Latest / Stories That Live In Us / Florida: A Good Deed Is Never Lost (with Meredith Kratzer Sellers) | Episode 92

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Florida: A Good Deed Is Never Lost (with Meredith Kratzer Sellers) | Episode 92 · Stories That Live In Us

• 0:00
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: I'm looking up potential Facebook profiles and I pull up what I think is a a Facebook page for Gerta's granddaughter, and I see the indication you have one mutual friend.
• 0:15
  Crista Cowan: Stories That Live in Us is a podcast that inspires you to form deep connections with your family, past, present, and future.
• 0:22
  Crista Cowan: I'm Crista Cowan, known online as The Barefoot Genealogist.
• 0:26
  Crista Cowan: Counting down to the upcoming celebration of America's 250th birthday, you'll meet families from each state whose stories are woven into the very fabric of America.
• 0:37
  Crista Cowan: Tales of immigration, migration, courage, and community that remind us that when we tell our stories, we strengthen the bonds that connect us.
• 0:46
  Crista Cowan: So join me for season two as we discover from sea to shining sea the stories that live in us.
• 0:52
  Crista Cowan: Several years ago, I found myself on stage in front of an audience at a genealogy conference playing a game show called, wait for it, Jupiter.
• 1:04
  Crista Cowan: Yep.
• 1:05
  Crista Cowan: It was the Jewish Genealogy Conference, and uh it was a tradition at the conference for years to host a game night.
• 1:13
  Crista Cowan: And a dear friend of mine, Ron Ahrens, every year would put together a game show called Jupyter.
• 1:20
  Crista Cowan: And he would personally invite the contestants.
• 1:23
  Crista Cowan: And I was on stage with Miriam Margoles.
• 1:28
  Crista Cowan: If you're a Harry Potter fan, you might recognize her as Professor Sprout.
• 1:32
  Crista Cowan: I was on stage with the gentleman who, from the woman in white, was the lawyer who actually was involved with that particular case, and me.
• 1:43
  Crista Cowan: And my last name is Cowen, not Cohen.
• 1:47
  Crista Cowan: As a matter of fact, there was a blogger from that particular conference who wanted to make sure everybody knew I was not Jewish because I've become so much a part of the Jewish genealogy community.
• 2:00
  Crista Cowan: In fact, I serve on the board of directors for the International Jewish Genealogical Society.
• 2:07
  Crista Cowan: And so how does somebody with my background get involved in that community?
• 2:12
  Crista Cowan: Well, you've heard parts of that story in other episodes.
• 2:16
  Crista Cowan: And that is something I am super passionate about because I've developed the skills to be able to serve that community in that way.
• 2:27
  Crista Cowan: My guest today is Meredith Kratzer-Sellers, and her background is as an engineer.
• 2:35
  Crista Cowan: She's not a genealogist by training or by profession, but she has found a really unique way to serve a community with the skills that she has.
• 2:47
  Crista Cowan: And those really unique skills are going to take us from across the sea all the way to the state of Florida.
• 2:57
  Crista Cowan: Enjoy my conversation with Meredith Kratzer Sellers.
• 3:01
  Crista Cowan: Well, Meredith, I'm so excited to have you join me.
• 3:04
  Crista Cowan: I am excited to get to know you a little bit as well.
• 3:07
  Crista Cowan: So I would love for you just to share with us about you and your background and your family story.
• 3:15
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: Great.
• 3:15
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: Thank you so much for the invitation.
• 3:17
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: I have a pretty varied background.
• 3:20
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: I was born in the US, but actually grew up in America, Africa, and England.
• 3:26
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: My mother was born in Scotland right after World War II.
• 3:30
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: And uh my Scottish and English roots were pretty present in my life growing up by holidays, the foods we ate.
• 3:39
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: Um, so I was raised learning about my Scottish grandfather, who had been an aerial photographer during World War II.
• 3:49
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: I was also lucky enough to spend time with my paternal grandparents who were of Eastern European origins and had a very melting pot American experience growing up.
• 4:02
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: I love that.
• 4:03
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: So, how did your parents meet?
• 4:05
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: My parents actually met in England when my father was stationed there in the 70s.
• 4:10
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: That makes sense.
• 4:11
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: And then where in Scotland is your mom from?
• 4:14
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: My grandfather was actually born in Glasgow, but my roots are from Lanarkshire and Earthshire.
• 4:20
  Crista Cowan: Okay.
• 4:20
  Crista Cowan: I love Scotland.
• 4:22
  Crista Cowan: I have a lot of deep roots there and have made many a family history trip to Scotland.
• 4:27
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: It is beautiful, and I can confidently say that my husband did not understand much of what my grandfather said before his passing.
• 4:35
  Crista Cowan: So a very, very thick Scottish broke current.
• 4:39
  Crista Cowan: That's fantastic.
• 4:41
  Crista Cowan: Well, tell us a little bit about your professional background and you know what first interested you in family history.
• 4:48
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: Yeah, so I'm a chemical engineer by training, but I have always been fascinated by history.
• 4:55
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: As a kid, I would watch the British archaeological show Time Team and read stories about Eleanor of Aquitaine and the Black Plague.
• 5:06
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: And actually, leading up to our wedding, we were brainstorming what we could do as a gift to our families.
• 5:14
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: And I conceived of this idea to create a family tree and a bound book that we could give, except I had to figure out how to do that first.
• 5:25
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: And so that was when the genealogical bug hit me.
• 5:29
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: That's amazing.
• 5:31
  Crista Cowan: Um, and what a beautiful wedding gift.
• 5:33
  Crista Cowan: I love that.
• 5:34
  Crista Cowan: Um I own a business that does family tree chart printing for people.
• 5:39
  Crista Cowan: And I love when we have it's usually a parent of the bride or the groom that comes to us and is like, I think I want to have something to display at our child's wedding.
• 5:49
  Crista Cowan: I've never had a bride come and ask for that.
• 5:51
  Crista Cowan: So I love that.
• 5:52
  Crista Cowan: We didn't have enough to do.
• 5:54
  Crista Cowan: We had to add something else to our plate.
• 5:56
  Crista Cowan: Did it work out?
• 5:58
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: Yeah, yeah.
• 5:58
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: And it was a great conversation piece, which was exactly what we were hoping for.
• 6:02
  Crista Cowan: Oh, I bet.
• 6:02
  Crista Cowan: That's incredible.
• 6:03
  Crista Cowan: So so it sounds like you grew up really kind of immersed in your own family stories and family culture.
• 6:10
  Crista Cowan: Um, and uh is it one grandparent or two that are that are Eastern European?
• 6:16
  Crista Cowan: Two.
• 6:17
  Crista Cowan: Okay, so it's your whole dad's side.
• 6:19
  Crista Cowan: Yep.
• 6:19
  Crista Cowan: And where are they from again?
• 6:22
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: I have roots in Germany, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania.
• 6:26
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: Um you cut the gamut.
• 6:28
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: Got a lot of exposure to different archives.
• 6:32
  Crista Cowan: Okay.
• 6:32
  Crista Cowan: And so for your own family history, then when did, you know, did they immigrate or not immigrate?
• 6:39
  Crista Cowan: Like did the did some of them stay there?
• 6:41
  Crista Cowan: What did that look like?
• 6:42
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: Yeah, so all of my ancestors came to the US between the 1860s and 1900s.
• 6:50
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: So my my earliest immigrant ancestor was actually a substitute for a US citizen uh in the Civil War, ended up fighting for the Union in the Massachusetts infantry and later becoming a citizen.
• 7:04
  Crista Cowan: Oh my goodness.
• 7:05
  Crista Cowan: So your family immigrated a little earlier, I think, than a lot of Eastern European families.
• 7:11
  Crista Cowan: Yeah.
• 7:12
  Crista Cowan: Um, because the bulk of Eastern European immigration, especially Jewish immigration, was going to be like 1885 to about 1910, 1920, um, you know, well, right before World War I, um, when a lot of that uh immigration law changed and there were quotas put on and and things.
• 7:31
  Crista Cowan: Um and so, so yeah, a lot of the fact that your family was all here before that is kind of amazing.
• 7:37
  Crista Cowan: Uh, and so was that information that was readily available to you because of your connection with your family, or did you actually have to dive in and learn how to do that research?
• 7:46
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: Very little was available to me.
• 7:49
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: Um, actually, one of the documents I found very early on was a handwritten tree that I had prepared as a school assignment.
• 7:58
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: Um, but no, I did not really know specific towns where my ancestors had come from.
• 8:05
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: And I think that was a big driver as to why I wanted to learn more about the specifics of their history.
• 8:13
  Crista Cowan: Did you know both paternal grandparents?
• 8:16
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: I did, yes.
• 8:17
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: I I was lucky enough to have grandparents who um survived till their 80s and late 90s.
• 8:23
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: So wow.
• 8:24
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: I learned a lot about their own life experiences, but comparatively little about those of their parents or grandparents.
• 8:33
  Crista Cowan: Yeah.
• 8:33
  Crista Cowan: Well, and because you're a few generations removed, like your grandparents were not the immigrants, right?
• 8:38
  Crista Cowan: Was that was it their their grandparents in most cases?
• 8:41
  Crista Cowan: Yes.
• 8:42
  Crista Cowan: Yeah.
• 8:42
  Crista Cowan: Okay.
• 8:42
  Crista Cowan: Yeah.
• 8:43
  Crista Cowan: And so when you're a generation or two removed from that immigrant experience, sometimes those stories get lost or yeah, not passed down, sometimes intentionally, sometimes unintentionally.
• 8:53
  Crista Cowan: Yeah.
• 8:54
  Crista Cowan: Did your grandparents have information for you when you got interested, or were they already gone by then?
• 9:01
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: No, my grandfather had done a bit of digging on his own time, sort of in the early days of uh online genealogy records, uh, and using some of the resources that we'll talk about later, I'm sure.
• 9:15
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: But yeah, he hadn't been able to uncover too much.
• 9:18
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: And uh my grandmother's side was a pretty blank slate.
• 9:24
  Crista Cowan: Okay, wow.
• 9:24
  Crista Cowan: So you you said you're a chemical engineer.
• 9:27
  Crista Cowan: How does your your interest and passion and education and career play into this hobby of family history?
• 9:36
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: Yeah, and I started with the genealogical work while I was in graduate school.
• 9:43
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: So I think a lot of what I've learned in my career has led to the way I approach the research process in a very structured, logical fashion.
• 9:56
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: And when I became more familiar with concepts like the genealogical proof standard, I realized that a lot of the components of that were things I was used to doing day in and day out, like conducting reasonably exhausted research and correlating and interpreting evidence.
• 10:16
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: So it was that, and I think my interest in following very small but significant clues and big sets of data that was critical to growing as a family history researcher.
• 10:33
  Crista Cowan: Yeah.
• 10:33
  Crista Cowan: So it's interesting because a lot of people who undertake family history as a hobby find ways to connect it to their career, right?
• 10:43
  Crista Cowan: My father's an accountant and he loves numbers and order, and family history is very attractive to him because of the logic behind it as well.
• 10:51
  Crista Cowan: Um, and it sounds like for you, that whole scientific process or methodology made sense to your brain.
• 10:58
  Crista Cowan: But um, but not a lot of people, I think, venture out of it from a hobby into kind of a volunteer vocation almost.
• 11:08
  Crista Cowan: Um, and so what was the pull for you to dedicate more time, not just to researching your own family, but but other families as well?
• 11:16
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: Yeah, I would say I'm always motivated by efforts where the broader impact is clear and there's opportunities for continuing education.
• 11:28
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: So very early on, I would offer to help friends with their family history questions so that I could gain experience in specific countries.
• 11:39
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: I volunteered in my local family history center.
• 11:43
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: And I was looking back, and it was actually in the early 2010s, that I worked on my first team-based volunteer project, which at the time was about finding and notifying families of veterans awaiting burial or buried in national cemeteries that did not have family arrangements.
• 12:02
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: Um, and then over time I gained more experience with genetic genealogy, realized I had the skills to help with unknown parentage searches.
• 12:14
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: And that's when I gained what I think is somewhat distinct skill set from some genealogists, which is working forward in time to identify living individuals who are connected to either specific ancestors or as we'll talk about today, objects.
• 12:34
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: Uh so I've been very active with a large Facebook group called Search Squad for the last five years and helping adoptees and individuals who are donor-conceived with their family history questions.
• 12:47
  Crista Cowan: Such great work.
• 12:48
  Crista Cowan: I love that.
• 12:49
  Crista Cowan: And interestingly enough, you and I have a lot of parallels, right?
• 12:52
  Crista Cowan: So my two research specialties, uh, one is Jewish immigration to the United States.
• 12:58
  Crista Cowan: I am not Jewish, however.
• 13:00
  Crista Cowan: I just grew up in a very predominantly Jewish community in Southern California.
• 13:04
  Crista Cowan: And that was kind of when I launched my family history research business where I landed was with a lot of Jewish clients.
• 13:11
  Crista Cowan: And so I had to quickly figure out how to do Jewish family history research.
• 13:16
  Crista Cowan: And there are some nuances and some differences.
• 13:19
  Crista Cowan: And um, and so I'd love to just talk about that just a little bit.
• 13:24
  Crista Cowan: Like, for example, one of the greatest resources for Jewish family history research is a website called Jewish Gen.
• 13:31
  Crista Cowan: Yep.
• 13:31
  Crista Cowan: Tell us a little bit about that.
• 13:34
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: So, Jewish Gen was established as a nonprofit in the 80s and became an affiliate of the Museum of Jewish Heritage in 2003.
• 13:44
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: It is a global online resource.
• 13:47
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: It provides genealogists with tools to research Jewish family history.
• 13:53
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: And my earliest exposure to Jewish gen was leveraging the resources available on the website, uh, features such as its family finder database where you can go in and indicate surnames and towns of interest to you.
• 14:07
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: They had a very early interface where you could submit images of records in different languages and request uh translation by volunteers and a burial registry as well.
• 14:20
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: Um, in the last few years, Jewish Gen actually uh teamed up with the Museum of Jewish Heritage to establish a research center in New York City.
• 14:33
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: So the Calico Jewish Genealogical Research Center now functions as the physical home of Jewish Gen, and people can visit that and work with the genealogists there.
• 14:45
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: Yeah.
• 14:46
  Crista Cowan: And then of course, Ancestry hosts the Jewish Gen data online and is able to provide some of that computing power for the service that they offer, which is amazing.
• 14:57
  Crista Cowan: And I love the resources available through Jewish Gen.
• 15:01
  Crista Cowan: Um, talk to us then a little bit about the Collection Jewish Community Nuremberg Project and what that is and how you got involved with it.
• 15:12
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: Yeah, so what we'll in English refer to as the uh the Collection Jewish Community Nuremberg Project, or sometimes the IKG collection, consisted of about 10,000 books that were found in the offices of the Nazi newspaper Der Sturmer and on the estate of its founder, uh Julius Streicher, who was a German publicist, uh member of the Nazi party, and convicted war criminal.
• 15:45
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: And most of these books were taken illegally by the Nazis from Jews and other victims of Nazi persecution.
• 15:55
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: So at the end of World War II, the collection was placed in the hands of the Nuremberg Jewish community that subsequently gave it on permanent loan to the Nuremberg Municipal Library.
• 16:10
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: Um, for those who are familiar with restitution law, there was a very important conference in the late 90s that uh formalized the Washington Conference principles on Nazi confiscated art.
• 16:29
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: And those principles really breathed new life into post-war restitution efforts.
• 16:37
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: German libraries carried out dedicated initiatives to search their holdings for Nazi confiscated books, and whenever possible, they were to investigate and make public the information about those holdings.
• 16:52
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: And so at the beginning of that process, the library, in conjunction with the Jewish community, determined that they wanted to hand back these books to the former owners or their successors wherever possible.
• 17:08
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: So, how first of all, how on earth did you learn about this?
• 17:13
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: So, in the 25 years since this effort um really started in Nuremberg, there'd been incredible uh efforts uh carried out already.
• 17:24
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: So over 900 books had been returned to heirs in in 13 countries by the time I got involved.
• 17:33
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: And funny enough, in 2014, one of those books was received by Karen Franklin, who's now the director of outreach for Jewish Gen.
• 17:44
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: And Karen and some additional volunteers began presenting about the looted books effort in 2024, uh, both at a Jewish genealogy society meeting and on Jewish Gen.
• 18:00
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: And they issued a call for individuals who had expertise to join the team.
• 18:06
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: And I sent an email.
• 18:08
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: And since that point, a team of about 20 of us have been assisting in the research for about 700 books on our current list.
• 18:18
  Crista Cowan: That's amazing.
• 18:19
  Crista Cowan: So it's so interesting to me how it's just this perfect convergence of your skills, too, right?
• 18:24
  Crista Cowan: Like your Jewish background and your own research into your own family history, the research you were doing for other people, and then this genetic genealogy skill that you developed that is my other research specialty as well, that ability to like trace descendants and come to find living people, which is a lot of people call it reverse genealogy or descendancy research, but it's a whole different mindset and a little bit of a different methodology.
• 18:52
  Crista Cowan: And you have to overcome privacy issues and all sorts of other things to find those living people.
• 18:59
  Crista Cowan: And so you've developed these skills over time, and now there's this opportunity to use those skills in this really kind of noble cause to return these artifacts to people.
• 19:10
  Crista Cowan: I think that that's incredible.
• 19:12
  Crista Cowan: And then that you answered the call.
• 19:14
  Crista Cowan: Um, what was it about it that like what why?
• 19:18
  Crista Cowan: Like, why did you answer that call?
• 19:20
  Crista Cowan: Not just because you have the skills, I suspect.
• 19:23
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: Yeah, I mean, as you might see in the background, I've always had a soft spot for books.
• 19:29
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: Um, and I think it's just, you know, the concept that these items have this story that we can only begin to speculate about.
• 19:41
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: And that in many cases they do have people that should be in possession of them.
• 19:51
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: Um, and so to the extent I can help to a small part with that, uh, it's just a an honor and a pleasure.
• 19:58
  Crista Cowan: So something of just I've I I'm hearing maybe.
• 20:03
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: Like setting the world right and to a very small degree, yes.
• 20:07
  Crista Cowan: Yeah.
• 20:08
  Crista Cowan: Well, and and when so much in the world is chaotic and messy and not able to be set right.
• 20:14
  Crista Cowan: Um, I think maybe there's something really satisfying about being able to do a small part to write some wrongs.
• 20:20
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: Yeah.
• 20:21
  Crista Cowan: I love that.
• 20:22
  Crista Cowan: So uh you said there were about 900 books that had already been returned by the time you got involved in the project, but that for 20 some odd years people um had been cataloging um our artifacts in their collections and in their possession.
• 20:38
  Crista Cowan: How how vast?
• 20:39
  Crista Cowan: Like how many things or how many items are we talking about ultimately that need to be returned?
• 20:46
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: Yeah, it was about 2,000 books in Nuremberg's collection that they had identified as carrying provenance marks and suspected of being illegally confiscated.
• 20:57
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: Obviously, there's a significant number in the collection with no inscriptions, in which case there's really not a lot of options in terms of identifying claimants.
• 21:08
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: But for those that had any identifying marks whatsoever, a stamp, a handwritten signature, um, those were all diligently cataloged, photographed, uh, and information about them made available on the Lost Art internet database, with the second part of that being this proactive effort to identify potential claimants as opposed to um hoping someone might stumble across their ancestors' name on a list.
• 21:39
  Crista Cowan: So, so about 2,000 books just from Nuremberg.
• 21:43
  Crista Cowan: Correct.
• 21:43
  Crista Cowan: Um and then do you have any idea how many from other places around the world?
• 21:50
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: I don't actually.
• 21:51
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: And I think the the short answer is probably that a lot of institutions are still working themselves to figure that out.
• 21:59
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: Um, people are quite familiar with some of the headline stories about particular artwork.
• 22:08
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: Uh, but I think it's some of the more everyday objects, if you will, um, that are trickier to understand if they have a history suggesting they were illegally confiscated or flight goods.
• 22:25
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, because because if the Nazis were stealing very expensive art or jewelry, those things are always going to make the headlines.
• 22:33
  Crista Cowan: But but a book is something that is so, like you said, every day, so simple.
• 22:38
  Crista Cowan: Um, and so why like why is that maybe equally as important to try to return as an expensive work of art?
• 22:47
  Crista Cowan: Yes.
• 22:48
  Crista Cowan: Like yeah, like that just like the the the thought of um of of the I'm I'm just trying to articulate this, right?
• 23:00
  Crista Cowan: Because I think I'm a little bit overwhelmed as you think about like of course they were gonna steal art, of course they were gonna steal jewelry, but they also stole not just books, and books are books are so important to me too, but probably comfort items from children.
• 23:17
  Crista Cowan: And you know, having walked through um Auschwitz and experienced like the dehumanization, um, they did they strip them of everything.
• 23:27
  Crista Cowan: But to then confiscate those things and keep them in private collections, um in some cases almost like trophies, that the the horror of that is, I think, a little bit overwhelming to me right now.
• 23:38
  Crista Cowan: Maybe that's what I'm feeling.
• 23:41
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: It is.
• 23:41
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: And I think it's, you know, when you're talking about this sort of research, there is an extent to which you, when you're caring out, do have to depersonalize it, right?
• 23:51
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: Because you're looking at record sets and information that really convey horrible things about what happened to entire families.
• 24:00
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: Um, and then I think that's really one of the special parts when we're able to reunite a family with a book, it drives home that very personal nature of what we're doing, um, not just names on paper, right?
• 24:17
  Crista Cowan: Yeah.
• 24:17
  Crista Cowan: So walk us through what is the typical process of reuniting a book with a family?
• 24:24
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: Based on the detailed scanning efforts and the cataloging already carried out by the library, we're typically starting with a name of an individual, a place.
• 24:36
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: Sometimes we may have information about a suspected occupation or biodata.
• 24:43
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: Our current working list, I checked uh before today, we actually have books associated with individuals born in the early 1700s, ranging through to 1927.
• 24:59
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: Uh, so the subsequent research and the restitution is all done in compliance with German property law.
• 25:09
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: We're relying on a variety of resources to build out family trees.
• 25:14
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: So sometimes we discover that an owner has surviving descendants, other times we can only identify nieces, nephews, cousins.
• 25:24
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: We're documenting all the findings and provide a dossier to the library outlining what we've discovered.
• 25:33
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: We do also make initial contact with the successors and introduce them to the library.
• 25:40
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: And after that, the the books are retrieved from the shelves, the appropriate paperwork is completed, and the items are packaged up with care and shipped to the families.
• 25:52
  Crista Cowan: That's amazing.
• 25:53
  Crista Cowan: And it seems like maybe a process that's been refined over a lot of years to get to this point so that more people can participate.
• 26:01
  Crista Cowan: And and I think that that's really a tribute to those who started this project.
• 26:06
  Crista Cowan: Yeah.
• 26:07
  Crista Cowan: So um focusing on, and you're gonna have to make sure I pronounce this correctly.
• 26:12
  Crista Cowan: Is it Icefeld?
• 26:13
  Crista Cowan: Yes.
• 26:13
  Crista Cowan: Okay, so the Icefeld prayer book.
• 26:16
  Crista Cowan: Um, what information did you have to start with with that book?
• 26:21
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: Yeah, so for Hertz Icefeld's book, the handwritten notes on the inside of the work included a name and a specific municipality in Bavaria.
• 26:34
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: So the the municipality is Calm involved.
• 26:38
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: And this had led to the initial theory that the Hertho we were looking for was uh a woman, then young girl born in that German town in 1912.
• 26:55
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: And so from that starting point, uh it was to need to build a family tree, uh, focusing on the surviving relatives and make sure that we had consistency between the provenance information and the genealogical research.
• 27:11
  Crista Cowan: And so walk us through that.
• 27:13
  Crista Cowan: Like what other, like what records were you using?
• 27:17
  Crista Cowan: How like how did you even identify her to begin with?
• 27:21
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: Yeah, as we can imagine the the complexity is quite dependent upon the name of the book owner.
• 27:28
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: Um, so luckily, uh, in the case of Hertha, it's it's quite an uncommon name.
• 27:35
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: And I, in my initial searches, had found a list dating from 1946 from a displaced persons camp that referenced uh a Hertha Eisfeld with ties to the specific hometown I was looking for, um, which was a very encouraging clue because that suggested to me that Herta had lived to adulthood and was being sought out by uh a Holocaust survivor.
• 28:06
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: I was subsequently able to locate uh a US Social Security application and claims index uh entry, and that listed uh Hertha Bach born Eisfeld.
• 28:22
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: Once again, we importantly had that link to her birthplace, Tom, in Bavaria.
• 28:28
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: Uh so that suggested to me she had entered the US in the 1950s and uh was a jumping off point for the the subsequent research.
• 28:38
  Crista Cowan: And then and then from there, so if you found her in a social security claims application, that means she's deceased at that point.
• 28:45
  Crista Cowan: And so so then how are you how are you finding the rest of her family?
• 28:49
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: Yeah, yeah, piece by piece.
• 28:51
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: Um, so I discovered a corresponding index entry from the Florida death index indicating she passed away in Miami-Dade County in 1998.
• 29:03
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: And uh luckily for me, there was a photograph of her gravestone on Find a Grave.
• 29:12
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: And the inscription on that contained the text, beloved wife, mother, and daughter.
• 29:19
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: So that gave me the confidence that at least at the time she passed in 1998, she had a surviving descendant.
• 29:26
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: And so then you go to what next?
• 29:30
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: Then we're typically switching to white page type sources, social media, LinkedIn, uh trying newspaper clippings, trying to find anything that can help us work forward in time to those living individuals.
• 29:48
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: And so I had my eye on a specific group of Bach family members who were still living in Florida.
• 29:58
  Crista Cowan: And did you have an obituary to guide you through this to like to give you names, or were you just going strictly off a surname and a location?
• 30:05
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: I was going off of some white pages type entries as well as location information.
• 30:13
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: Uh I actually don't believe I was able to find an obituary for her.
• 30:17
  Crista Cowan: And so then is that the point at which you reach out to these people and start asking questions?
• 30:24
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: Yeah, we do a lot of research up front.
• 30:28
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: Uh we want to make sure we understand um sort of the breadth of the family that we're looking for.
• 30:34
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: And in this case, it seemed to me that uh her surviving descendants and their family unit was actually quite small and and closely co-located in Florida.
• 30:45
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: So that was the stage at which I thought about reaching out to them.
• 30:49
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: Okay.
• 30:50
  Crista Cowan: So are you learning the story of her and her life through your research, or are you really just trying to narrow straight down to the descendants?
• 31:00
  Crista Cowan: Um, or so are you learning it during your research process, or are you learning it after you contact the family and they share more information?
• 31:08
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: Yeah, I would say in this case it's a mix of both, right?
• 31:11
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: As we are collecting records, we're finding newspaper clippings talking about someone's bar mitzvah, we might be finding um, you know, a stumbling stone biography for for some of our other book owners that lists information on living relatives.
• 31:30
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: So it really depends.
• 31:32
  Crista Cowan: Okay.
• 31:33
  Crista Cowan: And then as you're doing this research, I suspect you're also using social media.
• 31:37
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: Yep.
• 31:38
  Crista Cowan: And I I know I use Facebook quite a lot when I'm doing uh genetic genealogy and trying to connect the dots.
• 31:44
  Crista Cowan: And so you had an experience with Herda's granddaughter as you were doing some of that research, yes?
• 31:50
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: I did, I did.
• 31:52
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: Um, you know, I think those of us that have been doing this research for quite a while sometimes have a moment that we find a little, I don't know if it's prophetic or interesting, that moment where you spot that someone you've been researching and just found that critical record for maybe passed away on a date that's meaningful to you.
• 32:14
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: Um, and so in this case, I part of the process, I'm looking up potential Facebook profiles and I pull up what I think is a Facebook page for Hertha's granddaughter, and I see the indication you have one mutual friend.
• 32:32
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: So I clicked on the connection only to discover it was actually my dear friend's husband, who, like Alexandra, lived in the Miami area, works in the legal profession, made perfect sense.
• 32:48
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: And so within Bennett's actually, I'm texting saying, Do you know this person in real life?
• 32:54
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: And having to explain why that's a question that's important to me.
• 32:59
  Crista Cowan: Right.
• 32:59
  Crista Cowan: So, how then um do you approach Alexandra and the family with this information?
• 33:06
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: Yeah, so that helped a lot in this instance.
• 33:09
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: I was able to obtain an introduction through this mutual connection.
• 33:14
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: As you can imagine, many of the families we contact are initially quite skeptical about our efforts and intentions.
• 33:24
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: Uh, so it's actually a great benefit that we can often direct them to the holding information in the Nuremberg Library catalog so they can verify our inquiry.
• 33:36
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: And shortly after I was able to share information about the item with Alexandra and her father, they were able to look at the scans of the work and actually confirm that the handwriting was her grandmother's script.
• 33:50
  Crista Cowan: Well, that's amazing.
• 33:52
  Crista Cowan: So I would love if you would share with us just a little bit about Herta's story, you know, what you discovered, but also what the family shared with you and what Herta's family's experiences were during World War II.
• 34:07
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: Yeah, and the Bach family has been incredibly gracious in sharing this information with us.
• 34:13
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: Um, you know, Hertha fled from Germany uh and ultimately ended up in what was then mandatory Palestine in the 1930s.
• 34:25
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: Um, while she fled and survived, her older brother Gerhard actually fought in the French resistance.
• 34:33
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: Uh, he was captured, uh deported from Jancy and killed at Auschwitz.
• 34:40
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: Uh so his name is actually inscribed on the Shoah memorial in Paris.
• 34:46
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: And Arta married.
• 34:49
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: Uh she and her husband had one son uh before emigrating to the US in 1954.
• 34:57
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: They failed on the SS constitution from Italy to New York, and uh she would go on to become a naturalized citizen in 1959.
• 35:09
  Crista Cowan: Wow.
• 35:10
  Crista Cowan: And did they go straight to Florida or did they settle somewhere else first?
• 35:14
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: Yeah, they were initially in the Northeast in Connecticut.
• 35:17
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: Um, and their only son went on to obtain a degree from the University of Miami School of Law and raise a family in Florida, uh, practicing as an attorney.
• 35:30
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: Uh so his daughter, Alexandra, would go on to attain a law degree from the same institution.
• 35:37
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: And his son is also currently uh a county court judge in Miami-Dade County.
• 35:42
  Crista Cowan: As you connected with Alexandra and her father, Lewis, like uh what was there other things that Lewis shared with you about his mother?
• 35:53
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: Yeah, I mean, they were, I think, just incredibly grateful for the opportunity to have the book returned to them.
• 36:02
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: Um Alexandra had later shared with me a photograph of a memorial plaque to Herta in her hometown.
• 36:12
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: And I found the inscription on it very touching.
• 36:18
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: So it actually says um, an evil spirit of barbarism and its submissive lackeys robbed her of her home and family, sad memories and painful longing, but also true friends bound her to her native country to the end.
• 36:37
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: And you know, I when I was thinking about that, the inscription, you know, it references that it references these sad memories, and I think that's why it's even more poignant that the restituted item uh recalls this time in Herda's life prior to that strife, prior to that heartbreak, her time as a school child practicing cursive in a prayer book.
• 37:07
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, so so this prayer book, right, like it's not just a book.
• 37:12
  Crista Cowan: It is not just a book.
• 37:15
  Crista Cowan: So you have you reconnected them with the library, and then the library packages it up and ships it to the family.
• 37:24
  Crista Cowan: Um, do you ever get to hear the rest of the story or have continued contact with the family or know what their experience is like receiving that item?
• 37:34
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: Yeah.
• 37:34
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: So Alexandra shared with me that her and her father live blocks apart.
• 37:39
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: So her father went to her house for dinner and they were able to open the package together.
• 37:46
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: Um, and some of our families have been able to take photos and videos of this process, which is just a joy to receive.
• 37:54
  Crista Cowan: I love that.
• 37:55
  Crista Cowan: That's really beautiful.
• 37:56
  Crista Cowan: Um, you know, beyond the great historical significance of this work that you're doing, um, like there's a lot of emotional impact here.
• 38:06
  Crista Cowan: And in some cases, that impact could be um reopening things that a lot of people try to bury or not think about or not talk about.
• 38:16
  Crista Cowan: In some cases, it could be um painful, in some cases it can be healing, I think.
• 38:21
  Crista Cowan: Um what what aspects of this whole process are most meaningful to you as you think about that?
• 38:28
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: Yeah, I mean, I think those of us involved in this process, there's this mixed emotions.
• 38:35
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: It's both sort of wonder at this process as well as the sorrow that these items survive when so many people didn't write.
• 38:45
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: It's this craving to understand if these books could talk, what would they tell us?
• 38:52
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: Um, I think for me, one of the really unique aspects that I alluded to is that we're returning what are in many cases like everyday household books.
• 39:05
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: They're not clipped portraits, lost Raphaels.
• 39:09
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: And yet when a family member unwraps the package, they recognizes the handwriting, they're just amazed.
• 39:19
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: Um and as you're familiar with Jewish genealogy, um and those listening might be there's a a Hebrew word mitzvah, which you know strictly translates to commandment, uh, but is often interpreted as you know a good deed.
• 39:38
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: And I think those of us that have volunteered with this project have just gained an incredible sense of fulfillment, including by the new connections we've formed, as well as just the joy that we've brought to these families.
• 39:51
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: I love that.
• 39:53
  Crista Cowan: If people, if other people want to get involved in this, what do they need to do?
• 39:58
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: Yeah, so you can go on.
• 39:59
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: Line right now and review the list of looted books on the Jewish Gen site, also on the Looted Art website.
• 40:08
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: So if you spot a connection to one of those names, you are welcome to contact me, Karen Franklin, the Nuremberg Municipal Library.
• 40:17
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: We're often also looking for those with genealogy backgrounds or translation capabilities.
• 40:35
  Crista Cowan: Then we'll make sure we include links to all of that in the show notes so that people can access that readily.
• 40:41
  Crista Cowan: So some people might be a little bit confused or want to understand the connection because right now we're in the middle of season two of the podcast and we're talking about America 250.
• 40:54
  Crista Cowan: And if they've made the connection by now or not, I don't know.
• 40:58
  Crista Cowan: But this story about Herda and her family is representing the state of Florida.
• 41:04
  Crista Cowan: And there's a million stories we could have told about the state of Florida.
• 41:09
  Crista Cowan: It's it's got the oldest European settlement in the nation.
• 41:13
  Crista Cowan: And certainly we could have taken an angle and talked about that.
• 41:17
  Crista Cowan: There are, you know, Cuban ties, there are, there are just so much rich history in Florida.
• 41:24
  Crista Cowan: But as we think about connecting this story from Germany to Florida and the role that that Florida plays as a safe haven, even today, for a lot of Jewish families, but especially in those years immediately following the war.
• 41:43
  Crista Cowan: But I love that Florida has played that role and and becomes a character in this story as this place where Hertis family lives.
• 42:06
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: Yeah.
• 42:07
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: And uh, I referenced my own ancestors who who settled, you know, initially in in New York City in St.
• 42:17
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: Louis, but my grandparents lived in Fort Myers, Florida, uh, for the last 20 years of their lives.
• 42:24
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: Um they were active in their community.
• 42:26
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: I had the pleasure of of visiting them.
• 42:28
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: And so I think it's just wonderful that Herda's descendants made Florida their home and have flourished there and just excelled in their chosen past.
• 42:40
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, absolutely.
• 42:40
  Crista Cowan: Well, Merida, thank you so much.
• 42:42
  Crista Cowan: Thank you for the work that you're doing.
• 42:44
  Crista Cowan: I think it's so important and meaningful.
• 42:47
  Crista Cowan: Um, and thank you for sharing Herda's story with us today.
• 42:50
  Meredith Kratzer Sellers: My pleasure.
• 42:53
  Crista Cowan: Studio sponsored by Ancestry.