Get Ready for Veterans Day: Tips and Tools to Explore Military History and Make Family Connections

Presented by Ben Kempner, Vice President - JGS of Southern Nevada

Date and Time: Wednesday, October 12, 2022 @ 7:00 pm EDT

Discover how to use a variety of websites to learn more about your military ancestors at low or no cost. Sites like Fold3, Ancestry, FamilySearch, and JewishGen will reveal military documents including draft registrations, enlistment records, transport lists, military registers, and separation documents.

We will discuss how to find your military ancestor's unit, what they did, and where they did it. We will also weave in a case study of the highest-ranking Jewish general from WWII, Maurice Rose. What better way to honor and thank our ancestors for their military service!

As a child of Holocaust survivors, Ben's interest began with a scrap of paper from his mother with a sparse family tree consisting of 10 people. That interest lay dormant for decades until he took a Genealogy course at the University of Nevada Las Vegas in 2015. Since then, he has grown his tree to over 250 people. He began volunteering at the Las Vegas FamilySearch Library (affiliated with the Salt Lake City Family History Library) in 2016 and regularly teaches classes there and elsewhere on Ancestry.com, using social media for genealogy, DNA, and other topics. He has been actively involved in the Jewish Genealogy Society of Southern Nevada for the last 7 years and has been Vice President since 2020.

Ben has a BA in Psychology and an MBA from the University of Denver. He spent 39 years with IBM in a variety of sales, marketing, and management roles.