I am helping a volunteer group clean and restore the old Jewish cemetery in Floridsdorf, Vienna. The cemetery has been neglected, of course, as most of the Jewish
community from Vienna left Austria in 1938-39 or perished in the Holocaust. The Jewish community here was very large and contributed greatly to Viennese and Austrian culture.
Floridsdorf cemetery was just one of several in the city and has been closed for decades.
The volunteer group is led by Wilhelm and they work on trimming trees and overgrowth
that have covered much of the property. Volunteers are welcome to register and help in this monthly event. Walking within the cemetery is dangerous as the ground is uneven, very soft in some places with broken headstones completely hidden by the thick growth of weeds.
Many stones are extremely dirty from the overgrowth and require cleaning and restoration. These are the conditions in which I am taking photos.
I am photographing the entire cemetery to help families work on genealogical projects. My photos currently number over 600 and
all will be posted here soon with more to come, an estimated 4,000 images. The collection illustrates the general layout and condition of the cemetery, groupings of stones to illustrate the general
location within the cemetery and finally the individual stones. In some cases there are multiple images of the same stone from different angles. This has been necessary
due to the lighting conditions (sunny days are required for good images). In many cases the trees block available sunlight making it difficult to read the engravings
on the stones. Many stones are broken from vandalism as well as the World War II damage. Some stones are laying on the ground and are unreadable while others are buried
under the weeds and need to be discovered.
All the photos are copyrighted by Harvey Abrams and may not be published elsewhere without written permission. You may download copies for your own, non-commercial use. The images are extremely large on purpose - you may use your computer to enlarge them to see very fine details. This is necessary to read and translate the inscriptions.
The artwork is also very interesting and worthwhile to observe. Hebrew and German are the primary languages so if your only language skill is English then you will need translation assistance.
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Under Construction August 2022
My Jewish Vienna
UNDER CONSTRUCTION.
The history of the Jewish community in Vienna with photographs, documentation and many links to other sources.
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New Non-profit corporation
The Name will be announced soon
I am creating a new non-profit corporation in Pennsylvania in the summer of 2022 for the purpose of developing educational memorials for the Holocaust (Shoah). More to be announced soon.
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Under Construction August 2022
The Stolperstein Project in Vienna
I photograph all the Stolperstein that have been placed in Vienna.
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Open...go visit....
International Institute for Sport History
Library & Museum
The IISOH is a Pennsylvania non-profit educational, literary & research corporation
under section 501(c)3 of the Internal Revenue Code.
It is organized to operate a library and museum for the History of Sport,
Physical Education, Recreaton, Dance, Sport in Art and the Olympic Games.
Founded in 2001, I serve as the President and Chairman of the Board of Directors.
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Open...go visit....
Harvey Abrams-BOOKS
Founded in 1979, Harvey Abrams-BOOKS is my antiquarian book business.
The main purpose was to develop my own research library for my Ph.D. in Physical Education. My specialty was History of Sport and my minor was American History.
My Doctoral Dissertation was on the 1904 Olympic Games. My original business focus was on selling books and printed matter. After living in West Berlin, Germany
I expanded the business interests to include posters, artwork, medallic arts and collectables. This business helped me to develop my own personal collection,
a research library that grew into one of the largest private collections on the Olympic Games in the world. This led me to create the IISOH non-profit corporation,
a seperate entity than this business. I sell new, used & rare books, posters, medals & collectables on the Olympic Games and most sports subjects via print catalogs
to libraries and collectors worldwide.
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Open...go visit....
Central High School of Philadelphia 226
(Class of 1967)
I created and host a website in honor of, and in memory of,
the 482+ classmates from Central HS of Philadelphia.
Central was founded in 1836 and is the 2nd oldest high school in the USA formed right after Boston Latin HS.
Entrance is strictly limited to high scoring students from all the junior high schools in the city and was originally
only a boy's high school. Girl's HS was across the street. Since the 1980's Central has become coeducational.
The school awards a Bachelor of Arts degree for students above a specified grade along with the high school diploma.
Graduating classes have been numbered since the first class graduated in the 1800's and I was in the 226th graduating class.
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Under construction...September 2022...Private access
Abrams / Stein / Spiegelman Family
Genealogy Project
Private access section devoted to the genealogical research on the Abrams, Stein and Spiegelman families that emigrated to the
United States from Jewish communities in Russia in 1905. Family members may have access upon request and the access codes will be sent by email.
Photographs are based upon the collection of Harvey Abrams and the family albums dating back to the 1930's.
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