Let's Write about finding lost family even after the Holocaust

How I found out in my 60s that I have cousins on two other continents. We thought our grandfather’s family was decimated in the Holocaust. Now we’re finding family we didn’t know we had.

Echo article from Connecticut Magazine published in the Boston Globe Magazine by Richard Newman.

The writer’s grandfather Sam Ajdels in his Russian army uniform in 1914. Sam and his brother Harry reunited in New York in 1979 after 65 years apart. (illustration by Albee Lu; photographs from richard newman)

For years, we believed our family history was complete. We knew our Polish origins had spread across oceans when two brothers left their homeland. My grandfather Sam Ajdels immigrated to America in 1926, after serving in the Russian army from 1914, to 1922. His brother Harry left for London in 1919. We presumed their six siblings perished in the Holocaust.

It wasn’t until 1979 that Sam and Harry reunited. We thought that emotional encounter would be the most extraordinary chapter of our family narrative. I even wrote a memoir about it, believing I’d told the whole story. But recently, we discovered just how much we didn’t know.

Harry’s grandson Jonathan, living in London, had taken a DNA test some years ago, and in April he heard from the Holocaust Reunion Project: a woman in California named Suzanne was a match. DNA revealed her grandmother Frajda was Sam and Harry’s sister. She had died in 1920, leaving behind an infant son who later survived Auschwitz, came to America, and raised two daughters (Suzanne and her sister, Liliane) in California. Our family tree had a newly revealed branch.

Jonathan started a WhatsApp group: The Long Lost Ajdels. Within days, we were in a nonstop conversation, sharing photographs, stories, and discoveries. For a family shaped by trauma and inherited silence, the most surprising feature of our texts was not grief — it was humor.

Harry’s daughter Jeanette, 88, posted witty comments at 1 a.m. from London. My sister Leslie wrote Dr. Seuss-inspired poems with every family revelation. 

Newly discovered cousins interrupted at the same moments, deflected emotion with the same sarcasm, laughed in the same rhythm. Apparently, comedic timing was the trait most successfully passed down across generations.

Then my sister found two photographs — an unnamed woman and an unnamed boy — stored for decades in a leather satchel belonging to our grandfather Sam. Suzanne recognized the boy as her father; the woman almost certainly was the faceless grandmother she had spent years searching for.

Suzanne texted: “Whoa Whoa Whoa.” Suzanne’s middle name is Frieda — named for that grandmother.

Discoveries accelerated. For years, a rumor floated that another sister, Fajga, had escaped to Argentina before the war — but we couldn’t track her without her married name. Within days, our WhatsApp group uncovered long-lost answers through intensified sleuthing.

We learned Fajga left Poland years before arriving in Buenos Aires in 1923, where she raised five children. Immediately, we set up a Zoom call with Argentine cousins in their 70s and 80s who, a week earlier, had no idea we existed. 

The writer's great-aunt Frajda Ajdels Chojnowski, who died in 1920, and his cousin Izzy Chojnowski, who later survived Auschwitz and other concentration camps. The writer did not know about either until a few months ago. from Richard Newman.

Fajga’s great-grandson translated. We laughed like people who’d been connected their whole lives.

We learned that Fajga’s youngest son, Arie, now 91, had immigrated to Israel from Argentina decades ago. I identified someone on LinkedIn who I thought could be his son and messaged him. The response arrived within minutes: “Yes. Arie is indeed my father. He knew nothing about his mother’s family.”

Now our Zoom calls include relatives from four continents. Arie met his London-based first cousins (ages 88 and 94) online for the first time, his son translating stories into Hebrew as they unfolded. Though we’d just met, nobody spoke with the guarded politeness of strangers. The familial warmth was immediate.

Sam and Harry spent their whole lives believing they were the only ones who’d survived. They couldn’t have imagined that a century later, the extended Ajdels family would reunite. 

In October, we’re gathering in London — long-lost cousins from America, Argentina, England, and Israel.

The strangest part of this story is not that we found each other. It’s how quickly we recognized one another❗ 

We started by exchanging old pictures, but in a matter of weeks, the group chat was full of birthday wishes and good-natured World Cup trash talk. The extraordinary quickly became ordinary.

Jeanette, posting from London at 1 a.m. as usual, said it best: “I’m running out of wow words.”

Richard Newman is a writer in Newton and author of Don’t Be Such a Big Shot: A Family Memoir of Identity, Secrets, and Survival.