Geri Spieler: The Family I Never Knew

A journey to Warsaw uncovered surprising family connections for Geri Spieler and her son.

After Grandma Regina died, I stood over her grave in Los Angeles, my belly swollen with my son. Twenty-one years later, my son and I visited Warsaw, Regina’s birthplace. She’d come to the US in 1910, then lost all her relatives left in Poland to the World War II Holocaust. At least that is what she professed.

Before our trip, and to my surprise, my mother gave us the names of two people she found in Grandma’s effects, Joseph and Januz.

While walking around Warsaw my son suggested we try to find the address. I laughed. “No one is left of her family. She always said the Nazis killed everyone,” I said with authority.

Curious, we asked the hotel concierge if she could find a phone number for it with these names. She did! He came to our hotel. I recognized the family resemblance right away. As I approached, I pulled my son close to translate.

I asked him, “Are you Joseph?”

He didn’t answer. He just stuck his hand in his pocket and pulled out a small photograph, pointed to the picture and looked at me. The photo he held was taken at my cousin’s wedding many years earlier.

I learned that Joseph and his younger brother, Januz, are my mother’s first cousins. Some siblings and relatives fought in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and died there and others died in the Bergen Belsen concentration camp. But these two survived.

My son told me this experience gave him the feeling of being closer to his European roots than before.

I can’t ask my grandmother why she never told us about her nephews, but I think to her she was keeping them safe in Poland.

With a Perspective, I’m Geri Spieler.

Geri Spieler is a writer and author. She lives in Palo Alto.