“If we do not come back for her, send her to our relatives in America”.
According to Wolfgang and Adele Rebhun’s eyewitness account they provided to the Yad Vashem, these were among the last words spoken by Pnina’s mother the day she brought her daughter to their apartment to be hidden on the Aryan side of Warsaw. After that, in the fall of 1942, there was no sign of the parents. When Charlotte Rebhun was executed by the SS in 1945 upon her return to Berlin after the war, the identity of those relatives, along with the identities of Pnina’s parents, died with her.
Thanks to a 454 cM DNA match on Ancestry, after nearly 80 years, we found those relatives.
Helen Karp Ferszt was born in 1931, the daughter of Louis Karp and Frida Birsztajn from Warsaw, Poland. Helen’s father arrived in the US in 1922, eight years before her mother arrived in 1930. They initially settled in Chicago, where Helen was born. They moved to New York City in 1935 when Helen was three and a half years old. Helen married Roger Ferszt in 1959. She has one son and two granddaughters. She lives on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Helen graduated from NYU with a B.A. in English. While working for IBM, she attended the Center for Psychoanalytic Studies where she got her degree in psychoanalysis, with the intention of working in the field when she retired. She went back to school at the age of 60 to get her Master’ degree in social work.
Helen and Pnina share 454 cM. According to the Shared cM Project tool on the DNA Painter website, they are most likely half first cousins (1/2 1C), or first cousins once removed (1C1R). According to what Helen told us about her family, they must be 1C1R, implying that one of Pnina’s parents was Helen’s first cousin. In other words, one of Helen’s aunts or uncles was Pnina’s grandparent.
An even better surprise was that Helen had a collection of old family photographs – many of which have inscriptions on the back. These include a magnificent picture of her mother Frani (third from left) with three of her sisters. The picture was printed on a postcard addressed to their older sister Rebecca in London, dated 19 August 1922. Their names were on the back, although probably not in the order the sisters appear in the picture.
Thanks to assistance from Vincent Slatt, Archivist at the USHMM, we have discovered that Helen’s mother Frida Tauba was born on 8 Feb 1897 in Warsaw, the daughter of Yitzhak Yacov Birsztajn and his wife Idel (Adele) Berlanstein. Frida’s younger sister Chawa Sura was born 3 September 1898. According to Helen, Grandfather Yitzhak had previously been married to Grandmother Adele’s older sister (name unknown). Frida had several sisters and one brother, who would be Helen’s aunts and uncle. The son died before the war, ruling him out as Pnina’s grandparent. One of Yitzhak’s daughters Rebecca Rivkah (b 1885, Warsaw, the recipient of the postcard) emigrated to London to live with relatives, and then moved to America in June 1948. She died in 1982 in New Jersey. Rebecca never married.
Making the Connection
In late March 2018, Pnina came up with a 3rd-4th cousin named Jay at the top of her AncestryDNA list. When I contacted him, I received a reply from his granddaughter Erin, who described herself as the family historian who had prompted her grandfather to take a DNA test.
At first, Erin was not aware of any relatives from Warsaw, but through the In Common With tool on Ancestry, she was able to pin down that her family’s connection to Pnina was through Jay’s paternal Berlanstein/Klauser family. Further research on JRI Poland and JewishGen revealed that the Berlansteins were indeed from Warsaw. Erin told me she would contact a cousin who might be able to provide more information on the family history.
A few weeks later, a close match named HFerzt appeared on Pnina’s AncestryDNA list. I was stunned. I contacted Erin immediately – the In Common With tool indicated that Pnina, Jay, and and HFerzt were all related.
Erin informed me that the cousin was Helen Ferszt. Her grandfather Jay had been skeptical about his connection to Pnina so Helen agreed to test as a confirmation, never realizing how life-changing her offer would be.
Helen’s maternal grandmother Adele Berlanstein was the sister of Jay’s paternal grandfather Zanwell Berlanstein. Helen and Jay share a common set of great grandparents, making them second cousins.
Helen and I got on the phone right away. She had already been alerted to the match by Erin and was very excited. She explained that after the war, her mother had searched endlessly for information on what had happened to her family back in Warsaw, taking Helen with her to agency after agency, hoping to discover the fate of her sisters and their children in Warsaw, but always leaving empty handed.
As Helen explained, her mother Frida told her the family stories when she was a child, but she was too young to understand. She has forgotten much of it. There were many gaps we had to fill in.
Based on their relative ages, the amount of DNA they shared, and what Helen could remember about her family, we discovered that Helen and Pnina are first cousins once removed.
Yitzak Birsztajn and Adele Berlandstein must be Helen’s grandparents and Pnina’s great grandparents. Another way of saying this is that Helen’s mother Frida and Pnina’s grandmother were sisters, that is, one of Helen’s aunts was Pnina’s grandmother. But which aunt, and was the aunt the mother of Pnina’s father or the mother of Pnina’s mother?
Related through Mom or Dad?
A clue to which of Pnina’s parents share the connection with Helen is provided by mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA). MtDNA is passed exclusively along the direct female line of a family. A mother passes it to all of her children, a father does not; people who share the same mtDNA are connected through only female relatives. In other words, if you draw a line connecting two people in a family tree, they will share mtDNA if the line passes through all females.
Starting with Helen, and tracing up the family tree, through Frida, to Adele Berlandstein, and then back down the tree through Pnina’s parent to Pnina:
Helen ==> Frida ==> Adele ==> Pnina’s grandmother ==> Pnina’s parent ==> Pnina
If the connection is through Pnina’s mother, the two would be linked by all females and they would share the same mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA). If the connection is through Pnina’s father, they will not share the same mtDNA.
Since Helen’s mtDNA haplogroup is N1b2, and Pnina’s is H5, they must be linked through Pnina’s father. Helen’s aunt (whichever aunt that is) must be Pnina’s father’s mother, that is, her paternal grandmother. This is good news – knowing who that aunt married will give us Pnina’s last name.
To be continued.
Part I: Who Am I? What is My Name? Pnina, Otwoc, and the Kaczmareks
Part II: Who Am I? What is My Name? Pnina, Wolfgang, and the Warsaw Ghetto
Part III: Who Am I? What is My Name? Gertrude and Sonia Spyra
Part IV – Who Am I, What is My Name? Wolfgang & Adele’s Eyewitness Account
Part V – Who Am I, What is My Name? Gertrude and Sonia’s Escape
Part VI – Who Am I, What is My Name? Our Search for Gertrude Spiro
Part VII – Who Am I? What is My Name? Gertrude’s Other Children?
Part VIII – Who Am I? What is My Name? Gertrud and Leo’s Trial
Part IX – Who Am I? What is My Name? Gertrude’s Sisters!
Part X: Who Am I? What is My Name? Gertrude’s Marriage and Divorce
Part XI: Who Am I? What is My Name? Berlin, Warsaw, and the German Soldier