It’s been a few
years since I’ve been able to work on my own family history research. I’ve
dabbled a little here and there when Ancestry.com had a free week, but didn’t
run across any “new” finds.
But back in October, my friend, Mara, approached me about
a genealogy/family history project that she needed help with. She knew I liked
history and had done my own family research, so she thought I’d be a good brain
to pick.
Mara had recently returned from visiting Belarus and Poland,
on a trip to help young people learn about their past. They toured
Holocaust sites and had the privilege of meeting individual Holocaust survivors
and hearing their stories. One man, Leonid Rubinstein, was an 87-year-old, living
in Minsk, Belarus. Not only did he survive the Minsk ghetto, which he
adamantly states was "worse than any death camp," but he survived
five concentration camps including Auschwitz and Dachau, where he was liberated
in 1945. While Leonid lived in the ghetto, he lost 28 of his family members, at
the time believing that every single one of his relatives had passed away.
After the war,
Leonid returned to his homeland in Belarus at 18 years old. Surprisingly, the
Red Cross contacted Leonid and said that he had an aunt in America who had
contacted them. Leonid's aunt and cousin, Tamara, had immigrated to America in
the 1920's before the war. Immediately, Leonid began corresponding with them,
and his aunt started sending him care packages. However, the Soviet Union began
interrogated Leonid and reprimanded him for receiving care packages and letters
from their "enemy" (America). They forced him to write a letter,
which they dictated, cutting off all communication with his only living
relatives.
Seeing the sorrow that Leonid had, after losing his
family a second time, Mara agreed to do as much as she could to help Leonid
find his family. Although Leonid had recorded his family’s
history in a short book, he didn’t have very clear details about his cousin and
aunt, but he was able to tell Mara four specific things about his cousin:
1.Her
name was Tamara (unfortunately, he didn’t know her last name), 2. She served as
an U.S. army, and was a gynecologist/doctor in the liberation of Dachau in
April, 1945. 3. Her husband was also a doctor in the army (but didn’t know his
name), and 4. They lived in Brooklyn, NY when they were able to write letters
back and forth. He also had two photographs: one of Tamara and her
husband (in military uniform), and the other of her family on her wedding day. And
additional info about his parents was given as well.
[As
it turned out, not all of these things were true, but I’m getting ahead of
myself.]
Immediately after
returning from Eastern Europe, Mara started searching. She contacted national
and international archives, multiple Holocaust museums, the Red Cross, the
International Tracing Service, military libraries and museums, and census
records, which all yielded no results.
Then, after a
Sukkot service, Mara shared this all with me, and I agreed to jump on board as
well. I was in the middle of a busy school semester, and had been dealing with
some difficult health issues, but if you know me, I cannot say no to a research
project! Mara helped me pay for a month’s subscription to Ancestry.com’s
World Membership, and I jumped right in. For the whole month, every spare
minute I had was spent thinking, praying, and researching about Tamara and her
family.
I began by
creating a family tree on Ancestry.com, to see if any hints would appear. Them
I posted a short description of the inquiry and the photographs of Tamara and
her family on various message boards on Ancestry.com. One person responded and
identified Tamara's uniform. They suggested the U.S. Army Enlistment records,
found at the National Archives (NARA) and on Ancestry.com. There were four people
with the first name Tamara who lived in New York when they enlisted. Two of those
women were born in the former Soviet Union. The first served as an aviation
cadet, but Leonid had told me that Tamara served in a medical unit so we knew
she couldn't be the one. That left one Tamara: Tamara K.
I shared this
information with Mara in late October. She was optimistic but also unsure how
we would actually contact this Tamara or any of her relatives. Through Public Records
and Phone Directory Records on Ancestry.com, I was able to give Mara a list of outdated
phone numbers and addresses for all the "Tamara K's" in New York.
Mara called them,
one by one. There were many wrong numbers, as I expected. For the last Tamara,
there was a phone number but no area code. However, this Tamara was born in
1919, which would have lined up with Leonid's cousin's estimated age. . .
Having no luck with
the phone calls, we decided that "Tamara K." was not the correct
Tamara, and went back to scouring Ancestry.com for anything to “click.” I
looked at census records (hallelujah for the 1940 census!), military, and
immigration records on Ancestry.com; military history websites and I even went
to the library and looked up books about the Army units that liberated the
Dachau concentration camp, in case Tamara was important enough to get
mentioned. Meanwhile, our subscription to Ancestry.com was running out.
Then, five days
before the subscription ran out, I received another response from the message
board, encouraging us to reconsider "Tamara K." The person also
sent a link to a K family tree on another genealogy website (Geni.com). Geni’s
family tree for the Klein family showed the connections I was looking for!
Tamara’s mother’s name was Marya, and her father was Moti, the same name as
Leonid’s father! When Tamara and Marya (Alyoshina) had migrated from Minsk in
the 1920s, they (unknowingly to us), stopped in Turkey for a while. Therefore,
many of their immigration records noted Turkey as their last location (which
originally turned me off to a whole line of inquiry!). Crossing borders into
the United States, their last name was changed. This information all came from confirming our
speculation about Tamara Klein being the right Tamara. It was only then that I
was able to confirm connections going both back, and forward in time. It was an
amazing moment of discovery!
[But back to my original side note: in all this we discovered that Tamara was never at Dachau, nor a gynecologist/doctor. She was in the U.S. Army, but served in a home-front capacity, as she was pregnant with her daughter Judith at the time. Her husband Michael K. fought in WWII, but also did not make his way to Dachau either. What we thought was vital information, was not true at all.]
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| Immigration Record |
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| 1940 Census Record |
[But back to my original side note: in all this we discovered that Tamara was never at Dachau, nor a gynecologist/doctor. She was in the U.S. Army, but served in a home-front capacity, as she was pregnant with her daughter Judith at the time. Her husband Michael K. fought in WWII, but also did not make his way to Dachau either. What we thought was vital information, was not true at all.]
With this
information, I turned to Google. I found Tamara K.’s obituary (she must have
been the Tamara who was born in 1919 who didn't have an area code!), as well as
her daughter’s (Judith) obituary. I anticipated the fact that Tamara had passed,
but I was saddened to learn that Leonid’s next best connection was as well. But
through the wonders of Facebook and Google, I found out that Judith and her husband
moved from New York to San Francisco to begin a social service agency, where
their three grown children still work today! I sent Mara the information right
away, and she began calling the siblings. Finally, after a few weeks, the
oldest son called Mara back on Christmas Eve!
He was hesitant at first, but confirmed some of Mara’s
questions about his grandmother, and then she sent him the photograph of Tamara
and her husband. He was floored, “ Oh!!
That's my Grandpa Mike and Grandma Tam! I've seen that picture before."
Through their phone
call, we realized we forgot about trying to contact Tamara’s son, who is still
living. So Mara emailed him, and it turns out that he had the most interest in
meeting Leonid.
When Mara shared
all of this with Leonid (through an interpreter), he listened quietly while she
spoke, and then tears started streaming down his face. "Unbelievable,
unbelievable," he said. Leonid had been trying to reestablish connections
with his relatives since Belarus became independent from the Soviet Union in
1991. His last communication with Tamara and her mother was in 1946.
Leonid immediately
began writing a letter to Tamara’s son, the form of communication he last had
with Tamara. Everyone laughed, telling him that he could email or video chat
with his American family! Later in January, they did just that, and began
making plans to visit Leonid in Belarus.
In their Skype call,
Leonid said, "I would like to
invite you to come to Minsk so that I can put my arms around you and hug you. I
want to take you through the ghetto and show you where your great grandparents
died, where your aunts and uncles died, where your cousins died." He
asked, "What could 6 million people have done? Perhaps one of them could
have found the cure for cancer. Perhaps one of them could have written the next
great symphony....."
He implored them to
continue telling the stories of those who had passed away. "Someday, I
will be gone, but these stories must live on.” And said, "It's not my
story. I'm no hero. All I did was survive. And because I survived, I have to
tell this story---for those who have died and can't tell their stories."
Fast forward
to June 2015:
Mara and her contacts in Belarus, and a camera
crew stood waiting at the airport. Leonid joined them, proudly wearing a suit,
and appearing 10 years younger than he had earlier. Leonid’s son was there, as
well. More people began arriving: the rabbi who along with his wife started the
congregation in Minsk that has cared for the Holocaust survivors for the past
20 years; the woman who had coordinated all the survivor visits; the
translator. They all stood in a half circle, in front of the glass doors,
waiting for Leonid's family to walk through them and into his life.
After several minutes, the doors finally opened, and out walked Tamara’s
son (with his wife), grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. The camera flashed
and Leonid began meeting his family one by one. Tamara had written Leonid
letters and sent care packages almost 70 years ago, and today, they were meeting
Leonid face to face!
Leonid’s son planned a very special dinner, and everyone talked and showed
family pictures. When the meal began, Leonid stood up for a toast: “I will not
speak here about the tragedy that took place in Minsk in the ghetto. I will not
even say right now how many of my relatives died. I will save that for
tomorrow. Today is a day of joy. At my table at home, I always had more friends
than relatives. And today, I’ve got 8 people who are my relatives, and
honestly, it’s still hard for me to believe that you’re here from such a far land
in America. My dear relatives. Tomorrow, I will share about the tragic things but today, I wish
you all happiness and health.”
