Identifinders Blog

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

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

November 7, 2016 No Comments

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

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. 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 Wall running along Bernauer Str. It is located at

November 6, 2016 No Comments

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

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.

October 2, 2016 No Comments

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

Flight to Berlin and Arrival Thursday, August 11, 2016 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 gates are small- there is

August 24, 2016 2 Comments

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

June 15, 2016 4 Comments

Claude and the Geography Lesson

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. These included island territories in the Atlantic,

May 24, 2016 No Comments