This ambitious treasure trove could help us know our ancestors

My family’s history is so unknown to me, particularly the history going back more than a century.

Like so many in our community whose families came here as survivors of the Shoah in the years immediately following the end of the Second World War, I have very little in terms of tangible traces of the people and places that were: a few precious photos (the same number I nonchalantly take in a day); a handful of objects that were somehow preserved amid and through the mayhem.

Two out of four of my grandparents were willing and able to talk about their families and their lives. If only I had taken better notes and recordings. When you’re young, you think you’ll have time for these things. Alas. It’s as if a line were drawn across that world and the one in which I inhabit. For so long I’ve wanted to approach, look over, perhaps even step through it. Finally, I have the time and mental space to start the research process.

Having taken only a few baby steps on this journey of ancestry travels, I am grateful for any advice and direction I receive. I’ve spoken to a few fellow explorers, attended a couple of in-person and online talks, and made a start on a family tree. It seems to make sense to start with the basics of names, dates, places of birth and death as I populate the branches and leaves of a painfully stunted tree.

Yet I want to know more than simply, that they lived. I have a deeper desire to know how they lived. Who were these strangers, my ancestors? I know broadly where they situated themselves on the Jewish spectrum of belief and practice, but I am curious about their convictions and how they came to hold them. I want to know what sort of education they received. What were their livelihoods? How did their marriages work out? What were some of their strongest experiences of joy, love and grief? What did they eat? How did they like to spend whatever leisure time they had?