Madeleine Isenberg deciphers old matzeivos and connects people with their ancestors and family history

Touching the Past

“Miri, come here!” I cried. “Look what I’ve found!”

Standing in the old, windswept cemetery, a gray mist of rain obscuring the sky and overgrown weeds brushing my knees, I had stumbled upon my past.

The year was 1996. The place was Kezmarok, Slovakia, the hometown of my father’s family in prewar Europe. Most of the Goldsteins left this world through the chimneys of Auschwitz, but my father and his brother, Miri’s father, were stranded in England when the war broke out. The brothers never went back to Kezmarok, marrying and building new lives in England, but I grew up hearing stories about the family I never knew. I dreamed of seeing their old town.

My dream felt like an impossibility after I immigrated to America and became a computer programmer for Northrop Grumman Corporation, a manufacturer of aircraft for the US military and commercial airlines. Some of my work was classified, and with the Iron Curtain firmly in place over Slovakia, there was little chance for employees in my business to visit a Communist country.

By 1996, that had finally changed, and it was time to see Kezmarok for myself. After an arduous journey, Miri and I contacted the “caretaker” of the cemetery. When he unlocked the gates, we discovered a place that looked like it had been neglected for decades. How was I going to find my family? Wandering through the overgrowth, touching worn inscriptions, I suddenly found a familiar name: Rachel, our great-grandmother. She had died more than 100 years earlier at 26, after giving birth to her third child.

I knew the story, but touching the history with my own hands gave me a deep sense of connection. In that cemetery, so often a place of sadness, I cried tears of joy.