I found the names of two relatives murdered in the Holocaust

[DavidDvorkin]

Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Memorial institution in Jerusalem has a searchable database of Holocaust victims. They just passed 5,000,000 names and have some hope of being able to recover 250,000 of the remaining one million.

I searched the database and found the names of my mother's mother and teenage sister:
https://collections.yadvashem.org/en/names/9151952
https://collections.yadvashem.org/en/names/9151953

[hlthe2b]

1. That would have been chilling... It really brings it "home" for you in a way reading about or watching reporting

and documentaries never could.

for all lost and a prayer that the lessons we were to learn in the aftermath--continue with younger generations.

[3catwoman3]

2. How sobering. How did your mother escape the same fate?

Please do not answer if you'd rather not.

[DavidDvorkin]

3. She emigrated before the war

So did two older half-brothers and two younger siblings. Even before the Nazi threat, Jewish families in Eastern Europe were relocating (mostly to the English-speaking world) one or two at a time. The goal was usually to at least get the younger generation to countries where they had more opportunities and faced fewer threats to their lives.

My mother's father died of natural causes before the war.

[DavidDvorkin]

4. Some months ago, I found this grim description of what happened in that town

In 1941, the Jews were massacred by an Einsatzgruppen. Different mass executions occurred. One of them was in August 22, 340 women and children were murdered while the Jewish men were taken to the railway station of Viduklė for slave work, where they were later killed.

[question everything]

5. This must have been a chilling experience but you know they are not forgotten.

Yad means memorial and shem - name.

[DavidDvorkin]

6. Finding this made them much more real to me, real people

It's been unsettling. I can't describe the feeling accurately.

[lapucelle]

7. I'm so sorry.

[MLAA]

8. Thank you for sharing this with us.

May Feiga and Dena rest in peace and never be forgotten. ❤️❤️