Austin Bethell - Identifinders International, LLC

For Immediate Release – Grant from the Elie Wiesel Jewish Studies Center, Boston University

By Austin Bethell|2016-11-07T16:42:13-08:00November 7th, 2016|

The Center for Professional Education at Boston University has been awarded a competitive grant from Jewish Cultural Endowment Fund of the Elie Wiesel Center for Jewish Studies to hold a one-day workshop "Holocaust Survival and Reunion Stories: Separating Fact from Fiction Using Genealogical Research Techniques". The workshop will be conducted by internationally recognized forensic genealogist Colleen Fitzpatrick, PhD, founder of Identifinders International. Dr. Fitzpatrick will focus on stories of child survivors and their efforts to connect with their birth families, covering five topics: Introduction to Holocaust Research Discerning the True from the False when the Impossible is the Norm The Mascot - A Holocaust Literary Fraud? Holocaust Archives and Repositories Who Am I? What [...]

Who Am I – What Is My Name – Part X – Gertrude's Marriage and Divorce

By Austin Bethell|2016-11-06T17:46:45-08:00November 6th, 2016|

By now, everyone who reads this should know Gertrude Priess-Spiro, the woman who arranged to have Pnina Gutman smuggled from the Warsaw Ghetto in August or September 1942. New information about her has recently been discovered that provides details about her marriage to Leo Spiro. It also explains why she was listed under her maiden name Gertrude Priess-Spiro on the Pawiak transport records to Auschwitz. Location of 176 Brunnenstrasse, Berlin During my recent trip to Berlin, I was able to visit the address at 176 Brunnenstrasse, where Gertrude grew up and lived for a while after she was married. The building is about three blocks south of what was once the Berlin [...]

ISHI 27 – David O’Shea and the Grandmothers of the Plaza

By Austin Bethell|2023-06-10T13:21:09-07:00October 2nd, 2016|

The keynote at the 27th annual International Symposium on Human Identification (ISHI27) was given by internationally recognized video journalist David O'Shea. O'Shea addressed the conference on the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo (Asociación Civil Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo), a human rights organization formed in Argentina in 1977 in response to the disappearance of hundreds of children who were either kidnapped or born to mothers who were "disappeared" political dissidents during the country's "Dirty War" in 1974-1983.

Extreme Genealogy – Arrival in Berlin and First Visit to the Berlin Bundesarchiv

By Austin Bethell|2016-08-24T08:31:54-07:00August 24th, 2016|

Flight to Berlin and Arrival Thursday, August 11, 2016 Keflavik International Airport My trip from Los Angeles to Berlin went smoothly with a layover in Keflavik Interntional Airport. It is the cleanest airport in the world. It felt more like an igloo than an airport – snug from the elements. Yet it was a beehive of activity – with people snacking in one of several cozy cafes, or browsing the stores which naturally offer beautiful Icelandic sweaters and other products. The sandwiches are the most beautiful sandwiches I have ever seen. I was tempted to exchange $10 for Icelandic krona at the money exchange, but thriftiness got the better of me. The [...]

Who Am I? What is My Name? – Part IX – Gertrude's Sisters!

By Austin Bethell|2023-01-12T23:15:53-08:00June 15th, 2016|

Gertrude Preiss and Charlotte Rebhun, c 1942 Since 2012 we have been trying to discover the birth identity of Pnina Gutman, who as an infant was smuggled from the Warsaw Ghetto with the assistance of a woman named Gertrud Spiro. We realized from the beginning that our best chance at solving the mystery was to find out as much as we could about Gertrude and her daughter Sonia, hoping they left some record behind of their activities. We have faced many challenges; when we started out, we did not even know the correct spelling of their last name. Thanks to our persistence, we can now account for most of Gertrud's whereabouts [...]

Claude and the Geography Lesson

By Austin Bethell|2016-05-24T22:28:53-07:00May 24th, 2016|

The départements and overseas territories of France. By the time I was asked to find Claude and Marie Dexter* in France, I had pulled a few unclaimed property rabbits out of unclaimed property hats so that I had become the company's patron saint of hopeless cases. Typically, when they finally got around to assigning me a case like Claude's, they had exhausted all their own resources yet had not been able to find their man. My first stop was my favorite website www.numberway.com, with links to telephone directories worldwide. France's online Pages Blanches were tedious to navigate back then. You had to individually search each of the 96 "départements" (France's equivalent of US states) and overseas départements and territories. [...]

They Never Thought I'd Find Them but I Did!

By Austin Bethell|2016-05-23T13:03:05-07:00May 23rd, 2016|

When people ask what I do for a living, I tell them "I read minds". This is not far from the truth. The case of the Chedidi's* stands out in this regard. In about 2007, the international investment company I worked for gave me an assignment to find a couple named Jack and Lily Chedidi* who were owners of unclaimed property in the US. Their last known address was in London. My only responsibility was to return the phone number of the couple or their next of kin, leaving the business end of things to the investment company. Easy enough. I searched the UK phone books on www.numberway.com, to discover there was only one [...]

An Adventure in International Unclaimed Property – Seeking The Von-Fiorellos

By Austin Bethell|2016-05-20T15:00:07-07:00May 20th, 2016|

The Hyatt Regency, Merida, Mexico About ten years ago, when Andy and I were in Merida, Mexico on business, I received an email from the international investment company I worked for. They had been trying to find owners associated with unclaimed property, but without success. They contacted me, as usual, for a last ditch effort in solving the case. The names they gave were Ernest and Maria Von Fiorello* with an address in Innsbruck, Austria, dating back perhaps ten or more years. From what I was told, the company had sent a Private Investigator to the old address of the Von Fiorello's, hoping that the neighbors would be able to tell them where the couple [...]

Who Am I? What is My Name? – Part VIII – Gertrud and Leo’s Trial

By Austin Bethell|2023-01-11T02:29:18-08:00May 19th, 2016|

Das Bundesarchiv Trial Records According to Widerstand in Berlin gegen das NS-Regime 1933 bis 1945 (Resistance in Berlin against the Nazi Regime 1933-1945), Leo and Gertrud Spiro were put on trial in Berlin in 1938. Trying to locate their court records, I contacted the editor of the book Dr. Gunter Wehner, a scholar of the German resistance. Dr. Wehner is 83 years old, and a well-known researcher at the Bundesarchivs (National Archives) in Berlin-Lichterfelde where the records are archived. Dr. Wehner offered to help by locating trial records in the Bundesarchiv that mentioned Leo and Gertrud, including those included in his book. Although we would have to go through official channels [...]

Who Was Joseph Smith – Close Calls and Possible Candidates

By Austin Bethell|2016-01-19T18:32:06-08:00January 19th, 2016|

Joseph Smith We have just a few scraps of information to go on in searching for Joseph Smith's original identity, many of which are questionable. But we have to make the most of what we have, since that's all we have. Joseph always said his birth date was 15 July 1896. My experience has been that if someone changes his name, he usually keeps his original date of birth, but if he steals someone else's identity, he is forced to use the date of birth of his victim. In Joseph's case, we have to assume that he changed his name but not his date of birth; without a birth date, we lack a key search [...]

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