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This project was started following the personal help of
one woman to another. Eva Floershiem came from a town in
Norway in which the cemetery contains the graves of her ancestors from over 700
years ago. She decided to help her
husband find his roots in Germany. Another woman, Arela Goldshmidt, lived on the
same Moshav (a semi-collective
community in Israel) & heard of Eva's research. She asked if Eva would
help her as well. Eva agreed, but there was
one small problem. Arela didn't know who she really was. She was separated from
her parents and the rest of her family
as a young girl during the Holocaust, yet survived.
Eva helped Arela with her research. Israel's Channel 1
television station heard of the amazing lengths one must go to
investigate the unknown past of a child Holocaust survivor and offered to
accompany the two women in their search in
Poland.
It turned out that there are many such child survivors
and the connection between Eva and the producer, Vered Berman,
led to a two-part TV series about some of them. Israeli TV and radio personality
Meni Pe'er hosted the two shows called
Zehut Avudah (Hebrew for Missing Identity) that was a co-production of
Israel's Channel 1 and Poland's Channel 2. The
idea was to interview those child survivors who were willing to tell their
stories, research their pasts and assemble
anyone with any knowledge about them or their families in studios in
Israel & Poland in a simulcast.
A short film was prepared before the first installment
of the series which took one of the child survivors (now in her 60s)
and brought her to a woman who (according to the research) was a neighbor of her
family (who she still doesn't know)
back in the 40s in Poland. The older neighbors opens her door in Jerusalem and
welcomes the "child" in Polish to invite
her in. As the "child" enters, she is introduced to a tall mustached man who
is...HER BABY BROTHER!
The view is from behind the back of the man, as he
stoops & bends to get a 3D view of this "sister" he could have only
seen
as a baby. Suddenly, the two lunge into each others' arms & there wasn't a
dry eye in the scene, nor throughout
the audience in two countries. Only
when things nearly calmed down did they get to make a phone call to their
M O T
H E R, in her 80's & living in Copenhagen, too ill to make the journey.
This was only one of many stories told & researched
that evening. The
follow-up was broadcast on the eve of
Holocaust Remembrance Day. The
impact of Jewish genealogy research was raised to a new level of technology &,
possibly more important, public awareness.
My Part in the Project
I became involved in searching my own roots
with the help & incentive of Isaac Kessler (my mother's uncle) and Sid Levitt
(a Chertoff cousin). When I got deep into it, I realized that I'll need a
computer to collect, organize and display my
findings. So I went to a meeting of the Genealogical Society of the Galilee to
consult with expert genealogists on what I
needed (what computer, software, etc.).
While at the meeting, I heard the lecture
about the "upcoming" Missing Identity series and got interested. But I wasn't
hooked until I saw the promos on Channel 1. They showed parts of the meeting
This site was last updated 15-02-2005
© 2003, Moshe Chertoff