Database opens window to Holocaust mysteries

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http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/northnorthwest/ct-x-n-holocaust-survivors-20100512,0,526673.story

By Amanda Marrazzo, Special to the Tribune

May 12, 2010

Hannah Weiss has no memories of her parents.

What she does have is a single photograph and one morsel of information: On March 4, 1943, when Weiss was 4, they both were taken to the Auschwitz concentration camp. She never saw them again.

Weiss, who was raised by her grandparents, said she was hidden in crates in the basement when Nazi soldiers raided her Berlin home.

"I was really small, and the crates had little holes in them so I could breathe," she recalled.

Now living in Northbrook, Weiss was among 72 Holocaust survivors and loved ones who gathered at Temple Judea Mizpah in Skokie recently to learn how to use the International Tracing Service, a massive archive of Holocaust-era documents that aims to help survivors figure out what happened to loved ones lost during World War II.