By Colleen Fitzpatrick, PhD
Would you like to be recognized as a crack forensic genealogist? It’s easy!all you have to do is to solve an apparently unsolvable mystery. May I suggest one of my favorites?
There are dozens of hidden Jewish children who survived the Holocaust who have not been able to regain their identities. They were placed in Christian homes under assumed names by parents who disappeared and never returned to retrieve them after the war. Many of these children have spent their lives not only trying to discover who they are, but also searching for relatives who may have survived the Holocaust. To read fascinating stories about these individuals, please visit the Missing Identity website at missing-identity.net.
One of my favorite “missing children” is Michelle Annette, born 1938-1939 in France. She only remembers that her mother’s first name was Catherine and that she had a grandmother in Normandy. During the war she stayed in the Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants (OSE) children’s home in Montmorency, France. OSE is a French Jewish humanitarian organization that saved hundreds of refugee children during WWII. It was founded in Russia in 1912 and transferred to France in 1933.
Between August and September 1941, Michelle Annette was brought to New York from France, probably through Spain and Casablanca in Morocco. When she arrived in the United States, her foster parents renamed her Mary and tore up her identity papers, essentially kidnapping her from her past.
Over the years, Mary found nothing about her early life until April 2008, when she discovered a book called Never Wave Goodbye by Philip K. Jason and Iris Posner. The book tells the story of about 1,000 children brought from Europe to the States between 1934-1945, who were between the ages of 14 months and 16 years old. In the book Mary noticed a picture of a group of children waving at the Statue of Liberty as they arrive in New York Harbor.
She was shocked to recognize herself as the little girl in the arms of the woman on the right; she has a photo taken in late 1940 at her American foster parents’ house, where she is wearing the same dress. Since this discovery, she has been able to narrow down the date of her arrival through a second photo taken in August 1940 where she appears at the birthday celebration in France of the OSE home’s director— Dr. Ernest Papanek. Since the children on the boat are wearing light clothing, she must have arrived between August and September 1940.
If she can only identify the ship she arrived on, she may be able to obtain her original family name from the passenger manifest. Perhaps there is other personal information about her on the manifest such as her date and place of birth.
To help Michelle Annette to regain her identity, all you have to do is to determine which ship she arrived on. I have already found that Dr. Papenek arrived in New York from Lisbon on the Nea Hellas on Sept 3, 1940. Although I searched this passenger list for a little girl about 2 years old who might be accompanying him, I came up blank.
I throw this mystery out to those of you who aspire to become forensic genealogists. With all the clues in the photograph to the ages of the children on the ship, and with all the hints to probable groups of siblings, it must be possible to find the answer. Perhaps you can be recognized as the forensic genealogist who helped Michelle Annette regain her identity.
