This website is a gateway to our family's history and to some of my other creative interests. It is mainly meant for relatives and friends, but Holocaust researchers will find records here that may be of interest. 

A little bit about the name 'Riesenbach'

"Riesenbach" has Germanic roots, meaning roughly "giant creek" . While not a particularly common family name, there are a few dozen people with the last name Riesenbach in the USA (a few of which I have made contact with over the years). There probably are many more in Europe. To the best of my knowledge, our extended family are the only Riesenbachs in Canada (with this spelling).  Our name stems from my father's family, who immigrated to Canada from Poland, having survived the Holocaust. His father (Jacob, or Yakel, in Yiddish) was not born a Riesenbach.  He was born a "Feldmaus" or "Feldmouse". Jacob adopted the last name Riesenbach (his mother's maiden name) for mysterious reasons that were never explained to me satisfactorily.