ENGLISH CORNER, CON LINDA JIMÉNEZ – This week’s trivia question: Which country has the Converso Project chosen to begin digitizing documents, and why?

Genie Milgrom was born in Havana, Cuba to Roman Catholic parents of Spanish ancestry. She was able to fully document that her family descended from a direct, unbroken maternal Jewish lineage spanning 22 generations, back to 1405, in pre-Inquisition Spain and Portugal. She is the author of two books that received 2015 Latino Author Book Awards (My 15 Grandmothers, the Spanish edition Mis 15 Abuelas and the bilingual book How I found My 15 Grandmothers, A Step by Step Guide). Genie is the president of Tarbut Sefarad-Fermoselle in Spain, and immediate past president of the Society for Crypto Judaic Studies. She writes for several online sites, for the Journal of Spanish, Portuguese and Italian Crypto Jewry, and received the State of Florida Genealogy award for outstanding achievements and advances in the pioneer work she has done in genealogy. On previous programs we spoke with Genie about how she found her “15 Grandmothers” and also about a conference she participated in on the Anousim Diaspora, which was held in Israel last year.

This past August 9, she presented her latest undertaking, The Converso Project, at the International Jewish Genealogical Conference, held by the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies (IAJGS) in Seattle, Washington.

Genie spoke with us about this exciting new project, and how it may someday help others trace their own Crypto-Jewish heritage.

To contact Genie Milgrom:  spanishancestry@aol.com