Genealogical Gems

Auschwitz Death Camp was liberated On This Day in 1945. The Soviet army entered liberated approximately 7,000 people in Auschwitz , Birkenau, and Monowitz. The majority of those 7,000 - mostly European Jews - were too old, too young or too ill to survive the Death March to another camp. These 7,000 were essentially left to die. The exact number of people sent to Auschwitz may never be known. It is estimated that approximately 1.2 million people were sent there and that 1.1 million of those died in the camp. Photo: Public domain image of child survivors liberated in January 1945. Source: Wikipedia. On This Day is a prompt I started this month to further explore historical events.                  © Jeanne Ruczhak-Eckman, 2015

I joined a Polish Genealogy group on Facebook and came across a resource, similar I suppose to our white pages here. The site, Moikrewni , led me to realize that the surname Matys is more common that I had thought.   There are, according to this site, 2,446 people with the last name Matys. That said, it does say "people" as opposed to "families" or "households."   On a whim, I searched for Matys in Ancestry.com using only a location as "Fraga, Poland" (which by the way did not self populate. The results? Over 47,000 entries! I should point out that I currently only have the US edition of Ancestry. I am so close to upgrading but I wanted to wait until I had several lines ready to cross the pond, to make it cost effective.   Find A Grave (yes I realize it is now owned by Ancestry.com) revealed 52 entries using only the last name Matys as my search requirements. That's a little more manageable! It also includes some from Poland, ...

One of my girls is doing a research paper for her English class and her thesis  - I forget the exact wording - concerns Auschwitz, the conditions there specifically and Hitler's prejudice against Jews. While she was surfing to find some additional credible sources, she came across the Memorial and Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau . The site offers a database of those imprisioned at Auschwitz. While the Museum states it is unlikely to ever actually conatin ALL the names of those who entered the camp, it is compiled from the original SS paperwork. However, the SS ordered many of the records destroyed. The database pulls its information from several resources: Death Books Digital Repository—Prisoners of and Deportees to Auschwitz Gypsy Family Camp Record Books Memorial Resources The site does a great job explaining the references and terms as well, in addition to some of the more common translations. I search for Hruszczak, Kurenda and Skrabalek but found no one. When I search...