K – Kin

My Theme this April is “My Muse Says…”

The Story Spark for this story was Family History.

The writing prompt I took was the story spark.

The following is what my muse said I should write:

K – Kin

I am the family genealogist. It is my self-appointed task to find out as much as I can about my family and their ancestors and to share with those in my family who are interested.

My interest started when I graduated from college and wanted to discover more about my parents and their backgrounds. 

Both my parents were born in Germany. I discovered that all of my ancestors came from there. 

When I was born, in 1950, my grandparents had already passed away, so I had no sources other than my parents, my aunts and uncles, and friends of my parents to glean any information about their past. 

My religious heritage is Jewish. As German Jews, my parents left Germany in the 1930s, after the Nazis took power. They met here in the U.S. Their siblings emigrated to the U.S. between the 1920s and 1940s, as did my grandparents, who were still alive at the time. My grandfather Otto passed away in 1939 in Germany.

Neither of my parents nor any of the relatives or friends from Germany talked to me about their past, especially when it came to Nazi Germany.

So, it was up to me to find drips and drabs of information. My mother translated from German some of my father’s love letters that she had kept.

There was a postcard from France with a picture of a baby on it, with the inscription “Your Franz.” I was told by my sisters that the picture was of a half-brother that we supposedly had. It wasn’t until 2013 that I actually found my half-brother, Franz, but that’s another story. You can read that story here:https://www.hdhstory.net/Storyblog/?p=320 if you are interested. 

Other than that, I did manage to interview my parents when I was in college, but by that time, my father had had a stroke, so my mother had to fill in some of the details of his childhood. 

I did do a lot of research using the library’s computers. When I visited Washington, DC, I went to the National Archives to look up immigration information, filled out a lot of search forms for different genealogical organizations, and joined a few genealogical groups, especially those that focused on German ancestry. 

I was fortunate to link up with a genealogist who lived in Germany near where my father grew up, and he did a lot of research for me, which gave me ancestry that went back to the 1700s.

My biggest prize was the letters that were written to my mother and father when they initially came over to the U.S. from Germany. I have over a hundred of those letters and documents. Unfortunately, they are mostly handwritten in old German script. This is not a script that is used today, and very few Germans can translate that script. I’m sure the letters contain a lot of information about life in those times before, during, and after the WWII years. I had a few translated by my father-in-law, before he passed away, as he could read them. The rest just sit waiting to feed me information.

I have recently discovered that AI can translate them. When I have the time, I’m really looking forward to finding out the information they contain. 

My recordkeeping isn’t the greatest. I sometimes forget to write down sources when I find a piece of information about someone. When I want to confirm that information later, I don’t know where I got it from. 

I also have to make sure, even though I’ve digitally copied each document/letter, that I preserve the originals so that they survive the test of time.

If you are looking for a puzzle/mystery to solve. I highly encourage you to try to find out as much as you can about your kin. After all, the results of those generations of family are part of what makes you you. And isn’t that a mystery worth solving?