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

In late April, 25-year-old American Jessica Katz posted on the social network Facebook message, which began: “After 70 years of searching for members of my family, divided during the Holocaust, we have finally found them! I can’t express in words how I feel at the moment.”

The girl wrote that in 10 days, with the help of social networks, she managed to do what neither the Red Cross, nor Yad Vashem, nor many other organizations had been able to do for many decades.

Jessica told the reporter NEWSru.co.il the story of how two families found each other in different continents.

1939 year, Piotrkow Trybunalski, Poland

Idel and Malka Belzicki, as well as their children Abram (23 of the year), Haim (21 of the year) and Gitel (24 of the year), along with other Jews find themselves in the local ghetto. Malka persuades children to flee, as rumors spread about the murder of Jews spread in the ghetto. However, only the youngest, Haim, is resolved to escape. At that time, the ideals of socialism are close to Haim, he is selected from the ghetto with the help of his mother, and he manages to cross the border and into the Soviet Union. From there he sends several letters and parcels to the ghetto, and then the connection with him disappears. In the 1940 year, Gitel dies from tuberculosis, then Idel and Malka die in the gas chambers of Treblinka, and Abram begins to wander through labor camps. In 1945, Abram enters the Mauthausen-Goosen concentration camp.

Yad Vashem, from the testimony of Abram Belzhitsky:

Gusen was the most terrible of the camps in which I visited. Kapo killed people right and left. The Americans freed me 5 May 1945 of the year. I do not know how I managed to survive. I think no more 200 people are left alive.

1945 - 2011, Brooklyn, USA

After his release, Abram Belzhitsky ends up in an Italian refugee camp, where he immediately sets about searching for his brother. Abram contacts numerous organizations created after the war to search for families separated by the Holocaust, but cannot find traces of Chaim. In 1950, Abram left for the United States, where he continued the search for his brother through Yad Vashem, the Red Cross and other organizations. Belzhitsky leaves testimony about the Holocaust for Yad Vashem in the hope that if Chaim is alive, he will look for traces of his brother there.

In America, Abram becomes a tailor and in 1960 he marries Marilyn, who is 8 younger than him. They have two children - Michelle and Eddie. Michel, becoming an adult, helps his father find the missing uncle, in whose death Abram stubbornly refuses to believe.

In 1967, Abram accidentally learns that his cousin Yankel lives in Israel, who, being an orphan, grew up in a Belzhytsky family and whom Abram considered dead.

Yad Vashem, from the testimony of Abram Belzhitsky:

When Yankel and I first met in Ben Gurion, we cried like children. Since then, my family and I have often been to Israel.

In the 2011 year, at the age of 95 years, Abram Belzhytsky dies.

1948 - 1970, Sakhalin, USSR

Chaim Belzhytsky, apparently, during the war years fought in the ranks of the Soviet army. He also becomes a tailor and marries a woman who is 8 younger than him. At some point, Chaim changes his name and becomes Nikolai. In 1948, he and his wife come to Sakhalin. Chaim-Nikolay has four children - three sons and a daughter who dies very little.

Chaim Belzhytsky tells his children that his entire family died during the Holocaust.

In 1959, Haim tries to go to Poland, but he isn’t released. In the 1969 year, Belzicki wrote to the Polish authorities a request about the fate of his family, and he was told that everyone had died.

In 1970, Chaim Belzhytsky dies from brain cancer. One of the sons of Chaim dies in the 1997 year. Two remain - Eugene and Anatoly.

2016, New Jersey - Israel - Sakhalin

One of the four daughters of Michel Belzhytsky, Jessica Katz, who had previously lived in Israel for several years, works in New York in a company that develops content marketing software. Jess is fond of journalism, and her articles are published by The Times of Israel, The Jerusalem Post, The Huffington Post. In mid-April 2016, Jessica is forced to take a two-week vacation, and her mother, deciding to take a daughter, brings her a thick folder with correspondence related to the search for Haim Belzhytsky, who were kept by his brother and niece. Michelle asks her daughter to continue the search.

Jessica, who loved her grandfather very much and knew from childhood how important it was for him to find his brother, is taken to work. However, neither Jessica nor her mother believe that Chaim can be alive. The search begins with the site jewishgen.org, where the girl finds the coordinates of a Russian-speaking genealogist. Jessica writes him a letter listing the information about her great-uncle known to her, and asks for help. A few hours later the answer comes:

Hello. I need more information. I found one Haim Belzhytsky. He was born in 1918, in Piotrków Trybunalski, and his father's name was Idel. Is it possible that this is your relative?

Attached to the letter is a link to the site with documents of the Red Army. According to the information on the site, in 1942, Chaim Belzhitsky was at a military forwarding station in Saratov.

10 days and 70 years have passed since the beginning of the search.

Unfortunately, the interlocutor of Jessica says that she can no longer help her, but the girl, inspired by her find, does not intend to retreat.

I could no longer stop, and began writing to various Jewish communities on Facebook and asking for advice on how to proceed. I was recommended to go to the Russian genealogical portal “Jewish Roots”, where I described the history of my search and asked for help. Literally the next morning I received an email from a Russian-speaking woman living in Israel, who wrote that she had found the son of Chaim Belzhitsky, my cousin.

Jessica immediately called the woman who wrote to her, and she said that she had found Evgeny Belzhitsky on the Odnoklassniki social network, where there were only a few people of the right age with that last name. The woman sent Evgeny a link to the “Jewish Roots” forum, where Jessica described the search for Chaim, and Evgeny Belzhitsky said that it was about his late father. Jessica immediately registered on Odnoklassniki and received from Evgeny a photograph of Chaim, who turned out to be like two peas in a pod like her grandfather, Abram Belzhitsky. However, Michelle and Jessica Katz decided to be cautious and asked Eugene to give his father's date of birth and the name of his father's mother, since this data was not mentioned on the forum. Evgeny really turned out to be the son of Chaim Belzhitsky.

The next day, the two families spoke on Skype for the first time. Two weeks after they met, the Kats and Belzhitskys are already planning to meet soon in Israel.

“My grandfather thought that his entire family was dead until he found Yankel. And thanks to this, I now have 35 second cousins ​​in Israel, whom I love like my own. And now there’s a whole family in Russia. And Anya, Evgeniy’s granddaughter, cries every time she sees us on Skype, because all her life she dreamed of a big family,” Jessica told a NEWSru.co.il correspondent.

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