Bubbe’s family, which originated in Poland, was completely wiped out in the ashes of the Holocaust. Growing up, we knew few details of her pain but understood that our grandparents were the only ones to survive. Their children, my father and Aunt Rivka, were born in DP camps. The family journeyed to the shores of freedom in America when my father was a toddler.

Growing up, we were very close with our cousins. We knew that the eight of us were the only family we had, and we were Bubbe’s pride and joy. Zeide had died when my father was very young, so it was just Bubbe sitting at the table surrounded by her brood.

Now, after Bubbe’s death, Chani wanted to learn more about the family. When she discovered Bubbe’s maiden name, she was excited, because it was the same as her new friend Elana’s. Walking up to Elana, she joked, “Now we are really related. My Bubbe had your last name.”

“Where was your family from?” Elana asked.

“Skrychyczyn, Poland; it was a tiny shtetl. Where were yours during the war?”

“Siberia.”

“What were your great-grandparents’ names?”

“Avraham and Sarah, isn’t that awesome!”

“Hey, mine, too!” Chani said.

Over the next few weeks, the two discovered that their families shared many more names. But Chani needed something more definitive — irrefutable proof of the family connection. She reached out to our mother. “What can you give me?” she asked.

Mommy told her the story of Zeide Avraham, who died (before the Holocaust) in an accident under such unique circumstances that you’re unlikely to find anyone else who passed on to the Next World in a similar fashion. As a personal policy, I won’t even mention in a public forum how he died as this is our family’s secret way to identify each other. Think of it like DNA results in the form of storytelling.

Chani returned to Elana and asked her, “How did your Zeide Avraham die?”

“In a crazy accident,” Elana said, and she recounted the details.

After hearing Elana’s story, the two girls immediately accepted each other as biological family. It took the rest of the family time to adjust to the shock of this new reality. We went from being all alone to having lots of cousins. Bubbe was not the sole survivor of her family — three brothers had also lived.

Though Bubbe and her brothers had all spent the years after the war searching, desperately hoping to find a living relative, it wasn’t meant to happen then. Decades later, as my new son entered the bris of Avraham Avinu, my great-grandfather Avraham’s descendants were meeting for the first time. I was saddened to think that Bubbe wasn’t there to see it, but grateful that we’d finally found these missing links in our family’s chain.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 816)