JURY
(English - Deutsch)

KAREN FRANKLIN is Director of the Family Research Program at the Leo Baeck Institute in New York City. She was Director of The Judaica Museum in Riverdale for over 20 years. She is former president of the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies and past Chair of the Council of American Jewish Museums. Mrs. Franklin served on the board of the American Association of Museums (AAM), the only director of a Jewish museum ever to be elected to this position, and currently serves on the board of ICOM-US (International Council of Museums).

ERNEST KALLMANN has been writing family histories within a broader historical perspective, especially with the Cercle de Genealogie Juive, Paris. He was born in Mainz, escaped to France in 1933, and has lived there (except 1942-45), primarily as a telecommunications and computer management consultant.

WERNER LOVAL was born in Bamberg and at 13 escaped to England with the Kindertransport. He then lived in Ecuador and the United States before immigrat-ing to Israel in 1954. Until 1966 he served in the Israel diplomatic service in the United States and Latin America. He is a founder and director of Israel’s largest real estate brokerage company; former President of Har-El, Israel’s first Reform Synagogue; and a governor both of Hebrew University of Jerusalem and of B’nai Brith World Centre. In 1999 he was named an Honorary Citizen of Jerusalem. He is a frequent visitor to Germany.

WALTER MOMPER is President of the House of Representatives of Berlin and historian, was advised and supported by Lothar Funke. Walter Momper has been active in city politics and was Governing Mayor of Berlin when the wall came down in 1989. Funke has been head of the protocol department in the House of Representative since 2001.

SARA NACHAMA was raised in Israel, moved to Berlin over 25 years ago, and has worked for German national TV ptogram SFB (Channel 3) and ZDF (channel 2) editing documentary films. From 1992 to 1999, she organized as volonteer the annual Berlin Jewish Cultural Festival (Juedischen Kulturtage). From 2001 to 2003, Mrs. Nachama was the executive founding director of the Berlin branch of Touro College (NY); in October 2003, she became Dean of Administration of Touro College Berlin and remains its executive director. Since 2005 she is a vice president of Touro College.

DR. ARTHUR OBERMAYER is a high-tech entrepreneur and philanthropist in the Boston area. He initiated the Jewish Museum in his ancestral German town of Creglingen, and recently a volume was published entitled The Obermayers: A History of a Jewish Family in Germany and America, 1618-2009. He has been a long-term board member of the American Jewish Historical Society, and a coordinator and webmaster of the German component of JewishGen. He received from the German President the Bundesverdienstkreuz -- the Cross of the Order of Merit -- the highest tribute given by the Federal Republic of Germany.