Solving the Mystery of an Award Winning Photo

Winner of Orphan Photo Contest

Last week, thanks to Sara Esther, I won!  I never win anything, so winning a copy of Melissa Mannon's book The Unofficial Family Archivist is very exciting! Winning also has heightened my awareness of Sara Esther.

The contest was for orphan photos and their story. The photo I submitted (shown here on the left) is orphaned—unidentified. So why Sara Esther you ask? Simple, I think this may be a picture of Sara Esther, but I can't prove it. As in detective stories, family stories are full of mystery and Sara Esther is one of ours. I believe part of her story is hidden behind this unidentified photo.

Do you own vintage orphan photos? Most of us do. Fortunately there is something about the quality of these sepia prints which prevents us from tossing them. We tend to place them back where we found them, hoping next time we'll know what to do with them.

Genealogists work tirelessly to collect, preserve, study, archive and identify these priceless treasures. Even unlabeled, they contain a fragment of the story. This portrait and the story behind it, won me the prize. The story is not just about Sara Esther Kranowitz, but also about the work that goes into preserving her legacy. By writing about this process and sharing helpful tips I hope to encourage you to pull out and beging studying old photos. At the same time, I look forward to your collaboration and contribution to the Sara Esther story.

FIVE HELPFUL STEPS IN IDENTIFYING PHOTOGRAPHS


Step one: contacting relatives. Sara Esther was my great-grandmother's—Minnie—youngest sister. I began by consulting my great-grandmother memoirs. Sara Esther was the youngest of eight siblings. Minnie, five year the elder, cared for Sara Esther like a mother. She described her as "the baby of the family.... pretty as a picture with fair skin, blue eyes, golden blond curly hair and a mischievous smile." The last time Minnie saw her sister was when she left for America in 1913. Sara Esther was a young girl of about twelve and stayed behind to help their elderly parents. (More about her parents in the post: A Photo Worth a Thousand Words). The Kranowitz home was the town post office and Sara Esther partook in the family business, the mail. According to Minnie, the peasants who came to collect their mail specifically requested the "beautiful" Sara Esther for help in reading and writing letters.

From my uncle Larry, I learned how Sara Esther almost drowned. Once the family was crossing a bridge in their horse-drawn cart. This was the same rickety cart they used to pick up and deliver mail. Sara Esther, who was very young at the time, slipped out of the wagon, tumbling into the Neiman river. It was cold enough for the Sara Esther to be wearing her winter coat, but not cold enough for the river to freeze. Sara Esther did not know how to swim, but the down feathers caused the coat to floated, raising Sara Esther to the surface.

A photo of a young woman who
I think may be Sara Esther.

She remained in Belitsa (now part of Belarus) until she married a man named Altman and moved to a nearby (unknown) town where they owned a store and had a child (possibly his child from a previous marriage). I don't know his first name or the child's. We do not know if the child was male or female. All three perished in the holocaust. She is the only Kranowitz sibling with no living descendants. My cousin Flossie, found the award winning photo as well as the photo on the right. She believes both may be Sara Esther. Unfortunately, neither is labeled and Flossie can't be sure. This second portrait appears to be of the same woman but when she was younger.

The rest of our family elders believed there were photos in the family collection of Sara Esther. These two photos fit the description Minnie painted of her sister. One of Sara Esther's nieces, was a young child during the holocaust. She met Sara Esther only a handful of times when visiting the store. She agreed that the woman in the photos has distinct Kranowitz features, but her memory of her aunt is so faint that she could not confirm her identity.

Crane (Kranowitz) brothers.

Step two: cross referencing. From close inspection of the faces, I have pretty much convinced myself that the two unidentified photos are of the same woman. This woman, particularly when she was young, has a very a strong Kranowitz family resemblance. To me, she looks very much like two of the Kranowitz siblings, Max (left center) and Bernard (right center) in the Crane Brothers photo.

Step three: looking for clues within the photo and dating. At first glance these two photos do not provide many clues. There are no studio names engraved into the photo for example. But even my untrained eye can pick up a few hints. Both photos have a Europan flavor. The the young woman in the older print is seated posing for the photographer. The chair is placed on a dirt floor, but she is decked-out in her best dress, in-front of a studio backdrop. The formal style of dress and the studio backdrop, even though it is taken outdoors, date to the early 1900s maybe 1910-1920 when portrait taking merited dressing up. The later photo, looks like it was taken in the 1930s or so, when Sara Esther would have been in her thirties. This woman, appears more affluent, which could certainly be explained by what we know about Sara Esther, who left the poor shtetel of Belitsa to become a store owner.

Step four: hire a professional. There are experts in do this kind of work. When you feel stuck, you might want to consider hiring one. I have submitted several of my photos to a photo genealogist whom I met through twitter. Sherlock Cohn specializes in Jewish Genealogy.  I hope to learn from her more about these two photos and others in my collection. I promise to share what I learn in a future post.

Step five: exposure.  Increasing the exposure of your photos will increase the chances of identify them. The mystery of Sara Esther, how she lived and how she died remains unsolved. Publishing her photos in my book, entering them in the orphan photo contest and writing about them in this blog, will help expose the photos to family and the world. Perhaps another relative owns these photos, but their copy is labeled? Though the chances are slim, someone who knew Sara Esther may still be alive. In an earlier post, Facebooking Orphan Photos, I wrote about how helpful Facebook can be in identifying photographs. Websites dedicated to photo identification, such as jewishgen.org ViewMate, are also extremely helpful.

Have you had success identifying orphan photos? I would love to hear ideas of further identifying these two orphan photos. Which websites do you use for unidentified photos?

Never Give Up and Good Things Will Come

My Grandfather, on guard duty at his Kibbutz, 1939.

WARNING! Researching dead relatives can be a lonely endeavor. If you are thinking of researching your family history, consider yourselves duly warned. The genealogist amongst you, surly know what I'm referring to. For the record, please note: as difficult, frustrating and lonely as this pursuit may be, I HIGHLY RECOMMEND GENEALOGY! 


Personally, I am far from sharing Tim Tebow's religious beliefs—and as a Bostonian, I could not be happier that the Patriots just ended his amazing run—but I share in his message: Never Give Up and Good Things Will Come. Genealogy is a form of detective work requiring spending long hours alone, perseverance, attention to details and exceptional deciphering skills. Those around you, will rarely understand this crazy obsession with the past. Luckily, for you and for me, the internet is full of other's like us. The good news is, there are millions of Americans—and many more millions around the globe—researching their family history. In my immediate family, everyone is far to busy living their lives. Justifiably, they have little interest or time to study the lives of those who came before them. Yet there is a whole community of professional genealogist or self declared genealogy addicts who are out there sharing their work, offering advice, posting blogs and supporting this amazing and important process. While the process can be frustrating and guaranteed  to lead you into many dead ends, I promise it's a journey worth taking. To illustrate how perseverance will result in great discoveries, I want to share  with you one of my most remarkable discoveries: records in the Yad Vashem (Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority museum in Israel) database exposing information I feared lost forever. Read on, and remember DON'T GIVE UP!

It was two o'clock in the morning, and once again, I was staring at my computer screen, looking for clues about my great-grandparents who died in the holocaust. Four of my eight great-grandparents, lost their lives prematurely in the holocaust. My father, lost all his grandparents before he was born. So little did my grandparents talk about their lost family, that my father—now in his sixties—just did not remember the first names of his long deceased grandparents.  "How can you not remember your own grandparents names?" I kept asking. They were people, full of life! They were trapped by history. Living in the wrong place, at the wrong time. Someone needs to remember them. These missing ancestors were a huge hole in my family tree and my heart. All I had to go by, was their last names. Yampel and Celnik. 

My Great Uncle William Celnik who
Survived Auschwitz and his wife Edith Rose.
 .

On my father's Kibbutz, almost his entire generation grew up without grandparents, uncles or cousins. Like many Kibbutzim, Kibbutz Tel Yitzchak, was founded by young Eastern European pioneers who came to Israel as part of the zionist movement in the early 1930s. As idealistic teenagers, my grandparents left their families and comfortable middle class Polish homes, in pursuit of their dream: creating an independent Jewish state in what was then the dangerous, wasteland of Israel. During World War II, they lost everyone in their family except one of my grandmother's brother's who survived Auschwitz. In 1942, when most European Jews—among them my family—were obliterated by the Nazi's, my grandparents were in their late twenties and had not started a family of their own. They never determined exactly how they died. For them, there was no closure. No funeral, no shiva (traditional week of mourning), no grave to visit, no death certificate, not even a clue as to where or when exactly their loved ones perished. As I think about the strength it required to commence a family while you are mourning such unimaginable loss, I am overwhelmed. 

I must have searched the Yad Vashem site hundreds of times prior to that night. I searched there and on many other sites, ancestry.com and JewishGen to name a few. Without a first name, or any other identifying clue, it is almost impossible to identify a lost one. I kept probing my father for information and insisting that there must be somewhere we can bring to light the names of his grandparents. After all, they were his grandparents, not some distant relative. Earlier that day, my dad walked in triumphantly and said:" I found some documents. I hope they help." In his hand he held two death certificates belonging to his parents. My expert eyes scanned these documents in amazement, and immediately picked up a very important fact he had completely over looked. Both death certificate, written in Hebrew, listed the name of the deceased's fathers: Leon Yampel and Matias Tzelnik. Finally, I had names. This was a huge breakthrough! Armed with this new information, again I entered YadVashem.org, hoping to discover something about the two men who gave me life, and whom I knew nothing about. I looked and I looked. Nothing. I tried different spellings. Nada. And then, as I was about to call it a night, I noticed an option on the search engine which said witness.

It took a little more exploring to understand what this witness option was all about. Yad Vashem, collects testimonies of holocaust victims. These documents are called Witness Pages and are a kind of combination of a birth and death certificate. Despite the German's compulsive record taking practices, millions died during the war without a trace. The Witness Page is a testament to these victims lives and the fact that they existed. Normally these forms are completed by a relative or person who knew the victim and therefore witnessed their life. I had an epiphany. My grandfather, must have documented losing his parents, brother and in-laws.

For many years, grandfather worked as an archivist at a small holocaust museum on his Kibbutz called Massuah. His job was to record every article that appeared in Israel's newspapers related to the Holocaust. Reading the newspaper at my grandparents home was never any fun. Huge rectangular sections where missing from where a holocaust article carefully removed. In their home, there was an unspoken rule not to discuss the holocaust. As a little girl, I loved my grandfather's stories about the early days of hardships in the state of Israel. My saba (grandfather in Hebrew), loved tell stories about swarms of malaria infested mosquitos attacking him as he dried out the swamps by planting eucalyptus trees. But if I asked about Poland and his childhood, he would simply brush me off. "That was so long ago, I don't remember." he would retort and quickly change the subject. Yet, the newspaper, riddled with holes, was an ever present reminder to me, that my grandparents never forgot. They carried the weight of the holocaust on their shoulders silently. They wanted to shelter us, never to burden us children with such a heavy cargo. This restraint silence explains my father's inability to recall his grandparents names.


When I saw the witness option, on the Yad Vashem search engine, I knew that my grandfather, with his dedication to documenting the holocaust, must have filed a testimony page in Yad Vashem. Instead of looking for Yampel or Tzelnik, I tried a new approached and searched for Baruch Lavi, the witness. (My grandfather, Born Zigmond Yampel, Hebrewtized his name, around the foundation of the state of Israel. This was another attempt to leave Europe behind). To my amazement, instantly, sixteen records appeared. I looked at the list of names, and there they were. My four great-grandparents, and four great-aunts and uncles, each of their name appearing twice. I clicked on the first one, and read the summary. Then I clicked to see the original document. What I unearthed, was a Witness Page filled out by my grandfather in 1955. By then, after years of searching, he must have given up hope of finding survivors. This document may have been the only piece of closure he had. His familiar hand writing, recorded his fathers name, Leon Yampel—transcribed Jampel (J is pronounced as Y in Polish, a fact I did not know at the time), no wonder I could not find it—date of birth, names of Leon's parents, occupation, last known address, and where Leon may have perished.

Yad Vashem Witness Page for Leon Jampel my great-grandfather

My grandfather's brother Michael Jampel
Who perished in the holocaust. He was about
12 years old when he perished.

Alone, at my desk, tears streaming down my face, I read about my relatives. My beloved grandfather, who did not want to talk about the past, left these records behind for me to discover. That night, I felt he preserved this heritage only for me. I was the only one interested, the only one asking for stories. He understood, that one day, I will be ready to carry the weight of remembering. He understood, that one day, we, his descendants, will need to know. In 1999, when in his eighties, he filled out these forms again, forgetful of the 1950s duplicates. Luckily for me, the new expanded questionnaire provided additional information and clues. My saba wanted to leave his parents legacy even if it was to painful for him to talk about them. He knew then, what I am only coming to understand now: you can not rush people into the discovery of their past. The understanding that family history is one's own history, comes time and maturity.

My great-grandmother Anna Celnik (Rosenbloom)
Holocaust Victim

This gigantic breakthrough for a genealogist—finding information about eight lost relatives—meant little to everyone else around me. My dad was very moved of course. My husband congratulated me, but most people did not understand the gravity of this monumental advancement. From these records, I was able to retrace my father's family four generations more. Through much persistance, I began to learn about these relatives, found three surviving photos and reconnected with the descendants of my great uncle who survived Auschwitz. I even found the concentration camp uniform which he donated to the kibbutz museum.

William Celnik's Auschwitz uniform
(photo curtsey of Massuah)
Note the red triangle overlaying the yellow
triangle designated him as a
 political Jewish prisoner.

Many question remain unanswered in my mind. I know very little about these forefathers. I know even less about the circumstance of their death. I am far from closure. So I keep looking for clues, digging for leads. Most importantly, I NEVER GIVE UP and I believe GOOD THINGS WILL COME.

What has been your most amazing genealogical discovery? Please share with us in the comment section. Have you reached a dead-end? Do you need help? Write me a comment!