Where to start?
Part of the process of waiting for the DNA results is trying not to get sucked into buying all the other products the company offers. “While you wait, why not buy a membership and start your family tree?” Ha! I didn’t need to—I already had a genealogy program I was perfectly happy with.
So, naturally, I bought a membership and started a new tree in their program.
Sheesh. I’m such a sucker these days.
But in this case, it turned out to be a good decision. It opened new doors. I didn’t start from scratch. I exported my entire database—complete with individual notes—from my own software and uploaded it into the new one. Voilà. It worked.
The new membership granted access to thousands—maybe millions—of scanned documents that helped verify what I already had. I admit, I’d been a little lax with sourcing in some entries. There were several points where I found myself wondering, “How do I even know this?” and had nothing cited. Now, I could double-check and attach primary sources. I spent days downloading backup documents just to verify the research I’d already done.
Researching my wife’s family has always been more difficult. I wasn’t part of the early stories, so I lacked firsthand context. And on one side of her family… there just wasn’t much information. They didn’t make it out of Europe before the war.
Sherry did remember her grandmother—her Bubbi. She knew her well, even as an adult. She remembered her grandfather, Herschel, too—but not as vividly. Herschel had come to America from Russia in 1913. He had been a tailor making uniforms for the Czar’s army—until all the Jewish tailors were fired. Realizing his options were dwindling, he made the bold choice to leave.
He wanted to take Jenny (Bubbi) with him, but her mother needed care. Jenny stayed behind. Their neighbors whispered: He’ll forget you. You’re not beautiful. You have club feet. He’s not coming back.
But seven years later, in 1920, he sent for her. Jenny Berkover crossed the ocean to meet him in Pittsburgh.
That’s the family story I was told.
Later, I confirmed that the place they came from—once Russia—is now Lithuania. I also knew that terrible things happened there during the war.
This is where the new genealogy program really kicked in.
I found a scanned document: an Emergency Passport Application filed in Riga, Latvia at the U.S. Consulate. Jenny went there, signed it, and gave detailed information. It listed both she and Herschel as born in Jurburg, Russia. I already suspected this was actually Yurburg, Lithuania. Further research confirmed it.
Yurburg was a town of 2,000 Jews, surrounded by about 4,000 Lithuanians. It had been that way for centuries. Shops, schools, synagogues, a vibrant cultural life. Despite tension, the Jewish and Lithuanian communities had learned to coexist.
But then came the rise of nationalism. Russian rule had been harsh, and some Lithuanians blamed the Jews for their perceived cooperation with the Soviets.
Herschel and Jenny had left by then. They were starting their family in Pittsburgh. But they had left relatives behind—uncles, aunts, cousins. I don’t know how many. I only know this:
In June 1941, the Germans entered Yurburg.
By September, the Jewish community was gone.
The massacre happened in two stages. Half the population was taken to the local Jewish cemetery and executed after digging their own graves. The rest were sent to the Kaunas ghetto and later shot at Fort IX. Lithuanian nationalists, now allied with the Nazis, turned on their neighbors.
I learned all this from the Yurburg Yizkor, the Book of Remembrance—a collection of testimonies by those who had left before the killings. It’s available online. Some survived. Most didn’t. But they remembered.
I bought the paperback. Inside were at least seven families of Berkovers listed in Yurburg—one of them was certainly Herschel’s. On the same street, I found what I believe to be Jenny’s family, although the surname was spelled slightly differently.
This discovery connected Sherry directly to a place—and to a loss. And it connected me, too. Because this is my family now. The Berkovers and Pazerintskis were lost senselessly. And an entire world—an entire community—was erased.
I’ve been thinking lately about how fragile memory is. How the knowledge of the Shoah, the Holocaust, is slipping—not just because of deniers, but because we are human. We forget. Especially the painful things.
We must find a way to carry the truth without being crushed by it. To remember without being crippled. To hold grief and gratitude in the same hand.
Our family deserves that.
