Felicia Mode Alexander

Felicia Mode Alexander

 

Felicia is the current President of the Jewish Genealogical and Archival Society of Greater Philadelphia, where she has also been a member for 25+ years.

Felicia has been actively engaged in genealogy since 1983, when she and her father embarked on a massive research project on her paternal Mode/Grossman line who settled in Boston.  As a longtime Social Studies teacher, her passion for genealogy and history have converged with fascinating discoveries, including:

* Previously unseen documents in the Yad Vashem Pages of Testimony database about an unknown branch of her family in Berlin.  What she learned was heartbreaking and miraculous at the same time……see # 3 below

*A meeting at the IAJGS conference in Warsaw with a teacher from her ancestral town in Poznan who has been researching the history of the Jewish community in this town.  A file of startling information was shared with Felicia. This has led to ongoing collaboration….see #4 below

Felicia is a veteran teacher of the Holocaust and is a Museum Teacher Fellow of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, an Alfred Lerner Fellow trained in teaching the Holocaust by the Jewish Foundation of the Righteous, and an alumnus of the ADL’s Echoes and Reflections Holocaust Education program.  Her travels include most of Europe, Israel and Morocco.

Felicia’s topics include:

1)  An Introduction to Genealogy for Young People

2)  Getting Started in Jewish Genealogy (Adults)

3)  Researching the Holocaust and Your Family

4)  A Polish Town Embraces its Jewish Past: Wongrowitz/Wagrowiec