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.

The above list is one type of document that can be found in Ancestry's Registration of Liberated Former Persecutees, 1945-1950 collection, data which is from the Arolsen Archives.  Note that it includes survivors' names and years of birth along with their mother's maiden names.  Other documents in this set include towns of birth.  All of these names and towns have been indexed and are searchable via this collection.  (There are potential issues searching by town--and I'll explain how to do with that below.)

An example of types of included records--survivors with their birthdate and birthplace along with what they know happened to their family members

While this data set does not contain all survivors (my grandparents aren't included which is always my initial test in such situations), it contains a significant amount of information about many who did survive and often contains family information.

The other new dataset I'll mention today is also from Ancestry via Arolsen Archives: Germany, Lists from Displaced Persons Camps, 1938-1985.  It also isn't complete, but it does pass my "are my grandparents included" test.  I'd requested a full search of the Arolsen Archives (then called the International Tracing Service) about a decade ago (you can see what I got from them about my grandfather here).  I did get the following document at that time, after a year's wait.  But now I would have been able to find it from home with a quick search:

Record of my great grandmother (first circle) and grandparents (second circle) when arriving at a Displaced Persons Camp in January 1946.

I did mention that there are some oddities when searching this database.  One of the powerful things about this database is that it contains many birthplace town names that have been indexed, which can be especially helpful if you are searching for a common surname or if you're researching a very small village and want to see everyone included from that town.  For myself, I have some small ancestral villages in which I am related to pretty much every Jewish person who lived in that town. You'd think by searching for a particular town name in the "Any Event" location would help you find all people in the dataset from that town, but you'd be wrong in many cases.

First, remember that many towns had multiple names, often in multiple languages because of changing borders.  You may have some survivors who used one version of the name and some others--and one search will not necessarily find both.  For example, I found people who listed their town of origin as the Hungarian Darva and others as the Ukranian/Czech/Yiddish Kolodne--but that's the same town.  And sometimes you have a Hungarian survivor whose information was written down in German or Polish, and they'll use a relatively creative spelling.  So make sure to play around with variations of town names, even using the keyword field rather than the "any event" location field to search with wildcards, as you'll often find results you wouldn't otherwise.

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