“It is sometimes only through these secondary sources that the little details of an individual can be learned. ‘He had a beautiful singing voice’; ‘she had bright red hair’; ‘he loved animals’; these kinds of details—not present in the ‘hard’ data—humanize our ancestors and breathe life back into what is otherwise merely a name on a record.”
From our Archives we re-post this moving story: “Preceding deportation, ten-thousand people were herded together in terrible conditions of crowding, fear, and filth. I there met Rózsi, who was even then clutching the case of her dear violin.”
”I was helping a friend … to identify her great-grandfather’s town of origin… The first thing I did was to go to the JewishGen Family Finder, where I promptly found three things: the correct name, the correct town, and a researcher who turned out to be her third cousin!”