By Michael Diamant
“She found Norbert hiding in the utility room of her Stanislawow farm, hiding from execution, from certain death. She told Norbert he could stay and she hid him on her family farm for three years, at great danger to herself.”
“It is sometimes only through these secondary sources that the little details of an individual can be learned. ‘He had a beautiful singing voice’; ‘she had bright red hair’; ‘he loved animals’; these kinds of details—not present in the ‘hard’ data—humanize our ancestors and breathe life back into what is otherwise merely a name on a record.”
”I was helping a friend … to identify her great-grandfather’s town of origin… The first thing I did was to go to the JewishGen Family Finder, where I promptly found three things: the correct name, the correct town, and a researcher who turned out to be her third cousin!”