Family history
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- June
- 9
Last weekend, my mother showed me the notes she’d taken during an “interview” with her father, my grandfather, who was one of the few people in his family to have outwitted the Nazis. He died in 1989 when he was 93.
My mother is also a Holocaust survivor. When I visited her, she showed me a DNA kit that she’d ordered from the DNA Shoah Project , which is building a data base of genetic material from Holocaust survivors and their immediate descendants.
As it says on the Web site, the project is being done “in hopes of reuniting families disrupted by the Shoah (“Holocaust” in Hebrew). The Project aims to match displaced relatives, provide Shoah orphans and lost children with information about their biological families and, eventually, assist in the forensic identification of Holocaust-era remains.”
I helped my mother collect the DNA sample (from her cheek) and she answered a questionnaire that included information about the missing relatives she’s hoping to find. Her sister was 16 when she disappeared in Poland during the war, and she was never heard from again.
Anyway, this looks to be a promising project. Pass it along if you know anyone who’d be interested in this.
And yes, next time I plan to interview my mother and take careful notes. Have you talked to your parents about your family history?
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on Tuesday, June 9th, 2009 at 6:19 pm by Linda Lombroso.
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Baby boomer Linda Lombroso was born in Queens and grew up in Port Washington. She began her journalism career at New York Magazine and Rolling Stone, and came back to the field after spending 10 years as a stay-at-home mother. Linda joined The Journal News in 1997 and has been a Life & Style writer since 2000. She has three children.
