In May 2004, we first learned that our relatives, including five of my father’s first cousins, were still alive in Germany, Belarus, and Israel. The news came out of the proverbial blue and for the next half-year, after several letters and phone calls back and forth, we walked around as if in a dream. Overnight, I went from having a very small family to a very large one. My emotional world had expanded at the speed of light. Through all of our family history research, we never thought to look for our relatives, so certain we were that they had perished. How we were brought together–the improbable climax of a years-long project translating old letters–involved a magic potion of good luck and serendipity. How it is they survived so that we might meet again is an equally incredible tale.
Both stories are recounted in two Belarus SIG newsletter stories that can be found through the links below
From November 4-8, my father, Jerry Schechter, and I were reunited with our relatives in Nuremburg, Germany. Seventy years of separation were over. A photo of this amazing event can be found in the second article.
Bill Schechter
January 2005
- From the Belarus SIG Newsletter:
- New material on the Kholmich massacre in August 1941,
as well as the dedication of a monument in the town in 1997.
The information was provided in two letters and a photograph sent to Dr. Leonid Smilovitsky. These materials were forwarded to me in 2005.
When we first sat down together in an apartment in Germany, I read the following poem to my cousins in a very halting Russian:
TOGETHER
AGAIN
On a perfect
day, in a strange
land, in this
improbable
place, far from
our homes,
divided by a
great ocean,
and by the
vast ocean
of history,
separated by
emigration,
by starvation,
repression,
expropriation,
extermination,
by every horror
known and
visited by
man upon man,
a family reunites,
this family
of survivors,
that through
fate or good
fortune made
its way down
perilous roads,
across great
distances,
from a shtetl
called Kholmech
to this exact spot,
to Nuremburg,
on this most
perfect day.
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