When my wife and I dis­cov­ered that our grand­par­ents had once been neigh­bors in Zamość, Poland, we nat­u­ral­ly want­ed to inves­ti­gate fur­ther. I’m an immi­gra­tion reporter; she is an immi­gra­tion attor­ney. We drew on our respec­tive skills to find out all we could about their shared his­to­ry, and also how they sur­vived the Holo­caust via a 5,000-mile par­al­lel refugee jour­ney through the Sovi­et Union. The trans­for­ma­tive search took us to Sovi­et secret police archives, a gov­ern­ment records office in Uzbek­istan, and the depths of the US immi­gra­tion geneal­o­gy system. 

Here’s what we learned in the process of research­ing and writ­ing my new book, The Wan­der­ers: A Sto­ry of Exile, Sur­vival, and Unex­pect­ed Love in the Shad­ow of World War II.

1. Talk to every­one — you nev­er know who has the key document.

I first unearthed records about my fam­i­ly more than twen­ty years ago, long before I met my wife. I was inter­view­ing the new direc­tor of the New York Asso­ci­a­tion of New Amer­i­cans for a news­pa­per pro­file. When I men­tioned that my father had been reset­tled as a young boy by its par­ent orga­ni­za­tion, HIAS (the Hebrew Immi­grant Aid Soci­ety), he excit­ed­ly told me I might want to see their files. Weeks lat­er, a thick enve­lope arrived — dozens of pages of hand­writ­ten notes out­lin­ing my father’s first years liv­ing under a false iden­ti­ty in New York. If HIAS reset­tled your fam­i­ly, they can help you access their archives, which are now held at the Cen­ter for Jew­ish His­to­ry.

2. Don’t be afraid to request your immi­gra­tion papers — it’s your right.

When we start­ed research­ing as a team, my wife imme­di­ate­ly sub­mit­ted a Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act (FOIA) request for immi­gra­tion records — some­thing she reg­u­lar­ly did for her own clients. When her father’s file turned up it includ­ed a nat­u­ral­iza­tion pho­to she had nev­er seen. For my father, who entered under a false iden­ti­ty, I reached out to geneal­o­gist Jen­nifer Mendel­sohn — of #Resis­tance­Ge­neal­o­gy — who gave me tips on track­ing down nat­u­ral­iza­tion peti­tions. She informed me I could sub­mit a request through the lit­tle-known USCIS Geneal­o­gy Pro­gram. It worked where count­less oth­er efforts had failed, reveal­ing to me how my fam­i­ly was able to tran­si­tion out of their fake iden­ti­ties. Just be pre­pared: it can take over a year and involves hefty fees.

3. Join geneal­o­gy groups online — and con­nect with the experts.

We joined a Face­book group for peo­ple with roots in Zamość, and then I emailed Shel­ley Pollero, the area coor­di­na­tor for Jew­ish Records Index­ing – Poland (JRI). With­in an hour, she sent back a list of fam­i­ly mar­riages, births, and deaths going back to the 1840s. I also used the com­mer­cial sites Ances­try and MyHer­itage to track fam­i­ly mem­bers and con­nect with dis­tant rel­a­tives. You might want to start your search at Jew­ish­Gen, which hosts JRI. If your fam­i­ly is from Poland, the Jew­ish His­tor­i­cal Insti­tute in War­saw also has its own geneal­o­gy department.

4. Read memo­r­i­al books. 

Yizkor (memo­r­i­al) books are vol­umes that sur­vivors of the Holo­caust pri­mar­i­ly com­piled, doc­u­ment­ing their destroyed home­towns in extra­or­di­nary detail. These books are invalu­able resources. They con­tain the names of rab­bis, fish­mon­gers, the­ater troupes and their mem­bers, as well as the dates and the names of those who per­ished in pogroms. In ours, I found a por­trait of my grand­fa­ther and vivid descrip­tions of my wife’s family’s stand­ing in the community.

The New York Pub­lic Library holds about 760 Yizkor books, of which rough­ly 680 have been dig­i­tized, pri­mar­i­ly through a part­ner­ship with the Yid­dish Book Cen­ter. You can access them through the NYPL Yizkor Books guide. Hun­dreds are also trans­lat­ed from the orig­i­nal Yid­dish with sup­port from Jew­ish­Gen.

5. Seek out the local experts, and par­tic­u­lar­ly the high school teachers.

In our family’s shared town, Zamość, a high school teacher helped us iden­ti­fy records dat­ing to the 1800s and, cru­cial­ly, the names of my wife’s mur­dered uncle that no one in our fam­i­ly had known. We had a sim­i­lar expe­ri­ence with a his­to­ry teacher in Aus­tria, where my wife’s fam­i­ly had lived as refugees after the war. He led us to the last rem­nants of the dis­placed per­sons camp and shared a tremen­dous col­lec­tion of news­pa­pers in Yid­dish. We found both teach­ers by ask­ing around for who knew the local his­to­ry best before we trav­eled abroad. This kind of on-the-ground knowl­edge is irreplaceable.

6. Try every archive — you’ll be surprised.

I assumed I’d hit impass­able walls every­where in my research: Sovi­et secret police files in Yeka­ter­in­burg after diplo­mat­ic ties col­lapsed, Uzbek city records for a man who left at six months old, Pol­ish com­mu­nist archives for a fam­i­ly who was only there briefly after the war. But I was wrong on all counts. Here is a par­tial list of archives that I was able to access and what I gleaned from them:

• In the Israeli Nation­al Archives I found immi­gra­tion records and miss­ing per­sons reports for my wife’s family.
• In the Samarkand city archives in Uzbek­istan, I found my father’s birth cer­tifi­cate and his orig­i­nal Russ­ian name, Ilya.
• The IPN (Insti­tute of Nation­al Remem­brance, Poland) yield­ed legal records doc­u­ment­ing my wife’s grandfather’s bat­tles for resti­tu­tion of prop­er­ty after the war.
• At the Jew­ish His­tor­i­cal Insti­tute in War­saw, I was able to obtain repa­tri­a­tion and health records.
• The Claims Con­fer­ence pro­vid­ed Holo­caust repa­ra­tions spe­cif­ic to my family.
• The Memo­r­i­al Data­base of Vic­tims of Polit­i­cal Ter­ror in Rus­sia did not turn up any infor­ma­tion for our fam­i­ly, but it can be a good resource for those who are look­ing for infor­ma­tion on peo­ple who were deport­ed to the Gulag.

7. Con­nect with the Holo­caust archives which are remark­ably accessible.

A fel­low reporter point­ed me to a researcher at the Unit­ed States Holo­caust Memo­r­i­al Muse­um who was enor­mous­ly help­ful in nav­i­gat­ing spe­cif­ic archives. But what struck me most was how much has been dig­i­tized, and how direct­ly acces­si­ble the Holo­caust archives were. Here’s where to start:

• USH­MM archive search pro­vides access to var­i­ous col­lec­tions, as well as their own exten­sive one. 
• The Arolsen Archives con­tains over 40 mil­lion doc­u­ments on vic­tims of Nazi persecution.
• The USC Shoah Foun­da­tion has tes­ti­monies and search­able records that helped me find per­son­al accounts, pho­tos and con­nect­ed me to sur­vivor rel­a­tives still alive.
• Yad Vashem has vic­tim tes­ti­mo­ni­als and the Cen­tral Data­base of Shoah Vic­tims’ Names.

8. Start with what you’ve got.

The num­ber of places to search may feel daunt­ing, but the best way to start is to see what you already have in your fam­i­ly. Unearth those dusty VCR box­es. Who did you inter­view? Get your cousin to con­vert his records, and you may dis­cov­er you already know more than you imag­ined! As the late his­to­ri­an Roger Daniels told me decades ago when I told him I first want­ed to research my family’s migra­tion sto­ry: ​“Just be aware, you nev­er know what you’ll uncover!”

Join Daniela Ger­son and Nicholas Lemann in a con­ver­sa­tion with Stephanie But­nick root­ed in find­ing your place in the world after war or tragedy on April 15 at 7 p.m. at The Jew­ish Muse­um! Reg­is­ter here.