BRUCE WEXLER - Biography   I was born in Brooklyn New York in 1944. I was married in 1967. We have two sons, Kevin 32 and Craig 29.

I received a B.S. in Accounting from Rutgers University. I have worked as an accountant for various insurance companies, during my entire career. I was divorced in 1999 and remarried last year, to Gail, who was also born in Brooklyn. 
 
I'm not sure when my interest in my family history began, but I remember as a very young boy being told that my mother was born in "Czernowitz-Bukovina". In 1970 I started to research my family. I was about to be stationed in Germany, and had visions of going to Czernowitz after I was released. Uncle Sam had other plans. He sent me to Viet Nam.   Soon after getting out of the Army, I started to do more serious research, and was thrilled when I acquired the ship manifest for my mother's trip here to the U.S. She was four month old (she will celebrate her 99th birthday on May 21st).  

As the 1990s turned to the 2000's I was able to find more and more information on the internet. First I joined the Galicia list (my father's father was from Tarnopol), and then the Czernowitz list. I was overwhelmed at the number of people involved, and the more I read about the home town of my mother, grandparents, and great grandparents, the more fascinated I became. One thing I never understood was how my grandmother, a very poor person, could have learned, as my mother told me, four languages. Now I understand what a wonderful multi-cultural place Czernowitz was when she was growing up in the 1880's and 1890's.  

In the summer of 2004 I decided to make the trip of a lifetime to Czernowitz. I planned it for ten months, and in the end my wife Gail (then my fiance), my son Kevin, and my nephew Jonathan decided to accompany me. As I have written, I was thrilled to stand at the graves of six of my ancestors, and to see the wonderful city of my mother's (and grandmother's) birth. We walked and drove the streets that I had seen so many pictures of.   I am now very interested in seeing those places that were so important to the Jewish culture of Czernowitz restored and maintained. I consider all Czernowitzers, and descendants of Czernowitz cousins, and I am thrilled to have a new wonderful family all over the world. 

Bruce Wexler Jackson, NJ