"In Everything I Do"

Elizabeth singing "In Everything I Do"("B'chol Ma'ssai") written by Karen Davis
 and accompanied by her father.

This beautiful melody and song, "In Everything I do," has been playing over and over in my mind since I first heard it at the Kranowitz reunion eighteen months ago. Elizabeth, is my third cousin, whom I met for the first time during the reunion weekend. Prior to the reunion we were barely aware of each other's existence. I'm not sure she realizes, but that moment, captured on my iphone—that song—has left a  extremely strong impact. It left a particularly powerful impression on me. It transformed the way I view genealogy.

I see genealogy as many things. Mostly I feel it's a gift, or—as my great-grandmother wrote in her journal—a treasure. So powerful are her words: "I stored up many treasures in my life on this earth," that I based the title of her memoir, Stored Treasures on them. Minne Crane, my great-grandmother, in those two words,"Stored" and "Treasures," captures the process of genealogy. Studying family history, is truly a treasure hunt. Each aspect of the work we do, tracing our lineage back in time, continually surprises us with hidden delights. Elizabeth, reminded me that sometimes, the treasures of genealogy are not hidden in the past, they are right here in the present.

Let me explain. Searching for roots is a personal journey—at least, that is what I believed when I embarked. For me, it was almost a selfish need to extinguish an unquenchable thirst for knowledge about where I come from. I have been described as many things, including: well centered, hardworking, persistant, self confident but never spiritual. I think of myself, as a woman who is very comfortable with who she is. Therefore, I often ponder why understanding my family's past has become so important to me? Who knows? Maybe it's a type of mid-life crisis? After all, I did hit forty when I became a genealogy geek. Researching my ancestry may not be an identity crisis, it clearly has deepened my sense of who I am.

Seated in a conference room at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City, amongst the Kranowitz descendants, I listed in awe to Elizabeth sing. This prayer, turned song—which she sang first in Hebrew, then English—was an amazing conclusion to an incredible reunion. Listening to that song, I realized two very important things. The first, my great-grandmother, did not just send me on a voyage into the past when she challenged me to search for lost treasures. The wise grandmother that she was, she understood the value of family, and of the present. What she learned from the past, she utilized to constantly improve her life. The past and present are inseparable. The family reunion—particularly the song, "Everything I do"—reminded me of that small pearl of knowledge. The second, while advancing genealogical work is extremely important, sharing the legacy with the family and beyond, is the gift that keeps giving.

William Crane with his wife Luba (Elizabeth's
great-grandparents)
and son's Fred, Maurice and Robert (Elizabeth's
grandfather).

Most of the weekend, Elizabeth was fairly reserved and quiet. She seemed like a lovely young women, but no one realized she could sing. Her branch of the family had lost contact with our extended family for many years. Elizabeth's grandfather had a falling out with his dad, and eventually,  lost touch with everyone. What we learned at the reunion was, that Elizabeth and her brother, grew up feeling like they had no relatives at all. They barely knew their grandfather and never met any of his Crane (Kranowitz) cousins. One of my original goals for the reunion was to have every branch of the family represented. Their branch was a particular mystery. I search for them high and low with only names and an old defunct address to go by. Eventually, I found Elizabeth and her family through good old google. I contacted her dad, Kendall and invited him to join the on-line tree and come to the reunion. He was thrilled!

William Crane in WWI army uniform
Getting ready to leave for the front.
1917, Hartford CT
(This is a photo I recently discovered
 in my aunt's attic). 

Kendall, his wife and children are all musicians. They fit in quite well with the rest of the Kranowitz descendants, as the musical gene is heavily expressed throughout. Elizabeth and her brother, were amongst the most engaged of the twenty year-olds present. Isolated from family for so long, they could not get enough of the stories about their grandfather and great-grandparents. Kendall  recalled what lead to the family rift so many years ago and was grateful for the warm welcome he and his family received.

Musical as we all are, the family hosted a sing along on Saturday night. Kendall pulled out his trombone and dazzled us with his skill. Elizabeth, sang along with the rest of the gang. When the crowds thinned, her dad encouraged her to share a song. She was a little intimidated to sing in Hebrew. Their family's had left traditional judaism generations back, but most of the rest of the family is Jewish. We encouraged her to sing anyways, and then she sang. This first performance was as haunting and beautiful as the encore she gave the following day—in front of a packed house—adjourning the reunion. To a stunned crowd, she unveiled her stored treasure.

The song is a very powerful prayer. The message, taken from Psalms 139: be true to everything you do, resonated with all of us who listened to her sing. Elizabeth, who knew little of her Jewish ancestry, was singing a prayer in Hebrew, to her newly discovered Jewish relatives. Amazingly, it's very much the message our common ancestors brought to America when they immigrated a hundred years ago. While most of the family is not religious, the traditions and prayers—so powerful for our ancestors—are very much respected. Elizabeth, part of the Non-Jewish minority in our family, brought to us a universal prayer. As we prepared to return home to our daily routines, she reminded us of the unexpected hidden treasures found all around us, not only in the past, but right here in the present.

Thank you Elizabeth for not letting me forget an important fact: genealogy makes us aware of the past, in order for us to live a better present and prepare for the future. Thanks for everything you do!

Do you have a stored treasure you would like to share? How has genealogy changed your life?

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!