Genealogy - Finding Out About Family

This is the earliest picture of me that exists.  When I retired as a school principal, after 38 years in Education, I had the luxury of time to pursue various interests.  I became engrossed in genealogy and loved pursuing clues and finding answers to family mysteries. 

My parents, along with most Holocaust survivors, talked very little about the wartime years and I didn't ask very many questions.  As with so many, my interest grew with the years.  Now I can't ask them, they're gone.

I was able to verify an old family story.  In the picture, I'm about 4 1/2 years old.  With me is a young soldier.  He's not my father, nor any member of the family.  There was a story I'd heard of the time, right after the war, when my family were at a displaced person's camp in Bad Godesberg, Germany in the British Zone of Occupation. My parents became acquainted with a young Belgian soldier who promised to look up my mother's sister, who lived in Antwerp, the next time he went home on leave.

I researched the uniform and was able to get confirmation from the Belgian Museum of the Army that it was a Belgian Army Uniform of that time and that there was indeed a Belgian Military Force jointly in charge of the very camp where we had been.

This young man must be the very one who did indeed find my aunt and uncle and informed them that we had survived the war.  It eventually led to them getting us smuggled out of Germany and into Belgium.  It was then that I finally met my sister who was already 16 years old.  I was about 4. 

To read more about the story of my family,  get LOST AND FOUND, A Family Memoir.  It's available on Fastpencil.com and on Amazon.com