Peter Spiro's home page
Peter S. Spiro was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1952, and came to Canada in 1956, where he has lived since. He is married, and the father of three children. (His eldest son, Jason Spiro, has his own website.) He is an economist by profession, and studied this subject at the University of Toronto and the University of Chicago. He is the author of numerous professional publications in the area of monetary policy and finance policy, and is considered one of Canada's leading experts on the underground economy.
He is a vegetarian and an avid cyclist, riding his bicycle to work in downtown Toronto almost every day of the year, including winter. One of his greatest personal interests is the study of family history, and in this he focusses on the history of the Jewish communities of north-eastern Hungary, from where both his own parents and his wife's parents originated.
As time goes on, he will add various pieces of information which others might find useful or interesting to this web site. The contents at present are:
Classic Pentax Lens Tests -- a compendium of reviews describing the relative sharpness of a large number of lenses from the 1970s and 1980s. There are other links to photographic information, and also some of my photos.
Material related to Hungarian Jewish Genealogy and family history:
History of the
Spiro Family in Hungary
The Descendants of Joseph Fischer (born 1785 in Kisvarda)
Photo album of
some of Peter Spiro's Ancestors
For photographs of Jewish relics in Kisvarda and Budapest, click here.
Translation of the Kisvarda Memorial BookLink to the "Magyar Zsido" Hungary page of JewishGen, the home of Jewish Genealogy research on the web.
Map of Szabolcs County, circa 1900 about 300K.
Map of Zemplen County, circa 1900 about 300K. Map of Szatmar County, circa 1900 about 300K. These are particularly useful, since they have the Magyar place names of villages that were lost to Hungary after World War I.
A Handy Calculator for Converting dates between the Hebrew and the civil calendar.Please note that, after Geocities closes, my new website is at www.peterspiro.com .
Visits since June 1, 1999
