This is the age of geneal­o­gy. Trac­ing fam­i­ly his­to­ries — whether those of celebri­ties or ordi­nary cit­i­zens — is not only a fas­ci­nat­ing hob­by, but the means of locat­ing crim­i­nals, uncov­er­ing fam­i­ly secrets, or bring­ing togeth­er long-lost fam­i­ly mem­bers, includ­ing those sep­a­rat­ed by war or genocide. 

As its sub­ti­tle sug­gests, One in Six Mil­lion is part­ly about a baby left on the side of the road in Poland and retrieved by a child­less cou­ple who raised her as their own. Nei­ther the baby nor the cou­ple had any idea who she was or who her par­ents were, but it took place dur­ing World War II when Jews were hunt­ed, round­ed up and most­ly killed. 

But, in fact, the book is most­ly about how a few men and women in Cana­da, Jews who escaped the Holo­caust, cre­at­ed a mech­a­nism for trac­ing Pol­ish Jews by build­ing one of the largest data­bas­es of Pol­ish Jew­ish records. Ulti­mate­ly, they used this tool to uncov­er vic­tims and sur­vivors of the Holo­caust — one of whom, indeed, was the baby girl left by the side of the road. 

Amy Fish, a Cana­di­an Jew­ish writer, does an excel­lent job of describ­ing how this com­plex under­tak­ing came about, and how she stum­bled across the sto­ry. She takes us on a long jour­ney from Cana­da to Poland to Rus­sia to Israel and back to Cana­da, pil­ing up the remark­able con­nec­tions and coin­ci­dences that lead to the res­o­lu­tion of this tale. One in Six Mil­lion tells an amaz­ing sto­ry that any­one inter­est­ed in the pow­er of con­nec­tion and the pow­er of his­to­ry will find fas­ci­nat­ing. It’s also a clas­sic exam­ple of the adage, ​“Truth is stranger than fic­tion.” You couldn’t, in a mil­lion years, make this sto­ry up.