For family historians and genealogists, it usually begins and ends with the vital records: birth, marriage, death. As we all know and appreciate, thanks to the efforts of hundreds of volunteers, archivists, and skilled translators and researchers, a number of wonderful websites today make researching our families easy and accessible from the comfort of our living rooms and workplaces. These include JewishGen, JRI-Poland (Jewish Records Indexing Poland), Gesher Galicia, Israel Genealogical Research Association, Ancestry, GenTeam, GenealogyIndexer, Rohatyn Shtetl Research Group, to name a few.<\/span><\/p>\n While recognizing the important place that vital records play in reconstructing a family lineage, this article aims to highlight the crucial role that secondary sources such as testimonies, memoirs, and survivor and witnesses accounts can play in emotionally connecting us to our ancestors. For \u00a0many of these individuals, we may have zero photos or very little vital information that is precise, uncontested, and reliable. It is sometimes only through these secondary sources that the little details of an individual can be learned. \u00a0\u201cHe had a beautiful singing voice\u201d; \u201cshe had bright red hair\u201d; \u201che loved animals\u201d; these kinds of details\u2014not present in the \u201chard\u201d data\u2014humanize our ancestors and breathe life back into what is otherwise merely a name on a record.<\/span><\/p>\n Our work in my ancestral town of Rohatyn and with other Jewish descendants has led us to amass a large amount of information, photos, and data about people and buildings. Through my personal collecting of witness accounts, Yad Vashem testimony, and survivor memoirs, I am working to associate a family member with each surviving Rohatyn building, and by doing so – by layering the \u201csoft\u201d secondary sources over the \u201chard\u201d data – reconstruct prewar Jewish Rohatyn and rebuild memory.<\/span><\/p>\n I begin with three buildings, still standing today, that were owned before the war by David and Jonas Horn, brothers of my great-grandfather Isak Horn. <\/span><\/p>\n Three buildings, two families, many fates.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n JONAS HORN Restaurant & Tavern<\/span><\/p>\n Today, 58 Halytska<\/span><\/p>\n Jonas Horn was born on vul Valova in Rohatyn on April 13, 1898. His parents were Jozef Osias Horn of Rohatyn and Rifke Kurzrok of Kozowa. Jonas was one of nine children: he had six sisters and two brothers. His oldest brother Isak immigrated to America in 1914. \u00a0Jonas had dark hair, and was a very private, reserved gentleman, much admired in the Jewish community.\u00b9<\/span><\/p>\n At age 23, Jonas married his cousin Ester Malka Liebling (\u201cAmalja\u201d) of Kozowa, and together they had three children (two boys and a girl). Jonas ran a restaurant and tavern with his father Jozef \u00a0in the building next to the Roman Catholic Church (on what was then called Pilsudskiego Street), and lived upstairs with his family.\u00b2 Jonas’ younger brother David was also a partner in the restaurant at this location. In 1932, Jozef and David were the official representatives of Lwow Breweries in Rohatyn with telephone number 11. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\t\t