The Lost Part II

I finished reading Daniel Mendelsohn's The Lost this morning. Rarely has a book struck me the way this book did. Because the book is so close to home, which is to say, because I have tried to find information via travel to Poland, through JewishGen.org, etc, and have come up empty, I can relate to what the author was going through, why he was so interested in it, and why he took it so seriously. The difference, of course, is that the author accomplished largely what he set out to accomplish. He asked the questions early enough to learn all he could about his familial roots, and when he was old enough, he began making the trips around the world to find out the details about those who were lost.

He also had a great deal of luck; it's almost unbelievable, as one reads through the pages, to see how all the pieces came together. It was a serendipitous experience, being in the right place at the right time, one clue leading to another, a seemingly unimportant detail leading to a significant finding. Just when he thought he was done with his research, he would meet one more person who could give him information, and that person would send him to another, and another, and finally, he's in the house where two of his ancestors were found hiding during the war, setting foot in the hiding place itself. Later, we learn that he finds himself standing at the very spot where his ancestors where shot after they were discovered.

I confess to feeling a sense of envy as I read through the pages. The sense of accomplishment the author must have felt when he finished his four/five year tour, visiting numerous continents and elderly survivors who knew his ancestors from 60 years prior and could remember enough to provide enough information to paint a picture that brings those lost people back to a small degree.

I would absolutely love to find out what happened to my grandmother's sister. I doubt very much I will, and of course, with so many other things to worry about, it's difficult to dedicate the time to such an effort. It is, for all intents and purposes, the equivalent of searching for a needle in a proverbial haystack, especially since her sister probably, at least as far as she knows, was not in a camp, or on any deportation list that was kept by the perpetrators.

I can think of one other book that had an impact on me as profound as The Lost. And yet, the book is a work of fiction, not a real adventure capturing the lives of those in the present as they seek information about the lives of the past. The book is about Vietnam and it's call The Things They Carried. I first read the book when I was in high school, when I was captivated by the Vietnam war and when I was preparing an essay on PTSD, which at the time, was something new, whereas today, PTSD is widely accepted as an outcome of prolonged exposure to combat (among other things). I then read the book again in 2006, and it didn't bring about the same reaction I had to it when I was a teenager. I'm not sure why - while I remembered bits and pieces, especially the ending which is easily the most profound portion, I did not think reading it again after more than a decade would be like seeing a movie for the nth time, where the suspense is no longer there because the ending is known. With that said, I highly recommend it.

And so, my next step is send some names and birth dates via email to the Polish State Archives to see if I'll have any luck, once again, on finding something from the past.

The Lost

After four or so years of seeing it in bookstores, I recently purchased Daniel Mendelsohn's The Lost, a book about the author's quest to find out what happened to his relatives during the Holocaust. It's a little more than that, in that the author went back and researched his family tree going back to the 1800's. So he has a good handle on who was who and how all the pieces fit together. The missing piece, however, consists of the six who did not leave Poland (now Ukraine) before 1939, and who, like six million others, would come to regret that decision, assuming the decision was there for the taking.

The book has rekindled my own efforts at trying to find more about my grandmother's history in Poland, which, to this point, has resulted in the same results as those from the prior few years where I've tried to find information. I have learned where her parents are buried however, and went to Brooklyn to have a look. I also learned where three of her brothers are buried and I'll be going to New Jersey to view their monuments as well. If nothing else, my goal is to discover birth dates, and then try either through email or in person in the future, to go to the Polish State Archives to get birth certificates. The idea of going to the State Archives was taken from the book, where the author was successful in locating birth certificates; I figured I had to go to the town of Rozan and visit the municipal office there, which I did in 2009, coming away empty as I walked in without any birth dates, only names.

I also learned for certain that her hometown is Rozan, Poland, something I was starting to doubt. Her parents and brothers are buried in Rozan burial societies, which proves her memory is right. However, I am suspicious that she may not remember her original last name correctly, as when I type Brzoza in at online databases, the returns are never helpful.

Genealogy is one of those things that you really have to delve into early, for there will come a time when no one will be around to answer all the questions that need to be asked about the past. Mendelsohn was fortunate to start early, although he laments not starting early enough. He remembers, as so many of us do, being around old people as a youngster, people who would ultimately pass away, only to find out who they were later in life, discovering the wealth of familial information that was lost by not asking the questions when he had the opportunity. That's the problem, among many problems, with being young, I suppose. The answers are there in front of you, you just have to ask the question, but as a young person, you are more fascinated with toys, and maybe girls (if you're male), and sports, and everything else that surrounds one's world. Genealogy is not top of mind when a person is, say, 10 years old.

I remember in the 4th grade, Mr. Salka had us do a family tree. I remember my father on the phone with my grandmother, the one who passed away 10 years ago next month, asking questions. The assignment didn't push me to learn more, and I can't remember how far back or even what the family tree ultimately looked like once it was complete. What's worse, is that my parents never asked any questions either, which is strange to me; if you have a parent from, say, Poland, wouldn't you want to know something about her past? Or about the one sister that didn't leave Poland before 1939 and because of that, would never leave Poland and find herself among the six million?

It's unfortunate that I've let all this time pass, and that I let life and all the other things I was into get in the way of understanding the past. It's odd, I think, that I would only begin to be fascinated with this topic over the last eight to ten years, but then again, the seed that has brought this career change found its beginnings at the same time. It's been a holistic transformation, one which I find some difficulty in finding the absolute cause. My hope now is to find the birth dates of these few from Rozan, confirm their original last name, and then figure out how to approach the Polish State Archives to get birth certificates and anything else they may have available. I think others should do the same.