You Can Participate
Crowdsourcing
Telling the story of the lost community of Bad Neustadt is an ongoing process. Much of its success depends on information supplied by the survivors and their descendants around the world.
Finding the pitiful few who remain is no easy task. This is where the power of crowdsourcing comes into its own and where each and every viewer of this site can contribute.
It is our hope that in time, people will learn of this site and recall the name Bad Neustadt, either in family photographs stored in the attic, or in the vague recollection of the words of a lost relative.
Whoever has a story, a memory, a picture or a comment relating to the Jewish community of Bad Neustadt is encouraged to send it and build on the information contained here.
Stories may be mailed to us in the link provided here, or alternatively information may be tagged to any of the following excellent web sites devoted to culture heritage digital storytelling.
Billion Graves
What Was There
History Pin
Genealogy software has of late become very popular. A large number of excellent web sites offer both free and advanced family tree and community mapping services. It is not the mandate or purpose of this article to recommend one over the other. Nevertheless, when it comes to the connection between cemeteries and genealogy, it is worth noting the BillionGraves site (www.billiongraves.com).
This is a collaboration between the popular Geni web site (www.geni.com) and BillionGraves to help photograph and transcribe all the world's gravestones in order to preserve them and their information for future generations.
Key to this project is the use of an application for smartphones (iPhone and Android) which allows the user to photograph a grave stone and upload it directly to the BillionGraves site. There it is automatically geotagged and marked out on a Google map. Further information can be added at a later date. allowing access by name, place, etc. The students of the Bad Neustadt project have visited the cemetery and geotagging the graves which they helped restore in September 2014.
http://billiongraves.com/pages/cemeteries/Judenfriedhof-Bad-Neustadt/180656#cemetery_id=180656&lim=0&num=25&action=browse
It is now up to each any viewer to enter the site and add information to the graves.
What Was There
Similar in concept to Billion Graves, yet different in approach are two sites: What Was There (http://www.whatwasthere.com) and HistoryPin (http://www.historypin.com). These sites tie historical photos to Google Maps, allowing the user to tour a present day location and see what it looked like in the past. Using a mobile phone app the user can tour a location, raise the camera to a place of interest and utilising the power of augmented reality, overlay historic photos and data over the present day location. On the web site users may upload historic photos, enter the place, date and description and place them on the google map or even align them with Google’s street view. The HistoryPin site also enables social interaction, adding comments and creating thematic or location based tours.
History Pin
So whereas the Billion Graves site may be used to provide information about the deceased, the What Was There and History Pin web sites can be used to put the history back through whatever photographs the local community or relatives are able to provide