Global TV Canada "Past Lives" Stanley Diamond Episode 11

Описание: Episode 11 - The Stanley Diamond story
Location: Montreal
Directed by: Ezra Soiferman

Stanley Diamond has dedicated himself to a monumental undertaking. In 1977, he learned that his nephew carried the trait for Beta Thalassemia, an anaemia condition virtually unknown in the Ashkenazi Jewish population of the world. Stanley’s family then discovered that many of them were also unknowing carriers, and that the children of two carriers have a one in four chance of inheriting Thalassemia Major, a generally fatal disease. It was years later that he would research the trait in his extended family and in other families of Jewish Ashkenazi descent from Eastern Europe to warn them that future generations should aware that their mild chronic anemia could be Beta-Thalassemia.

Stanley’s need to reconstruct his family led to the indexing the 30,000 Jewish vital records for the family’s ancestral home in Ostrow Mazowiecka, Poland. He then connected with other Jews around the world who were looking into their genealogy, and founded the largest index in the world of specifically Jewish vital records – called Jewish Records Indexing – Poland. With the help of dedicated volunteers, this database of more than two million* records has not only helped researchers discover their roots, but also has reunited families separated for decades because of the Holocaust as well as provided valuable information to people trying to reconstruct their families for medical or genetic research.
6.2 million as of February 2021