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

Eastern European Newspapers

Have you ever used newspapers as a resource for researching your Eastern European family?  I've been playing around with a site that allows you to do just that.  It predominantly covers Ukraine, but there is coverage for neighboring countries as well; the site contains periodicals in languages including Russian, Yiddish, Ukrainian, Polish, Belorussian and more.  Below are some examples of what I've found for my own family--and how you can potentially find articles about your relatives too.

1913 Advertisement for Performers for the Zubkis Theater in Gaysin

Lefands in 1822--More Females Found--but Russian Handwriting Help Needed!

The indefatigable Alex Krakovsky posted of an interesting record set that included--among other things--many family lists of both Jews and Christians in Chernigov Guberniya.  So of course I went Lefand hunting--and I had success (although it does have their name here as "Lefan").

Lefand Family List Entry, 1822

US Military Records via BIRLS - My Beta User Experience

Our friends at Reclaim the Records have done it again.  The latest record set that they've helped to make accessible to us is the Beneficiary Identification Records Locator Subsystem (BIRLS) database, which includes people who served in the US military and received veterans' benefits in the twentieth century.  They've set up a user-friendly way for you to generate and send a fax (yes, a fax--but you don't need a fax machine) request for C-File (different than naturalization-related C-Files) records referenced in BIRLS.  I was a beta tester and have already received responses to many of my requests, so here are some of the things I learned about the system and about some relatives--as well as how you can do the same!

Application for my grandfather's first cousin to become a WAVE