My late husband assumed that his family wasn’t affected by the Shoah because they left for the U.S. around 1904. In my research on JewishGen, I discovered people with his same last name in the same villages who had perished. We don’t know if they were actual relatives. Even so, this sobering information seemed important to my husband, and I think it strengthened his relationship to the Jewish community as a whole. It didn’t happen to them, it happened to us.
Oh well-thought-out position, Sarah.
My late husband assumed that his family wasn’t affected by the Shoah because they left for the U.S. around 1904. In my research on JewishGen, I discovered people with his same last name in the same villages who had perished. We don’t know if they were actual relatives. Even so, this sobering information seemed important to my husband, and I think it strengthened his relationship to the Jewish community as a whole. It didn’t happen to them, it happened to us.
Much of JewishGen is not Holocaust related.
I'm sure my anxiousness about stumbling across information I don't really want makes it seem more so than it is.