Where We Think Eitan Shimko’s Ancestors Fit

With some excellent sleuth-work by cousin Kristie Weiland Cohen, turning up references to Shimon Strauber in the Yad Vashem Names database, here’s where we think Eitan’s ancestors fit into the big pictures.

Click on the graphic to see it in greater detail.

It will be interesting as we gather more information, and especially more people’s recollections, to see how the chart takes shape.

A large part of Herman Strauber’s family was killed during the Holocaust, though the dates of death aren’t clear. The Yad Vashem testimony seems to have been given by a cousin named Pnina Zandbank in 1953, more than a decade after the people died. It is possible, given the trauma on the survivors of horrors of the war and the decade that transpired that not every fact is accurate.

Also, the Yad Vashem testimony raises some questions. Did Yeta, Shimon’s wife, who may have been in her early 60s at the time of the German occupation, survive? She’s not listed in Yad Vashem. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that her records did not turn up on a search. Perhaps variants in the spelling of the name kept me from locating it. Or possibly, she had died of natural causes before the war. The testimony on Shimon’s death describes him as “married” at the time of his death in 1942, but perhaps there was not an option for “widowed.” It’s difficult to say much beyond what the Yad Vashem documents say.