“Life struggles”: Remember and remind

“Life struggles”: Remember and remind

Bernát Munkácsi devoted decades to researching his family’s history. For him, this genealogical research was crucial to preserve history and to give Jewry a connection to its past. When Bernát died in 1937, he left behind a stack of notebooks detailing births, deaths, occupations, and gravestone inscriptions dating back to the sixteenth century. His manuscript, which he titled Sefer toldotenu (Book of our Origins), was revised and edited by his son Ernő Munkácsi and published by this museum in 1939. In the forward, Noémi Munkácsi writes that on the eve of Kol Nidre, Bernát would gather around his children to remember and remind them of their ancestors: “This, he used to say, is the basis of Jewish survival.”