Visualizing the Holocaust's Impact - Genealogical "tree" shows branches wiped out.

[Dennis Donovan]

https://larasgenealogy.blogspot.com/2020/01/visualizing-holocausts-impact.html



Sunday, January 5, 2020

Visualizing the Holocaust's Impact

My great-great-great-great-great grandfather, Avraham Rutner, had a lot of descendants. I've used the incredibly useful and easy-to-use tool at http://learnforeverlearn.com/ancestors/ to visualize his family, as I've reconstructed it so far. And what is incredibly visible--and emotionally difficult to see--is how the Holocaust decimated this extended family.

Avraham Rutner lived in what was Darva, Austria-Hungary. Most of his descendants lived in that town and the general nearby area through the 1940s, although by that time it was Kolodne, Czechoslovakia. In the middle of WWII, it again was part of Hungary, which shielded the area from Jewish deportations until 1944 (with the exception of those taken to Kamenets-Podolsk in 1941 where they were murdered)--but when the deportations started in 1944, the area's Jews were decimated very quickly.

My great grandparents were among the few Rutner descendants who had emigrated before WWII. But their cousins back in Eastern Europe were still living their lives and having children through the early 1940s. Nearly all of those children and their parents were killed.

Along either side of the above image are the years in which people were born. Look at how many young children were born in the 1930s and early 1940s--and who were then murdered. This is the impact on one family. Now multiple this by all of the peers of Avraham Rutner and their descendants across Europe. That is the Holocaust.

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I'm speechless.

[JudyM]

1. Family after family.

Mine too. The ones who didn’t emigrate from Eastern Europe are gone...

[COLGATE4]

6. Likewise. Victims of the 'Holocaust by bullets'.

[Karadeniz]

2. Great graphic...thanks for sharing.

[Raftergirl]

3. My family

was very fortunate. Both sides emigrated to the US (from present day Lithuania and Ukraine) between late 1800’s - 1914. My maternal grandmother’s family from Germany came even earlier - 1880’s.

My paternal grandfather’s brother was drafted into the Russian Army and didn’t survive the war, but miraculously his family did and they came here in from Ukraine in the 1990’s when it had again gotten very bad for Jews there. I found them through DNA matching. I was stunned to learn about them. We believed my grandfather’s family had been wiped out.

[JudyM]

7. What a great surprise!

Hadn’t heard of DNA matching... it’s a service that’s offered?

Also heartwarming to hear about Lithuanian Jews who escaped... they were decimated...

[Raftergirl]

8. It's part of the package

when you submit your DNA sample. I get tons of matches all the time but they are very distant. Those you just ignore. They are able to determine the relationship based on % of DNA segments you share and the length of the shared segments.

I got these matches today:


Marilyn xxxx
Marilyn xxxx| Contact Marilyn
70's · Great Britain
Review DNA Match
1.6% shared DNA (116.6? cM) suggests the following estimated relationships:
2nd cousin - 2nd cousin once removed

Appears in a family tree with 18 people that she manages
Ancestral places common to you and Marilyn xxxx include Ukraine.


brandon xxxx
Contact brandon xxxx
Review DNA Match
1.4% shared DNA (95.9? cM) suggests the following estimated relationships:
1st cousin twice removed - 3rd cousin once removed

Several of my cousins did it and my mom (who is 90 and one of the only remaining members of her generation still alive.) We used My Heritage, which seems to be popular with Jews. My cousin won a kit from her Temple in a raffle, did it and then wanted to see what ours said, so we all ordered the kits from My Heritage, too.

My Ukraine relatives popped up as 1st cousin once removed (my fathers 1st cousin who is 92 and still alive) and his son as my 2nd cousin. They were listed right beneath my mom and first cousins who did the test. Their last name is also my maiden name (not a common one) so when I saw that I was just stunned. I literally could not believe what I was seeing.

Doing the test also confirmed research that one of my mom’s cousin’s did years ago that a relative left Spain during the Spanish Inquisition (going to France and then Lithuania.) We all showed some Sephardic DNA. It was cool having family lore confirmed by our DNA.

[Scarsdale]

4. Shameful period in history.

Absolutely no excuse for this hatred. Live and let live. Now hate is spreading here through the white radicals. What makes them think they are superior to anyone else? I will never understand prejudice of any kind, towards any people. Unfortunately, sometimes people do not learn from previous mistakes. The Holocaust was more than a mistake, it was a shameful episode in history. So many lives taken. Who will ever know what some of the victims might have accomplished had they been allowed to live?

[bobbieinok]

5. No way as horrible, but study of German lit is difficult b/c # of descendants killed in Holocaust

Man I did dissertation on lived in 18th-19th century. He worked with, corresponded with many Jewish people. I assume most of families who stayed in Germany, Austro-Hungarian .Empire were murdered

Kafka died of illness before Nazis. IIRC his girl friend and all his family died in extermination camps