In the year since Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) 2022, the Tracing Services at Magen David Adom received 150 requests for help in locating relatives and renewing family ties. In dozens of these cases, distant relatives were connected or information was discovered to provide closure for families who had been dogged by questions for years.
In the Jewish state, most inquiries relate to individuals who disappeared during the Holocaust, or to family genealogies that were severed as a result. Several generations after the Shoah, people want to know the fates of their ancestors or whether they have cousins they do not know about.
“As a full member of the International Red Cross Movement since 2006, we cooperate with Red Cross societies in other countries and the International Committee of the Red Cross to locate people. We send requests to them, and they send ones to us,” said Shulamit Rosenthaler, MDA Tracing Services manager.
. . . “Most of our work relates to World War II. We also get requests from Israelis or Jews from other countries who lost touch with relatives who lived in the FSU and other countries that were behind the Iron Curtain. We also get a few requests per year related to African refugees and asylum seekers who are living in Israel,” Rosenthaler said.
Over the years, the MDA Tracing Services has received 4,150 applications for assistance and has succeeded in connecting hundreds of relatives and locating many documents, as well as some graves. In six cases, pairs of siblings were united, some of whom did not know about each other at all.
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