By Marion Fischel, The Jerusalem Post

Earlier this month in Zamora, Spain, Miami resident Genie Milgrom –
genealogist, author and lecturer – received The Medal of the Four
Sephardic Synagogues of Jerusalem for her indefatigable labors in the
promotion of the Iberian Peninsula’s Jewish legacy.
Prof. Abraham Haim, president of the Council of Sephardi and Oriental
Communities in Jerusalem, presented the award in the framework of the
sixth International Sephardi Congress in Zamora, at which Milgrom was
keynote speaker. The now-annual July congress was inaugurated in 2013 by
Prof. Jesus Jambrina of Viterbo University, WI, who was honored with
the medal in 2014.
The award recognizes the decade-plus Milgrom spent recovering the Jewish
roots of her Cuban Catholic family, and her continued efforts to assist
the descendants of anusim – Jews who were forced to abandon Judaism
against their will – in their search for their roots.
Milgrom was able to retrace the footsteps of 22 generations in her
family, back beyond 1492, to the village of Fermoselle in the hills of
Zamora, and later to the cells of the Inquisition in Portugal. She
recovered this genealogy using methods she describes in her book, How I
Found My 15 Grandmothers, and uncovered the Jewish history not only of
her own ancestral village, but also of many others along the Duero River
that separates Spain from Portugal, deciphering the connections of the
heretofore lost crypto-Jews of the region.
Milgrom is past president of the Jewish Genealogical Society of
Greater Miami, as well as the Society for Crypto Judaic Studies. Two of
her books, My 15 Grandmothers and Pyre to Fire have won the Latino
Author Book Awards.
She has written numerous articles on the subject and lectures
internationally, encouraging and assisting others to retrace their
ancestors’ footsteps.
As director of the Converso Genealogy Project, Milgrom now manages
the momentous assignment of digitizing all the Inquisition files around
the world, flying to meetings with officials in various countries to
convince them of the importance of making their dusty, untouched
archives available.
The project has the seal of approval of the International Institute for Jewish Genealogy in Israel.
Milgrom told The Jerusalem Post, “I have been working for so many
years on recovering an era that was lost to Jewish history, yet I was
completely surprised at receiving this very important and meaningful
medal of recognition from Israel. I didn’t realize that others were
watching and following my work to that extent. It is a true honor.”