For a year now I have been obsessed with finding my mother in-law's family. OBSESSED! Her mother and father disappeared during WWII and Inga survived, she was just 5.
This is a picture of her mother's family sometime in the 1920's or so. Her mother is in the back row 2nd from the right, Zosia Cymerman.
Here she is again in 1935. She was married around this time to Fryc Klein (Inga's father.)
I can't read this at all but I know Zosia wrote it. Does anyone speak Polish?
I have searched Ancestry.com like a stalker, contacted the Red Cross, nothing. I can't find a thing about their family before the war. I know where they lived and their names. Basically until someone can go to the towns in Poland and the Ukraine and do some searching we are out of luck. So frustrating!
I don't know why I am so focused on this but every December the search just calls to me. I look and look and look and still no new information. There has just GOT to be some records out there....
Ugh, I know it can be SUPER frustrating!! I'm the site manager at a museum and genealogy centre, so I feel your pain! I live in the area where the first Scottish settlers landed in Nova Scotia, and I swear, every second person who comes in wants to link their family back to that very first ship, lol. Don't they realize just how many "John MacDonalds" there were?!
ReplyDeleteDon't give up!! Maybe you can make contact with a local archive in one of the areas you think they might have come from. Good luck!!
This site helped a lot when researching all our Polish ancestors...http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~mnpolgs/pgs-mn.html
ReplyDeleteSarah, that's so sweet that you are diving into finding out this information about your mother-in-law's family. That's how I would be too. It's your kids' history and would so good to find out what happened to them all (and surely sad, too - but better to know and keep their memories alive.)
ReplyDeleteKudos to you. Merry Christmas to you and your family!
How exciting! I want to do our family's genealogy. Maybe someday!
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ReplyDeleteHi Sarah,
ReplyDeleteI just sent my friend Krzysztof an email to see if he can help. I thought perhaps he could do the Polish translation on the photo as well as refer us to a company/organization like ancestry.com that is more focused on the region you're looking in. Let's see if he comes up with anything!! Good luck and enjoy your holidays!!
What a wonderful thing to be doing for your mil. My mother has worked on tracing our relatives and found a lot of valuable information on the ancestry.com message boards.
ReplyDeleteit says, in proof of love to my brother, Zosia
ReplyDeleteMagda
Thank you so much!! Magda:)
ReplyDeleteContact the Holocaust Museum on the Mall in Washington DC. They would have ideas on what to do next. I think there might be Jewish websites that might help.
ReplyDeleteI was going to say the Holocaust Museum or Stephen Spielberg put together The Shoah foundation (that lost TONS of $ to Bernie Madoff, what a shame). Anyway, here is a link to the website. He started it around the time of Schindler's list because he realized people were dying before telling their story and wanted as much as possible documented. Here is the website:
ReplyDeletehttp://dornsife.usc.edu/vhi/
Have you tried the new http://www.worldmemoryproject.org?
ReplyDeleteI just found 3 Cymerman's in documents dated 1942 in France (AIN). They are listed as Polish. Adel (b. Aug 10, 1926), Ida (b. 1927) and Charles (b. 1929). Do a search of Cymerman (uncheck the "match all terms exactly" checkbox at the top of the search form). Some Jews fled Poland for France before France became occupied. Could her family have been in France?
I'm not Jewish, but the holocaust has always haunted me and I've spent alot of time going through websites looking at the photos of those who perished and those who survived. Just to remember them even though I never knew them. My heart breaks for them, but especially for all the children who never got the chance to live and those who did, but had no family as a result. Tragic.
I also just found Adel Cymerman listed through Ancestry on the "Holocaust: Register of survivors printed in Pinkas HaNitzolim I & II, 1945". Adel is listed as residing in Lodz.
ReplyDeleteOkay, I'm finding tons of Cymermans originating from Lodz, Poland. Is that where her family is from? IF you have names, I let me know and I'll try to help find them and organize some kind of family spreadsheet that includes their names, dob, residences, transports (alot of my finds were on the list of Ten Ghettos, the survivors list, the Polish vital records, etc.)
ReplyDeleteIs "Fryc" a nickname? Or short for something, like Fryderick?