I never planned to visit Auschwitz-Birkenau. Having always opposed "Holocaust Tourism", I avoided visiting the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam on four different trips, including one where the flat we rented was across the street. I never visited the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem (Yad va Shem) even though I've lived in this country for most of my life. I even missed the school-trip. It's just too hard for me, and I don't feel remembrance should be traumatic.
So why am I planning to join a group of Steemians on a trip to the ruins of the Auschwitz death camp?
It all started a few months ago when @mrlightning casually said something about his grandfather escaping Auschwitz. To anyone who's been raised in Israel (or is familiar with the history of the Jews in WWII) this would sound pretty crazy, especially dropped so casually in conversation. Most families honor their survivors, and are closely familiar with the history of their ancestors in the war. Curious, I inquired further.
Family Secrets
According to @mrlightning, the topic of his grandfather's life in the Holocaust was a taboo in their home. The one time @mrlightning's aunt innocently inquired about her father's survival story, he had nightmares for weeks, and she was forbidden to ever mention it again. What little @mrlightning remembered from the few stories his grandfather (who died peacefully when @mrlightning was only 13) shared was even more shocking than the fact he survived Auschwitz - he never really told any government that he did.
The reason he didn't submit a survivor testimony wasn't the fact he was one of the 5% of Jews from Salonika (Thesaloniki) in Greece that survived the Holocaust, but the fact that he was an unwilling member of the Sonderkommando. It was no wonder he rarely spoke of it - the memories of burning the bodies of his friends and family must have been more than he could stand. Another reason to keep quiet was the fact that he had deserted the Greek army to stow away on a boat to Israel, and he wasn't very keen on the Greek looking into his matters even decades later. In addition, he mentioned escaping from Auschwitz during a mutiny, which might be nearly impossible to verify, but just made me even more curious to discover who this man was, and where his tragic story took him.
What's In a Name
So where would I start? @mrlightning's grandfather's name was Mois Brudo, and he was born in 1919 in Salonika, Greece. He was the son of Donna and Iosif Brudo. It's why he named his children Dina and Josef. He had at least 2 brothers and a sister he continued to search for after the war.
With that information, and very little else, I put to use my Google-Fu skills and began to search through every database of Holocaust records - from Yad va Shem to the Auschwitz Archives and community-specific victim lists. Which is when I came across a somewhat unexpected challenge: How do you spell Brudo? Or more specifically, how does a tired Nazi death-camp clerk spell it?
I've occasionally toyed with the idea of writing my last name as Brudaux to make it sound fancy and confuse people. But never did I think that I would spend hours guessing how a German would transcribe it from Greek. Apparently, there's a variety (that's managed to create quite a few duplicate records across databases). Among the names I found: Brodo, Broudo, Proudo and even Mproudo. Narrowing it down with the first name (Mois or Moshe), year of birth and the name of the parents, I managed to get access to some public records to confirm he was indeed deported with his family in the spring of 1943. But that was only the beginning.
"Lucky" Find
One of the databases I searched, the Holocaust Museum in Washington, had the name "Mois Proudo" connected to a file. This file, a digitized version of microfilms, included the scans of only 5310 forms, filled out by the Nazis for the prisoners entering the camp. It is worth noting that (according to historians), over 1.3 million people (!!!) entered that dark place. Many lost completely to history and their names forgotten, no record of them anywhere.
But not this one. Not Mois Proudo. I found him.
The kind archivists in Washington were quick to answer and attached an image. A scan of a document that brought tears to the eyes of family members, revealed the names of the first wife and child of Mois (who died in the gas chambers, most likely) and was the beginning of a journey that will take me to a place I would otherwise avoid visiting - Auschwitz.
Here it is, the entry form of my husband's grandfather to the place I will be touring with my Steemian friends:
...
In my next post: Getting help from friends on Steem, connecting numbers and looking for the Brudos who didn't make it.