JASON MILLER
Special to the Jewish News
GRANDFATHER'S
JOURNEY
TO POLAND YIELDS
AN UNEXPECTED
LIVING RELATIVE.
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Research pays
off for local
grandfather and
, 00 grandsons tracing
their family roots.
IV
hile growing up, my maternal
grandfather, Charlie Finkelstein of
Rochester Hills, recalls listening to
the many stories his parents told
him about life in Poland — the grandparents,
aunts, uncles and cousins he never knew and
towns and villages where he'd never been but
hoped to visit one day.
However, the Holocaust cast a dim light on these
dreams. After the war, my grandfather's family lost
contact with their relatives in Poland and feared
they all had perished at the hands of the Nazis.
Still, my grandfather maintained a strong interest
in exploring his family history and visiting the towns
where his parents grew up. Last year, he asked my
brother, Marc, and me if we would like to accompa-
ny him on a trip to Poland to search for family
roots. We readily agreed. Through help from family
members and research via the Internet, we found
information about our family's town, its history, and
even a brief mention in a Polish newspaper article
about a Holocaust survivor still living in the village.
Eager to find out more, we departed for Warsaw
and the eventual destination of Radzilow, a small
Polish shtetl in the former Lomza Gubernia district
of northeastern Poland. My great-grandparents lived
there before immigrating to the United States.
We spent several days visiting sites related to
Poland's Jewish heritage, then headed to visit
Jason Miller of Farmington Hills is a senior at the
University of Michigan.
Remnants of the old mill in Radzilow, Poland, where
Finkelstein family members lived before World War II.
Radzilow. Nelly was our Polish-speaking tour guide
and driver. We had the name of Rachel Finkielsztejn,
a Holocaust survivor reportedly living in Radzilow.
Finding Rachel
Upon arriving, we found the town offices were
closed for a Polish national holiday. But a storekeep-
er knew Rachel and led us right to her home.
An older gentleman greeted us at the door. We
explained, with Nelly's help, that we were members
of the Finkelstein family and searching for Rachel
Finkielsztejn because we thought that she might be
a relative. The older gentleman led us into the
house where a small, frail woman lay on the couch.
Nearly blind and almost deaf, the woman barely
lifted her head to look at us. We introduced our-
selves and my grandfather asked her if she spoke
Yiddish, but she said it had been over 60 years and
she had forgotten.
Then Rachel began to recount in Polish the
amazing story of how she survived the Holocaust.
Born in 1915, she lived on the grounds of her fami-
ly's mill outside Radzilow. Her father died when she
was just 3, but Rachel's mother, older brother and
sister, and many aunts, uncles and cousins; contin-
ued to live on the property adjacent to the mill.
As a young girl, Rachel developed a friendship
with a young gentile man named Stanislaw
Romatowski. The two became close and their
friendship blossomed into romance before the war's
interruption. Nazi soldiers infiltrated Radzilow in
1941. By the end of that year, they had forced all of
12/8j
2006
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