When my father, Irwin, was two years old, his 32-year-old father, Samuel, passed away from medical complications shortly after surgery. This biological father became a forgotten figure in our family’s history.
As a descendant of ancestors who crossed the Atlantic by ship from Europe to North America, I have been interested in how this was managed, as I assumed that my ancestors lacked sufficient income to accomplish this odyssey.
I began my genealogy journey with a short list of research priorities, “mysteries” to solve. One of them was to discover who from my family had survived World War II, and what had happened to those who had not survived.