New Resource to Find Holocaust Survivors--Often With Family Information

Ancestry recently added two new data sets (with data from the Arolsen Archives but much more nicely indexed and user-friendly to search) that document Holocaust survivors--and sometimes their relatives who didn't survive (including mothers' maiden names).  (As that these are part of the Holocaust collection, they do not require a subscription--but do require a free Ancestry account.)  But there are also some peculiarities with the search functionality when searching for towns of origin.  So what can you potentially find--and how would you search?  And how do you make sure you're not missing critical records because the searches you're using aren't catching what you think they would?

List of "Returning Deportees from Subcarpathian Ukraine."  This list includes mother's full maiden name as well as survivors' birth years.  Searching by mother's maiden name returns this document as well.

Polish Schoolchildren's Signatures - Now Searchable!

I wrote the following back in a 2018 post:

Anyone who had family in what was Poland of 1926 (which includes parts of modern-day Ukraine and Lithuania, as well as much of modern-day Poland and parts of what used to be Russian Empire, Galicia, Czechoslovakia and East Prussia among others) needs to be aware of an incredible resource hosted by the Library of Congress.

In 1926, in honor of America's 150th anniversary of independence, Polish schoolchildren wrote their signatures in "admiration and friendship for the United States."  Children of all religions participated--Jewish names are interspersed with Ukrainian, Polish, and Czech children's names. 

At that time, you had to use a relatively manual process to find pages from a particular town and then search through that town's pages in hopes of finding relatives.  But a reader named John recently commented on that post and pointed me (and now you!) to a site that has made this resource wonderfully searchable.  I've played around with it, and here's how you can as well!

Page of signatures from schoolchildren in Horochow, Poland (now Horochiv, Ukraine), 1926

Spelling Doesn't Matter in Genealogy (Still)

People tend to get hung up on a particular spelling of an ancestral surname as being the only way a particular branch of the family would have spelled that name.  They may even disregard records for individuals who are actually relatives because of the way a name was spelled.  But while these days people have a set way in which they spell their surnames--and their given names--in prior generations this wasn't a huge concern.

I've shown with examples in a previous post that even within the same record the same surname could be spelled differently.  Here's another example of where different versions of the same record give different spellings for both surnames and given names.

1864 Jewish births for Budfalu, Hungary (now Budești, Romania) - Version 1

Yom HaShoah 2025

Yom Hashoah (Holocaust Memorial Day) starts this evening.  For the past eight years, I have listed the names of the family members I've found who were murdered in the Holocaust.  In 2020, I listed 454 relatives.  In 2021, I listed 515.  In 2022, I listed 642.  In 2023, I listed 916.  In 2024, I listed 990.  And this year I list 1023.

Every year, this list grows as I find new branches of my family--and then find that multiple members of those branches were killed between 1941 & 1945.  This year I found 33 more people--and many other relatives whose fates are as yet unclear.

Publishing this yearly list is my one small way to make sure they are all remembered--all 1023 of those currently on this list.

Front Row L-R: Yosef Wollich, Mendel Chechman, Devorah Chechman; Back Row L-R: Sara Fine Wollich, Moshe Wollich, Chaike Chechman.  All were murdered in the Holocaust

Maybe You'll Find it, the Odesa Connection....

Many Jews moved to Odesa in the nineteenth century--including Jews from quite a distance away from Odesa itself.  Jews came to Odesa not only from all over the Russian Empire, but also from Austria-Hungary (including many from Galicia), Romania and the Ottoman Empire.  That means that even if you have no known ancestry from Odesa, it's quite possible that you have other branches of your family that moved there.  And these days it's easier than ever to find these branches.

Birth of Yosef Sanshuck, Odesa, 1916--his father was registered in Krasne, now Krasnoye, Ukraine

Soviet Repression Records - Information, Photos and More

Those who lived in the Soviet Union could be arrested and even put to death for various perceived or actual infractions.  Several different sites have been collating information on these individuals to document these victims of Soviet repression, with information ranging from simple names to full trial transcriptions and photos.  More records are being added to most of these sites regularly, but that means searching each of those sites individually to check for updates.  But there is a site that acts as a master search engine for all of these sites, allowing you to search in just one place.

Record for my third cousin three times removed, Isai Lefand

A Second Cousin Found - How DNA Helped a Holocaust Survivor Connect to My Family

My Diamond (formerly Diment) grandparents were Holocaust survivors.  My grandfather came to America with his two surviving siblings after his parents and two other siblings were killed in the Holocaust.  I've since managed to connect with descendants of two of his father's siblings--one because of a DNA match in which we learned that my grandfather's Aunt Shaindel had emigrated to Michigan rather than dying in the Holocaust like we'd thought, and then because of intensive paper-trail research where I found descendants of my grandfather's Uncle Leibish.  But now I have found descendants of one of my grandfather's half siblings, halfway across the world!  My father has a new-to-us half-second cousin, and a Holocaust survivor who lived most of her life in Ukraine (now living in Germany) who thought she had no relatives on her father's side has found out that she has a large family.

Email from MyHeritage about a new--and intriguing--match