Oregon women learn fate of relatives caught in Shoah

By JEWISH REVIEW

article created on: 2008-11-15T00:00:00

Laeh-Maggie Garfield of Eugene, knew about the ITS archives in Germany. She’d tried to trace lost relatives for years. She sent the archives names, birthdays, parents names, occupation, spouse’s name and town of residence. They answered it was insufficient information.

Unfortunately, this is the type of stonewalling many reported before the archives opened to the public in January 2007.

“Germany did not want the information released as it named not only our relatives and what was done to them but who did it,” Garfield wrote the Jewish Review from her teaching assignment in Europe. “Other European countries also stood in the way until our protests overcame their resistance.”

In May 2008, she visited Bad Arolsen on a trip organized by Avotaynu, the leading publisher of books on Jewish genealogy. “The story was picked up around the world,” Garfield wrote. “It was the first time in over 60 years we could search for our relatives this way.”

At Bad Arolsen, Garfield found treasures prior searching at Bergen-Belsen and the Family History Library in Salt Lake City couldn’t reveal. They included the names and location of relatives who had miraculously survived the Holocaust. Garfield’s family had assumed everyone was lost.

“I saw my Uncle Max’s name and address in the Bronx,” she wrote. “He twice escaped from trains headed to Auschwitz. He survived in the woods.”

She learned of relatives relocated to Tashkent, and some who immigrated to Argentina.

“The pain of the Shoah and the guilt that we did not save our own relatives has never left our family until now,” she said.

Others in Oregon also had success searching for missing family. Seaside resident Ruth Lindemann went directly to the Oregon Trails Chapter of the Red Cross. They helped trace her uncle, aunt and cousins.

“The Red Cross found the actual deportation orders and the labels they made the kids wear on the train,” she said. They also found the original, hand-written Nazi records with her uncle’s prisoner number and date of execution.

“The Red Cross was sensitive when they contacted me,” Lindemann remembered. “They said they’d rather not send that information in the mail. Could I come into their office? I can’t say enough about that.”

“It doesn’t give you a lot of peace of mind to know that your family was murdered but it does help to know exactly what happened,” Lindemann said, explaining the importance of learning the truth. “It’s something people want to know.”