If key family members are fuzzy on the details or have passed away, look to close family friends for insights. Thanks to the lovely World Wide Web, I was able to track down my grandfather’s one-time Czechoslovakian fiancée, Eliska, whom he met aboard a ship sailing for Brazil in ’41. Eliska was 88, and living in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. I wrote her a letter explaining my project and asking if she a) remembered my grandfather, and b) would be interested in chatting. She called me a few days later, ecstatic (apparently she and my grandfather were, in her words, “quite an item!”). She insisted I come for a visit. My mother and I spent two days with Eliska, learning priceless details about my grandfather’s voyage to Brazil, and about what a character he was at the young age of 28.
Another way to get creative in your research is to search the Web for people or groups with similar interests. In my early research of Radom, Poland, I came across this Kehilalink (a virtual community) on JewishGen.org—I contacted the author, Susan Weinberg, who not only helped me navigate the site, but who put me in touch with a survivor from Radom as well as with a young man from the city’s cultural center, who later gave me an extensive tour of Radom when I visited. To read more about how much Susan influenced my work, click here. And if you’d like to peruse the extensive research Susan has been conducting on her own family history (extending into the areas of travel, artwork, language, facial recognition and more) visit her blog, Layers of the Onion.
When I learned I had two relatives who’d been sentenced to a year in Stalin’s Siberian labor camps (which I knew very little about) I began digging around online—it turns out there’s a whole community of folks interested in the same topic—many of whom are survivors (or children of survivors). I can’t tell you how many members of the Kresy-Siberia Yahoo Group (and now Facebook Group) have helped me along the way in my research, not only pointing me in the right direction regarding how/where to track down records, but also providing invaluable first-hand accounts. The Virtual Museum is a wonderful resource, as well.
