My maternal great-grandmother was a world traveller. At age 2, she moved to London from Vienna; at age 5, from there to Brooklyn, NY; then back to Vienna where she grew up. After living in Cairo, she emigrated permanently to New York, in 1892.

Tracking her family to their tiny village near Pilsen, then Bohemia, now Czechoslovakia, initiated me into a terrible historical era that ended during the boyhood of my great-great grandfather, Karl Kauders.

For nearly 150 years, the so-called 'Familiant' laws had decreed that only the eldest son of a duly registered Jew could marry and bear legitimate children. This would limit the pestilential growth of that unwanted people.

Younger sons did marry, but they (and their children) faced daunting obstacles, fines, and other punitive consequences. Often, elder sons emigrated in turn, hoping that still younger siblings might bear families.

Our research suggested that my great-great-great grandfather, Rabbi David Kauders, a younger son of his own rabbi father, had managed to procure the needed Familiant documentation in a rather unorthodox fashion. If he had been discovered, the entire community could have faced severe punishment. Apparently, he was not.

This short book, "Decoding the Kauders", takes you along for the step-by-step ride which solved this apparent mystery. You can download it from the Toledot website of my co-author, the noted Central European genealogist, Julius Miller. Just scroll down the home page for the link.