How an Israeli startup connects families to any part of the world

Gilad Japhet, founder of the startup MyHeritage. Photo: vesty.co.il

Thanks to the new technology, three families, who had parted almost a century ago, found a friend and met in Israel. Family history and how everyone can find relatives in any part of the world, tell Vests.

When the Zionist Shabtai Baskin fled from the USSR in 1947, he knew for sure that he would never see his family again. And so it happened. The Iron Curtain separated him from the brothers forever. In Israel, Shabtai started a family. I lost my son in the war. But he raised his grandson Rani, who wanted to find out what happened to the lost part of the family. He was helped by army friend Gilad Japhet, whose startup MyHeritage made a miracle.

Rani Markovich. Photo: vesty.co.il

Rani Markovic is 46 years old. He lives in Kfar Saba. Doesn't know Russian. In his youth, his grandfather was a Zionist activist. He was arrested three times and was imprisoned by the NKVD. After the war I realized: if he doesn’t break out of the USSR now, then never again. And he managed to reach Palestine. In the new country, he immediately accepted everything as his own. The turning point in his life came when his beloved son died in the war. His grandfather changed his surname in his honor - from the galut “Baskin” to Beit Zvi, which meant “house of Zvika.” He changed his house, city, even profession - from an engineer to a teacher. As if he wanted to escape from his grief... “My grandfather and I were very close,” says his grandson Rani.

Those times and tried to speak Yiddish does not speak, not so much in Russian, therefore, Hebrew became the mother tongue of his grandfather. To Russian, his grandfather returned only in old age, when a nurse was given to help him, a new immigrant from the USSR. Suddenly it turned out that the grandfather remembers the language. He wanted to read Russian, Russian books appeared at home.

For the first time, Rani heard the story of his grandfather as a schoolboy, when he was doing work on the topic “Roots” (“Shorashim”) (this is included in the compulsory school curriculum in Israel. - Ed.) But then the grandfather suppressed all questions about his relatives - he was afraid of harming them. “In general, he was a rabid anti-Stalinist. I had a hard time with the doctors’ case, and in general with everything connected with the fate of Soviet Jews,” recalls the grandson.

Shabtai Baskin in his youth. The only surviving photo

The grandson of Rani always wanted to reveal the secret of his roots. He even traveled to Belarus with the only surviving photo of his grandfather in his youth. Appealed to the archives. He could not produce anything more than this picture: by that time his aunt was the only witness to the past, but she had Alzheimer's disease. The search did not lead to anything, and then he remembered Gilad Yafet. From his youth, Gilad was interested in genealogy, and in 2003 he created a social network MyHeritage. He told Rani that a family tree could be placed on the Internet and, with the help of a program developed by his startup, to restore the fate of missing relatives.

He did just that. Soon, protocols of my grandfather’s interrogation by the NKVD in 1926 were found. Then - a two-hour audio recording of my grandfather’s interview with an Israeli historian in the sixties, where the names of his brothers were mentioned. Gilad turned to the KGB archives in Belarus and Russia. And - I found traces of my grandfather's brothers and his children.

In the nineties, they all went to the United States, changed their names and surnames. But Gilad and his wonder program found everyone. And soon all the relatives met in person. The first communication session was held in the office. MyHeritage. “When I saw my 86-year-old aunt, my grandfather’s niece, on Skype, I felt such excitement, as if history itself had passed nearby,” recalls Rani.

Two parts of the Markovich family met on Skype. Photo: vesty.co.il

Genealogical tree for 88 million people

Gilad Japhet - the founder of a startup MyHeritage and the social network of the same name. It is used by 88 million people around the world. The technology developed by the company allows you to build a family tree for free and, using cross-references, establish connections with other “trees”, as well as archives in different countries.

Today on the network MyHeritage signed 88 million people. It contains 35 millions of pedigrees in 42 languages, including Hebrew and Russian. In 2016, a genetic test was included in the company's arsenal.

Rani Markovich is not the only one who, with the help of Gilad’s startup, found his “Russian” roots. Another story revolved around Michael Goldstein from Jerusalem. He came to Palestine after the Kishinev pogrom, in 1906, with one part of his family, while the other remained in the Russian Empire. At first, the separated relatives corresponded, but under Stalin the connection was interrupted. Michael knew something about missing relatives and filled out the family tree in English on the website MyHeritage. It coincided with the tree of a man named Yuri in Russian. The database determined that they were cousins. Moreover, both live in Israel, half an hour away from each other!

Another story is related to the Ben-Ner family. It broke up in 1920, when three Zionist brothers left Belarus for Palestine. Soon their parents and grandmothers and grandfathers moved there - the whole family, except for miner Shlomo with his wife and child. Before 1950, Palestinian relatives sent Shlomo letters, photographs, and parcels. He handed things over to speculators and fed the family with the money he received.

Letter from Ben-Nera from Kharkov to Palestine. Photo: vesty.co.il

In 1950, the clouds thickened over the Jews, and Shlomo begged his relatives not to write to him anymore. The connection was lost. Shlomo died, leaving behind him a daughter with 4-year-old son Sasha.

In the seventies, the matured Sasha asked those traveling to Israel to find his Israeli relatives. “Tell them just one thing: Shlomo’s grandson is alive, don’t forget him,” he said.

It took another 40 years. Sasha repatriated to Israel. By that time, almost a century had passed since the breakup of the family. Almost without hoping for success, Sasha completed his genealogical tree on the site. And it is necessary for this to happen that his Israeli relatives also did it. Finding similar connections, they called the phone. Delighted, Sasha said that he lived in a hotel on Hayarkon Street in Tel Aviv. There was a shocked pause in the phone: his relatives lived in the same street, whom he had been looking for all his life.

Read also on ForumDaily:

Relatives of the victims of the Holocaust told about their fate

Russian immigrant startups tell why they moved to the USA

Russian found great-grandfather executioners through 78 years after the execution

The descendants of the brothers separated during the Holocaust found each other after 70 years

Do you want more important and interesting news about life in the USA and immigration to America? — support us donate! Also subscribe to our page Facebook. Select the “Priority in display” option and read us first. Also, don't forget to subscribe to our РєР ° РЅР ° Р »РІ Telegram  and Instagram- there is a lot of interesting things there. And join thousands of readers ForumDaily New York — there you will find a lot of interesting and positive information about life in the metropolis.