A remarkable reunion via Yad Vashem

After a long absence, I am again writing for the Jerusalem Post on genealogy and related subjects.

My first new story for them recounts a remarkable reunion of two Holocaust-survivor cousins, and the researcher who used Yad Vashem's database and the Bezeq online phone book to make it possible.

The cousins last saw each other 58 years ago in Lodz, Poland.

As the Israeli researcher (formerly from London) who facilitated the reunion says, "Never give up hope. Someone may be just around the corner."

Never give up hope of finding family

Renee Steinig of New York saw the story and wrote to me about her own experience with the Yad Vashem database:

In December 2001, when the database was first available at Yad Vashem, I also connected first cousins in my son-in-law's family.

Fortunately, Beverly ignored her children's warning about the Intifada: the feisty then 75-year-old from Texas got on a plane to see her cousin, also 75, in Jerusalem.

Said Beverly at the time, "We're two old ladies. If I have to wait for peace, we'll never see one another."

In fact, her cousin Miryam died a few years later. There is so little time, so the publicity you provided is all the more precious.

Thank you, Renee.