Do You Think You Are?" - Ashley Judd

The season finale for Who Do You Think You Are? followed actress Ashley Judd as she learned about her father's side of the family.  Judd and her half-sister singer Wynonna Judd are the children of singer Naomi Judd.  Naomi was close to her family and Ashley knew that the Judds are eight-generation Kentuckians.  Ashley grew up knowing her paternal grandparents and her great-grandmother but nothing beyond that.

The opening monologue from Judd was a little disingenuous.  She talked about the important role that faith plays in her life and how it would be gratifying to learn if she had an ancestor for whom religion was important.  She also talked about her role as an activist and wondered if anyone in her family had agitated for reform.  Considering that we know all the research is done beforehand, these statements were obvious foreshadowing of what was to come in the episode.

Judd began her search with a trip to visit her father, Michael Ciminella.  The two of them paged through a photo album and talked about Judd's grandmother and great-grandmother.  They discussed how family information said that they had one line that went back to New England, and that Judd's great-great-grandfather Elijah Hensley had fought in the Civil War, been a prisoner, and lost his leg to a war injury.  Then we had another disingenuous comment:  "Would you imagine some of that information is online?"  Cue the Ancestry.com screen, though I will admit that it was a little more downplayed than in other episodes.  (And it looked like a laptop with a WDYTYA logo, but I wasn't sure.)

Unsurprisingly, they got a hit for an Elijah Hensley, who was in the 39th Kentucky Infantry, Company I.  Judd decided to go to the Kentucky State Archives in Frankfort to look for Hensley's service record.  She scrolled through microfilm and found his muster roll pages.  She said she wanted not just the records but also the stories behind them, so talked to Prof. Brian McKnight, a Civil War historian (and an assistant professor of history at Angelo State University in San Angelo, Texas).  They looked at the muster roll pages and discussed the fact that Hensley was captured about a month after he enlisted and had probably been held in Virginia, then returned back to the Union in a prisoner exchange.  Hensley was captured again later in the war, at Saltville, and was discharged due to disability.  His discharge showed his age as 18, which was also his stated age when he enlisted.  He had lied about his age when he joined up, but by the time he was being discharged apparently felt he could tell the truth.

I found it amusing that the archives segment (and the segment after it) showed microfilm and paper copies, considering that Hensley's service file is available online -- but at Footnote.com.  Taking into account average production schedules, this episode was probably filmed before Ancestry bought Footnote's parent company, and they certainly weren't going to advertise another company's online holdings, were they?  I looked through the 26 pages available on Footnote.  Hensley's file does not give specifics on his first capture, which explains why McKnight couldn't state exactly how long he had been a prisoner.  I was disappointed they didn't talk about the Certificate of Disability, which I found interesting.  Perhaps it was edited out of the final cut.

Judd next visited Saltville, Virginia, where she met George Wunderlich, the director of the National Museum of Civil War Medicine.  They met at the Madam Russell cabin, which appeared to be merely window dressing, because it wasn't mentioned at all in the segment.  The main topic of discussion was the amputation of Hensley's leg, in a fair amount of detail.  Apparently Dick Eastman missed it when Wunderlich answered Judd's question and confirmed that no anesthesia would have been used during the operation, but I heard it.

Judd returned to her hotel, where an envelope from McKnight was waiting for her.  He had sent a copy of Hensley's pension file, which included a photograph and what seemed to be a testimonial about the man.  It said that Hensley was doing the Master's work in the Methodist church and that he was a farmer in Inez, Kentucky.  She then talked about how she has deep roots in eastern Kentucky, but her people had to have come from somewhere before that, and since there was this family story about New England roots, she was going to go there and "poke around" to see what she could find.  Yeah, that's a great way to approach research; goes right along with the Ancestry ads that say you don't need to know what you're looking for.

Imaginary likeness of
William Brewster
(from Wikipedia)

Judd went to the New England Historical and Genealogical Society in Boston, Massachusetts.  There she met D. Joshua Taylor and said that she was supposed to have "some sort of a New England line."  From this point on there was no pretense that Judd was doing any of her own research, and records were waiting at each of her stops.  Taylor had prepared a beautiful ancestor scroll which showed that Judd is descended from William Brewster, who came over on the Mayflower.  This is the biggest leap I've seen on this program; they went back seven generations for which they didn't show any documentation.  This also went beyond the normal procedure for WDYTYA and the sham that the celebrities are doing the research.  You aren't going to go to a repository and find a scroll like that with your name on it.

One thing that bothered me in this segment was when Taylor brought out the book from the 1700's and told Judd to page through it to get to the passage he had marked.  If they're going to the trouble of wearing conservator's gloves to protect the items (the use of which for handling paper is generally a deprecated practice nowadays), why page through the book and subject more of the pages to stress?

After the revelation of Mayflower ancestry and mentioning that Brewster had been the bailiff for the Archibishop of York, Taylor recommended that Judd go to York, England, to continue her research.  As I've mentioned before, this is great if you have an unlimited budget, but most people would probably settle for writing a letter.  Judd's first visit was with Prof. Bill Shiels of the University of York.  He told her background information on the religious turmoil of the time and why Brewster would have wanted to leave England.  He had court records showing that Brewster was ordered to appear but did not do so.  Judd called Brewster a religious refugee, which Shiels agreed with.  He told her she should go next to Boston, Lincolnshire, to see what she could find.

In Boston Judd went to the Guild Hall and found the jail cells in which Brewster and William Bradford were imprisoned in 1607.  She spoke with author Nick Bunker, an expert on the Pilgrims, who explained more about the conditions of the time, including the facts that one needed a license to leave England and that Bradford and Brewster had been trying to leave without that permission.  The captain of the ship they had hired betrayed them, which is how they ended up in jail.  Bunker had a copy of Bradford's History of the Plimoth Plantation, and Judd read a short passage.  (History of the Plimoth Plantation is available as a free download from the Internet Archive, by the way.)  Bunker said that Brewster had spent many years in exile in Holland (I think he actually meant The Netherlands) but that Judd didn't have to go to Holland to find more information; instead he recommended she go to Cambridge University.

At the end of this segment Judd returned to the cell in which Brewster had been held and talked about how religious tolerance had been so important to the Pilgrims.  Unfortunately, history shows that Pilgrims considered that tolerance important only for themselves; they were remarkably intolerant and unaccepting of anyone not following their dictates when they set up the Plymouth Colony.  This of course was not addressed in the program.

In Cambridge Judd met with Anthony Milton, a professor of early English history at the University of Sheffield.  He showed Judd letters that referred to Brewster during the time he was in The Netherlands.  While in Leyden he printed and distributed the Perth Assembly in 1619, and then was being pursued by the English government.  Somehow he made it back to England without being caught, and he sailed on the Mayflower in 1620.  During this segment Judd was seen writing in a notebook.  She and Milton talked about the lack of freedom of speech and religion, and separation of church and state, which existed at the time.

For the last segment Judd went to Plymouth, England, where she reunited with her father and told him about her discoveries, including that his ninth great-grandfather was on the Mayflower.  I was thrilled to hear Ciminella tell her that he was "excited to pursue [the research] further with" her.  This is the first time I recall a mention on the program of continued research.  (Paltrow's episode even ended with a comment about the "final leg of her journey.")  Maybe Judd and Ciminella were the only ones who actually had an interest in learning more.

Wordless Wednesday

Online Jewish Postcard Collection

Singer sewing machine store in Serbia
(sign says "Singer" in Cyrillic)

Over many years Stephanie Comfort has assembled a sizable collection of postcards with Jewish images and themes, and now she has digitized them and made them available for free on the Web at http://jewishpostcardcollection.com/.  She has postcards from every inhabited continent and particularly focuses on pre-World War II Eastern Europe.

I found it easier to navigate using the site map rather than the search, because I wasn't sure how she had items listed.  One disadvantage of the site map, however, is that the list is not consistent for each continent.  For example, Africa has places, people, and synagogues, but Asia has synagogues, people, and places. Asia People has "India People and Places", but Asia Places has "Iran People and Places" and "China People and Places."  (Can you tell I'm an indexer?)

It appears that you can view the images either on her Web site or on Flickr.  The images were easier to view on Flickr because they were larger there.  Flickr says her collection is more than 12,000 images, but some appear to be duplicates (e.g., two files of the same David Pinski postcard).  What worked best for me was to find an image on her site and then search with keywords from her description in her photostream on Flickr.

Overall it's a fascinating collection, and I am sure I will spend a lot of time browsing through it.  She allows use of an image on your site if you credit her and link to her home page.

"Who Do You Think You Are?" - Gwyneth Paltrow

With this episode of Who Do You Think You Are? we returned to a celebrity who conducted no research of her own but merely went from repository to repository and looked at records that had already been found and were waiting for her.  On the positive side, the episode wasn't riddled with the number of ridiculous leaps of illogic and presumption that peppered the Steve Buscemi program.

The episode opened with Paltrow talking to the camera about her family.  She was very close to her father, Bruce Paltrow, who died in 2002.  She knew that her father was Jewish and that her mother, Blythe Danner, had a lot of German ancestry.  She commented that a lot of memories are subjective and that "you never really know what the facts are", which is oh so true with family history.  She had decided she wanted to research her maternal grandfather's side first, because the family story was that her great-grandmother, Ida Mae Danner, had been from Barbados, which she thought sounded pretty interesting.  Paltrow's mother had mailed her some photos of Ida, which she looked at in the car as she was taken to the New York Public Library.

At the library she met with librarian Maira Liriano, who had pulled several records.  The first item they looked at was Ida's obituary, which stated she had been born in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania (where I have some roots).  Paltrow's reaction was, "So she's not from Barbados?", not taking into account that obituaries often have mistakes.  The obituary gave Ida's parents' names, and Liriano showed Paltrow Ida's mother Isabel Yetter in the 1910 census, where it said she was born in the West Indies.  Liriano then produced Isabel's 1914 Pennsylvania death certificate, which stated she was born in Barbados.  So the family story was off by only one generation, which isn't bad at all.  The death certificate said her name was Rosamond Isabel, information that was needed to find her in the next record.

Liriano showed Paltrow the passenger list from 1868 listing Rosamond and Martha Stout departing Anguilla to come to New York.  There was some discussion of the fact that they were the only passengers on the list and the ship was a commercial one.  Paltrow asked what the next step was, and Liriano told her if she wanted to find out any more she would have to go to Barbados.  This is one of the quibbles I have with the episode -- most people would probably write to the Barbadian archives, not get on a plane and fly there.  But Ancestry.com has a big budget, what with all those subscribers and investors.

In Barbados Paltrow went to the Department of Archives in Bridgetown and met with genealogist Dr. Pat Stafford, who had records ready and waiting.  She had Paltrow look at the page of birth records to pick out Rosamond, whose 1851 birth entry said her father was a merchant clerk.  Paltrow then asked why Rosamond and her sister would have picked up and gone to New York in 1868, and Stafford said she had looked up burial records.  She told Paltrow to "read down the page", where an entry showed that Rosamond and Martha's mother had died in 1864 as a widow.  So the two girls were orphaned, Rosamond at 13.  Paltrow asked, "Where do you go from here?", and Stafford suggested she talk to a historian specializing in Barbadian history.

Paltrow visited Professor Pedro Walsh in what appeared to be his home.  He talked about the history of the time period when Rosamond and Martha had left Barbados.  Emancipation of slaves had come in 1834, which had increased the number of people available for employment, so there was competition for jobs.  In addition, there were more women than men on the island, so marriage prospects were not promising.  The two women apparently decided they would have better opportunities in the U.S.  They would have saved money by booking passage on a commercial vessel, which would not have many amenities.

Apparently happy with the information she had found and deciding not to pursue further research on her Barbadian roots (heaven knows why), Paltrow returned to New York to work on her father's side of the family.  She met with her Aunt Fran, Bruce Paltrow's sister.  They talked about Bruce and Fran's father, Buster, and his mother, Ida.  Buster had never had anything good to say about his mother but never explained why.  Fran talked about how Ida hadn't cooked or cleaned, and that there were piles of junk around the house.  She commented that Ida had gone to Hunter College but had never made a meal.  The two women concluded that Ida must have had mental health problems.  Fran had Ida's death certificate, which listed her father as Joseph Hyman.  There was a passing mention of Buster's father, Mike (Meyer), and that the name Paltrow had originally been Paltrovich.

Paltrow next met with Professor Deborah Dash Moore of the University of Michigan and said that Moore had researched Ida's background for her.  Moore had records from the Normal College, the earlier name for Hunter College.  She discussed how teaching school was the top career choice for women at the time and that the Normal College had admitted anyone, at a time when many schools did not admit Jews.  Ida's records showed that she had a lot of absences and that she was "discharged" and did not graduate.  Moore had found Ida in the 1890 and 1900 censuses; the 1890 census showed Ida with her parents and two brothers, but the 1900 census showed only her father and one brother.  Moore produced death certificates for Ida's mother Rebecca, who died in April 1897 of cirrhosis of the liver (which Moore correctly pointed out did not necessarily mean she was an alcoholic), and for her brother Samuel, who died in June 1897.  The deaths coincided with the time Ida had so many absences at school, giving a reason why her studies had suffered.

At the New York City Municipal Archives Paltrow met archivist Michael Lorenzini.  He had found Buster (under his given name of Arnold) in the 1920 census with his parents.  The oldest child in the household was 16, so Lorenzini said they should look for the family in the 1910 census (hooray! this is the next logical research step).  The family in 1910 included a daughter Helen who was not listed in 1920.  Lorenzini had Helen's death certificate (in a book, not from microfilm, which is not realistic), which stated she died at the age of 3 of shock, fractured ribs, and a punctured lung; she had been run over by a wagon.  He also had the file for the inquest and said it "may have more information" as he handed it to Paltrow.  (Give me a break -- if it didn't have more information, he wouldn't have bothered to bring it, would he?)  They then put this information in context to get a better picture of how this had affected Ida -- Helen died July 20, 1912, and Ida's daughter Miriam was born August 12, 1912.  This would be devastating to anyone.  It's not surprising that Ida would not care much about life after going through this.  While I understand the emphasis in this segment was on what happened in Ida's life, I wish Lorenzini had addressed the different spellings of the family name that were shown on different documents; many beginning genealogists have a lot of trouble understanding and accepting how much spelling can vary and still refer to the same person.

Paltrow talked about how she had always been told that the Paltroviches had generations of rabbis.  She knew that Meyer's father Shimon had been a rabbi.  At Eldridge Street Synagogue she talked with Professor Glenn Dynner of Sarah Lawrence College.  He told her that Shimon's father Zvi Hersh had been a famous rabbi and holy man.  Paltrow read translations of two items about Zvi Hersh, one from the yizkor (memorial) book of Nowogród, Poland, and the second from a book Shimon wrote about his father.  Paltrow was moved at the story of the miracle attributed to Zvi Hersh, and thrilled to find out that he was a master of Kabbalah, which she has studied.  The voice-over called Paltrow's last research stop the "final leg of her journey", but I hope that she pursues more research on her family.  After all, so far she has only two generations of rabbis; who knows how many more there are?

In the last segment of the episode, Paltrow visited her mother and told her about the information she had learned.  She said that she understood more things about herself and felt connected to her ancestors.  I was very happy to hear her say that people need to "take responsibility for all of [our] stories and teach our children."  If it weren't for the stories my mother and grandmother told me while I was growing up, I might never have developed my interest in family history.

Eisenhower Speech about Preserving Cultural Treasures

After the end of World War II, General Dwight D. Eisenhower spoke at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art on the importance of safeguarding cultural and historical objects, and how he instructed his troops to preserve items even while fighting the war.  An original recording of his speech was discovered in the museum's archives and has been converted to a digital format.  An AP article about the speech and the recording is available on Yahoo! News.  Eisenhower gave the speech after the museum honored him with a life fellowship.