Harvey Mark Krueger

From "Nu? What's New? by GAry Mokotoff Volume 18, Number 17 / April 30, 2017

There are a number of persons who have made a significant impact on Jewish genealogy yet remain in the background, seeking no public acknowledgement, but continue to do things to benefit family history research. Such a person was Harvey Krueger, who died Sunday, April 23, at the age of 88. He did not acquire any record groups. He did not index any databases. He did not lead any Special Interest Groups. Harvey was a Wall Street financier who expressed interest in his two loves—genealogy and Israel—through philanthropy.

It is not unreasonable that in the early years of JewishGen, Harvey contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to keep JewishGen financially sound. Warren Blatt, managing director of JewishGen, noted “Harvey spread his charitable contributions throughout the Jewish genealogical world—JRI-Poland, LitvakSIG, Gesher Galicia, many individual IAJGS Conferences, the Hebrew College Boston genealogy program, and others.”

Harvey’s financial support of Jewish genealogy extended to the International Association of Jewish Genealogy. IAJGS president Marlis Humphrey stated, “Without Harvey’s support and vision, it is likely that the LIVE! streaming of our conference sessions would not have become a reality. He took the risk to underwrite the Internet support of LIVE! during its inaugural year. Since that time, LIVE! has not only provided Jewish genealogy education to those who could not travel to the conference, but also allowed us to build a Lecture Library for societies to use to augment their programs and events - a gift that continues to give.”

His support of Israel was well known to the public. Neville Lamdan, founder of the International Institute for Jewish Genealogy and former Israel ambassador to the Vatican stated, “Harvey was the first major Wall Street player to truly believe in Israel as an investment opportunity, and the exceptional prominence of Israeli companies on Wall Street all relates back to his efforts. Very few people have contributed as much to the ‘start-up nation’ and to Israel’s place in the global economy as Harvey has.”

Most of all, he was a nice guy. He would call me up from time to time to chat about what was happening in organized Jewish genealogy.

May his memory be for a blessing,

The history of his financial efforts on behalf of Israel can be found at http://tinyurl.com/KruegerIsrael. His New York Times Death Notice is at http://tinyurl.com/KruegerDeathNotice.