Lost and Found
My mother sent along a link to a new Holocaust archive that opened to the public consisting of scanned documents and general information. Name, town, prisoner number, concentration camp. I dove into it, trying to find my great-grandmother’s brothers.
And I think I found them, many alternative spellings later; two men who fit in terms of name, town, and camp. I knew they were in Buchenwald and the town they’re from. There is a birth year listed on one of the documents, so I asked family members if they could name my great-grandmother’s siblings birth order. Was one of her brothers 9 years older? If yes, I found them. If not, this was someone else with the same name.
But no one knew.
And all the people who would have known are gone.
It made me so incredibly sad. I’m seeing a lot of family members this upcoming weekend, so I was going to carry around a list of names of her siblings and see if we could put them in order by pooling everyone’s information. Maybe no one can put them in order on their own, but perhaps they could at least say person A is older than person B, and in doing so, the order will logically present itself. At least, that is my hope. Plus I have a few papers to go through that have family stories written on them, and maybe there are clues to the birth order in those papers.
I guess it just brings up how sad I am that I don’t have my grandmother anymore, so I can’t ask her these questions. She would’ve known where her mother stood in relation to her siblings.
I actually knew they were in Buchenwald because Elie Weisel was in Buchenwald, and they were from the same town. It always gave me comfort that I knew some of their story by reading his story. They are one of the various townspeople crowded together with Weisel in the ghetto and the train and the camp. And so I knew they also ended up at Buchenwald, though unlike Weisel, they did not get out.
This is my first time diving into Holocaust records. And, on one hand, it’s upsetting, but it’s also all I have left except for a photo and a few stories. These documents confirm these people existed. They were my great-great uncles, and they had wives and children and lives in Europe. And they should be remembered, their documents collected, like everyone else on the family tree.
10 comments
I’m trying to imagine what the added dimension of the Holocaust adds to a family tree search. I mean, of course it’s sad to think the stories are lost with the ancestors who have passed before we could ask all the questions we want to ask. But you sort of take that as a given, with the nature of the task. The people in my family tree died from the typical things – old age and illness (I assume – there were no stories passed on about more dramatic deaths).
Good luck in your quest to know more – I feel certain thatyour children will have a pretty comprehensive gathering of stories to work with.
In 1967, I read Simon Wiesenthal’s book, The Murderers Among Us. It opened my eyes to the holocaust and to antisemitism. Before that time, I lived a sheltered and truthfully uninformed existence. Over the intervening years I’ve tried to educate myself and that continues.
I hope that you will be able to find more information about your Old World family and their stories.
Genetically I’m English/Scottish/Irish. Stewart and Aberdeenshire figure largely in our family tree. However, my heart has always been drawn to Poland and Finland.
One of my favorite PBS programs is FINDING YOUR ROOTS with Dr Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
It’s always so interesting.
I remember reading your post about your heart being in Scotland and I totally understood. My dream is to go there one day.
Thank you for your posts. I’ve been following you since the twins were babies. I’ve learned so much from you.
Thank you again.
I understand how you feel.
Recently my brother found some information about my paternal grandfather, and in doing so it brought up a lot more questions. And there is no one left who can answer them or fill in the blanks. And it left me feeling very sad to realize that.
I hope you are able to fit pieces of your puzzle together. I hope you update us on what you are able to find.
They should be remembered… just like everyone else on the family tree. I love that. I have recently been toying with the idea of doing one of those DNA things. I’m from the Dominican Republic so I know the general gist of my genetic makeup; European, African, some Taino. But then there is my great grandmother who migrated from Lebanon with her parents. i don’t know much about them or their stories. I don’t even know their names, but i want to do a family tree and they should be remembered too. Thank you for that.
I’m sorry you don’t have your grandmother, not least of all so that she can assist you with this. I grew up with my paternal grandmother, who lived with us from the time I was a year old until she passed away when I was 17; we were very close.
I have often wished that she had lived into my adulthood, as there are so many things I would’ve loved to learn about her and her life before I was born. She was born in Ireland in 1903, and from the few stories she shared that I remember of her childhood and early adulthood, it was practically a different world.
I only this year found out I had a great aunt murdered by the Nazis. I don’t know anything else. I’d thought my family was Catholic, but my bonmama was born Jewish. She survived Nazi occupation married to a Nazi sympathizer, but her sister did not.
I wonder if there is an energetic way to time warp, in which your great great uncles somehow know that you are including them, remembering them, making them real generations later. Keeping them real, too. Maybe there is an energetic way to time warp, and that is them tugging at you.
Who knows. What we see can’t be all there is.
I’m abiding with you as you miss your grandmother, too. I know how special she was/is to you.
I’m sorry you don’t have your grandmother to help you sort out the details in your search for where family members are in your family tree. I can’t imagine the heaviness from searching family through Holocaust records. And that’s neat (feels weird to use that word here) that you can get some details of your family stories through through Elie Wiesel’s.
I’m sorry you don’t have your grandmother to help you sort out the details in your search for where family members are in your family tree. I can’t imagine the heaviness from searching family through Holocaust records. And that’s neat (feels weird to use that word here) that you can get some details of your family stories through through Elie Wiesel’s.
wow. That must be so interesting but also upsetting coming across their names and information like that and knowing what happened to them. Such a shame your grandmother isn’t alive to share more stories. I hope your other family members can help fill in the gaps. I wish now I had asked my Granny more stories about her past (she was a nurse in London during WW2).