Meredith Kratzer Sellers: 0:00

I'm looking up potential Facebook profiles and I pull up what I think is a a Facebook page for Gerta's granddaughter, and I see the indication you have one mutual friend.

Crista Cowan: 0:15

Stories That Live in Us is a podcast that inspires you to form deep connections with your family, past, present, and future. I'm Crista Cowan, known online as The Barefoot Genealogist. Counting down to the upcoming celebration of America's 250th birthday, you'll meet families from each state whose stories are woven into the very fabric of America. Tales of immigration, migration, courage, and community that remind us that when we tell our stories, we strengthen the bonds that connect us. So join me for season two as we discover from sea to shining sea the stories that live in us. Several years ago, I found myself on stage in front of an audience at a genealogy conference playing a game show called, wait for it, Jupiter. Yep. It was the Jewish Genealogy Conference, and uh it was a tradition at the conference for years to host a game night. And a dear friend of mine, Ron Ahrens, every year would put together a game show called Jupyter. And he would personally invite the contestants. And I was on stage with Miriam Margoles. If you're a Harry Potter fan, you might recognize her as Professor Sprout. I was on stage with the gentleman who, from the woman in white, was the lawyer who actually was involved with that particular case, and me. And my last name is Cowen, not Cohen. As a matter of fact, there was a blogger from that particular conference who wanted to make sure everybody knew I was not Jewish because I've become so much a part of the Jewish genealogy community. In fact, I serve on the board of directors for the International Jewish Genealogical Society. And so how does somebody with my background get involved in that community? Well, you've heard parts of that story in other episodes. And that is something I am super passionate about because I've developed the skills to be able to serve that community in that way. My guest today is Meredith Kratzer-Sellers, and her background is as an engineer. She's not a genealogist by training or by profession, but she has found a really unique way to serve a community with the skills that she has. And those really unique skills are going to take us from across the sea all the way to the state of Florida. Enjoy my conversation with Meredith Kratzer Sellers. Well, Meredith, I'm so excited to have you join me. I am excited to get to know you a little bit as well. So I would love for you just to share with us about you and your background and your family story.

Meredith Kratzer Sellers: 3:15

Great. Thank you so much for the invitation. I have a pretty varied background. I was born in the US, but actually grew up in America, Africa, and England. My mother was born in Scotland right after World War II. And uh my Scottish and English roots were pretty present in my life growing up by holidays, the foods we ate. Um, so I was raised learning about my Scottish grandfather, who had been an aerial photographer during World War II. I was also lucky enough to spend time with my paternal grandparents who were of Eastern European origins and had a very melting pot American experience growing up. I love that. So, how did your parents meet? My parents actually met in England when my father was stationed there in the 70s. That makes sense. And then where in Scotland is your mom from? My grandfather was actually born in Glasgow, but my roots are from Lanarkshire and Earthshire.

Crista Cowan: 4:20

Okay. I love Scotland. I have a lot of deep roots there and have made many a family history trip to Scotland.

Meredith Kratzer Sellers: 4:27

It is beautiful, and I can confidently say that my husband did not understand much of what my grandfather said before his passing.

Crista Cowan: 4:35

So a very, very thick Scottish broke current. That's fantastic. Well, tell us a little bit about your professional background and you know what first interested you in family history.

Meredith Kratzer Sellers: 4:48

Yeah, so I'm a chemical engineer by training, but I have always been fascinated by history. As a kid, I would watch the British archaeological show Time Team and read stories about Eleanor of Aquitaine and the Black Plague. And actually, leading up to our wedding, we were brainstorming what we could do as a gift to our families. And I conceived of this idea to create a family tree and a bound book that we could give, except I had to figure out how to do that first. And so that was when the genealogical bug hit me. That's amazing.

Crista Cowan: 5:31

Um, and what a beautiful wedding gift. I love that. Um I own a business that does family tree chart printing for people. And I love when we have it's usually a parent of the bride or the groom that comes to us and is like, I think I want to have something to display at our child's wedding. I've never had a bride come and ask for that. So I love that. We didn't have enough to do. We had to add something else to our plate. Did it work out?

Meredith Kratzer Sellers: 5:58

Yeah, yeah. And it was a great conversation piece, which was exactly what we were hoping for.

Crista Cowan: 6:02

Oh, I bet. That's incredible. So so it sounds like you grew up really kind of immersed in your own family stories and family culture. Um, and uh is it one grandparent or two that are that are Eastern European? Two. Okay, so it's your whole dad's side. Yep. And where are they from again?

Meredith Kratzer Sellers: 6:22

I have roots in Germany, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania. Um you cut the gamut. Got a lot of exposure to different archives.

Crista Cowan: 6:32

Okay. And so for your own family history, then when did, you know, did they immigrate or not immigrate? Like did the did some of them stay there? What did that look like?

Meredith Kratzer Sellers: 6:42

Yeah, so all of my ancestors came to the US between the 1860s and 1900s. So my my earliest immigrant ancestor was actually a substitute for a US citizen uh in the Civil War, ended up fighting for the Union in the Massachusetts infantry and later becoming a citizen.

Crista Cowan: 7:04

Oh my goodness. So your family immigrated a little earlier, I think, than a lot of Eastern European families. Yeah. Um, because the bulk of Eastern European immigration, especially Jewish immigration, was going to be like 1885 to about 1910, 1920, um, you know, well, right before World War I, um, when a lot of that uh immigration law changed and there were quotas put on and and things. Um and so, so yeah, a lot of the fact that your family was all here before that is kind of amazing. Uh, and so was that information that was readily available to you because of your connection with your family, or did you actually have to dive in and learn how to do that research?

Meredith Kratzer Sellers: 7:46

Very little was available to me. Um, actually, one of the documents I found very early on was a handwritten tree that I had prepared as a school assignment. Um, but no, I did not really know specific towns where my ancestors had come from. And I think that was a big driver as to why I wanted to learn more about the specifics of their history.

Crista Cowan: 8:13

Did you know both paternal grandparents?

Meredith Kratzer Sellers: 8:16

I did, yes. I I was lucky enough to have grandparents who um survived till their 80s and late 90s. So wow. I learned a lot about their own life experiences, but comparatively little about those of their parents or grandparents.

Crista Cowan: 8:33

Yeah. Well, and because you're a few generations removed, like your grandparents were not the immigrants, right? Was that was it their their grandparents in most cases? Yes. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And so when you're a generation or two removed from that immigrant experience, sometimes those stories get lost or yeah, not passed down, sometimes intentionally, sometimes unintentionally. Yeah. Did your grandparents have information for you when you got interested, or were they already gone by then?

Meredith Kratzer Sellers: 9:01

No, my grandfather had done a bit of digging on his own time, sort of in the early days of uh online genealogy records, uh, and using some of the resources that we'll talk about later, I'm sure. But yeah, he hadn't been able to uncover too much. And uh my grandmother's side was a pretty blank slate.

Crista Cowan: 9:24

Okay, wow. So you you said you're a chemical engineer. How does your your interest and passion and education and career play into this hobby of family history?

Meredith Kratzer Sellers: 9:36

Yeah, and I started with the genealogical work while I was in graduate school. So I think a lot of what I've learned in my career has led to the way I approach the research process in a very structured, logical fashion. And when I became more familiar with concepts like the genealogical proof standard, I realized that a lot of the components of that were things I was used to doing day in and day out, like conducting reasonably exhausted research and correlating and interpreting evidence. So it was that, and I think my interest in following very small but significant clues and big sets of data that was critical to growing as a family history researcher.

Crista Cowan: 10:33

Yeah. So it's interesting because a lot of people who undertake family history as a hobby find ways to connect it to their career, right? My father's an accountant and he loves numbers and order, and family history is very attractive to him because of the logic behind it as well. Um, and it sounds like for you, that whole scientific process or methodology made sense to your brain. But um, but not a lot of people, I think, venture out of it from a hobby into kind of a volunteer vocation almost. Um, and so what was the pull for you to dedicate more time, not just to researching your own family, but but other families as well?

Meredith Kratzer Sellers: 11:16

Yeah, I would say I'm always motivated by efforts where the broader impact is clear and there's opportunities for continuing education. So very early on, I would offer to help friends with their family history questions so that I could gain experience in specific countries. I volunteered in my local family history center. And I was looking back, and it was actually in the early 2010s, that I worked on my first team-based volunteer project, which at the time was about finding and notifying families of veterans awaiting burial or buried in national cemeteries that did not have family arrangements. Um, and then over time I gained more experience with genetic genealogy, realized I had the skills to help with unknown parentage searches. And that's when I gained what I think is somewhat distinct skill set from some genealogists, which is working forward in time to identify living individuals who are connected to either specific ancestors or as we'll talk about today, objects. Uh so I've been very active with a large Facebook group called Search Squad for the last five years and helping adoptees and individuals who are donor-conceived with their family history questions.

Crista Cowan: 12:47

Such great work. I love that. And interestingly enough, you and I have a lot of parallels, right? So my two research specialties, uh, one is Jewish immigration to the United States. I am not Jewish, however. I just grew up in a very predominantly Jewish community in Southern California. And that was kind of when I launched my family history research business where I landed was with a lot of Jewish clients. And so I had to quickly figure out how to do Jewish family history research. And there are some nuances and some differences. And um, and so I'd love to just talk about that just a little bit. Like, for example, one of the greatest resources for Jewish family history research is a website called Jewish Gen. Yep. Tell us a little bit about that.

Meredith Kratzer Sellers: 13:34

So, Jewish Gen was established as a nonprofit in the 80s and became an affiliate of the Museum of Jewish Heritage in 2003. It is a global online resource. It provides genealogists with tools to research Jewish family history. And my earliest exposure to Jewish gen was leveraging the resources available on the website, uh, features such as its family finder database where you can go in and indicate surnames and towns of interest to you. They had a very early interface where you could submit images of records in different languages and request uh translation by volunteers and a burial registry as well. Um, in the last few years, Jewish Gen actually uh teamed up with the Museum of Jewish Heritage to establish a research center in New York City. So the Calico Jewish Genealogical Research Center now functions as the physical home of Jewish Gen, and people can visit that and work with the genealogists there. Yeah.

Crista Cowan: 14:46

And then of course, Ancestry hosts the Jewish Gen data online and is able to provide some of that computing power for the service that they offer, which is amazing. And I love the resources available through Jewish Gen. Um, talk to us then a little bit about the Collection Jewish Community Nuremberg Project and what that is and how you got involved with it.

Meredith Kratzer Sellers: 15:12

Yeah, so what we'll in English refer to as the uh the Collection Jewish Community Nuremberg Project, or sometimes the IKG collection, consisted of about 10,000 books that were found in the offices of the Nazi newspaper Der Sturmer and on the estate of its founder, uh Julius Streicher, who was a German publicist, uh member of the Nazi party, and convicted war criminal. And most of these books were taken illegally by the Nazis from Jews and other victims of Nazi persecution. So at the end of World War II, the collection was placed in the hands of the Nuremberg Jewish community that subsequently gave it on permanent loan to the Nuremberg Municipal Library. Um, for those who are familiar with restitution law, there was a very important conference in the late 90s that uh formalized the Washington Conference principles on Nazi confiscated art. And those principles really breathed new life into post-war restitution efforts. German libraries carried out dedicated initiatives to search their holdings for Nazi confiscated books, and whenever possible, they were to investigate and make public the information about those holdings. And so at the beginning of that process, the library, in conjunction with the Jewish community, determined that they wanted to hand back these books to the former owners or their successors wherever possible. So, how first of all, how on earth did you learn about this? So, in the 25 years since this effort um really started in Nuremberg, there'd been incredible uh efforts uh carried out already. So over 900 books had been returned to heirs in in 13 countries by the time I got involved. And funny enough, in 2014, one of those books was received by Karen Franklin, who's now the director of outreach for Jewish Gen. And Karen and some additional volunteers began presenting about the looted books effort in 2024, uh, both at a Jewish genealogy society meeting and on Jewish Gen. And they issued a call for individuals who had expertise to join the team. And I sent an email. And since that point, a team of about 20 of us have been assisting in the research for about 700 books on our current list.

Crista Cowan: 18:18

That's amazing. So it's so interesting to me how it's just this perfect convergence of your skills, too, right? Like your Jewish background and your own research into your own family history, the research you were doing for other people, and then this genetic genealogy skill that you developed that is my other research specialty as well, that ability to like trace descendants and come to find living people, which is a lot of people call it reverse genealogy or descendancy research, but it's a whole different mindset and a little bit of a different methodology. And you have to overcome privacy issues and all sorts of other things to find those living people. And so you've developed these skills over time, and now there's this opportunity to use those skills in this really kind of noble cause to return these artifacts to people. I think that that's incredible. And then that you answered the call. Um, what was it about it that like what why? Like, why did you answer that call? Not just because you have the skills, I suspect.

Meredith Kratzer Sellers: 19:23

Yeah, I mean, as you might see in the background, I've always had a soft spot for books. Um, and I think it's just, you know, the concept that these items have this story that we can only begin to speculate about. And that in many cases they do have people that should be in possession of them. Um, and so to the extent I can help to a small part with that, uh, it's just a an honor and a pleasure.

Crista Cowan: 19:58

So something of just I've I I'm hearing maybe.

Meredith Kratzer Sellers: 20:03

Like setting the world right and to a very small degree, yes.

Crista Cowan: 20:07

Yeah. Well, and and when so much in the world is chaotic and messy and not able to be set right. Um, I think maybe there's something really satisfying about being able to do a small part to write some wrongs.

Meredith Kratzer Sellers: 20:20

Yeah.

Crista Cowan: 20:21

I love that. So uh you said there were about 900 books that had already been returned by the time you got involved in the project, but that for 20 some odd years people um had been cataloging um our artifacts in their collections and in their possession. How how vast? Like how many things or how many items are we talking about ultimately that need to be returned?

Meredith Kratzer Sellers: 20:46

Yeah, it was about 2,000 books in Nuremberg's collection that they had identified as carrying provenance marks and suspected of being illegally confiscated. Obviously, there's a significant number in the collection with no inscriptions, in which case there's really not a lot of options in terms of identifying claimants. But for those that had any identifying marks whatsoever, a stamp, a handwritten signature, um, those were all diligently cataloged, photographed, uh, and information about them made available on the Lost Art internet database, with the second part of that being this proactive effort to identify potential claimants as opposed to um hoping someone might stumble across their ancestors' name on a list.

Crista Cowan: 21:39

So, so about 2,000 books just from Nuremberg. Correct. Um and then do you have any idea how many from other places around the world?

Meredith Kratzer Sellers: 21:50

I don't actually. And I think the the short answer is probably that a lot of institutions are still working themselves to figure that out. Um, people are quite familiar with some of the headline stories about particular artwork. Uh, but I think it's some of the more everyday objects, if you will, um, that are trickier to understand if they have a history suggesting they were illegally confiscated or flight goods.

Crista Cowan: 22:25

Yeah, because because if the Nazis were stealing very expensive art or jewelry, those things are always going to make the headlines. But but a book is something that is so, like you said, every day, so simple. Um, and so why like why is that maybe equally as important to try to return as an expensive work of art? Yes. Like yeah, like that just like the the the thought of um of of the I'm I'm just trying to articulate this, right? Because I think I'm a little bit overwhelmed as you think about like of course they were gonna steal art, of course they were gonna steal jewelry, but they also stole not just books, and books are books are so important to me too, but probably comfort items from children. And you know, having walked through um Auschwitz and experienced like the dehumanization, um, they did they strip them of everything. But to then confiscate those things and keep them in private collections, um in some cases almost like trophies, that the the horror of that is, I think, a little bit overwhelming to me right now. Maybe that's what I'm feeling.

Meredith Kratzer Sellers: 23:41

It is. And I think it's, you know, when you're talking about this sort of research, there is an extent to which you, when you're caring out, do have to depersonalize it, right? Because you're looking at record sets and information that really convey horrible things about what happened to entire families. Um, and then I think that's really one of the special parts when we're able to reunite a family with a book, it drives home that very personal nature of what we're doing, um, not just names on paper, right?

Crista Cowan: 24:17

Yeah. So walk us through what is the typical process of reuniting a book with a family?

Meredith Kratzer Sellers: 24:24

Based on the detailed scanning efforts and the cataloging already carried out by the library, we're typically starting with a name of an individual, a place. Sometimes we may have information about a suspected occupation or biodata. Our current working list, I checked uh before today, we actually have books associated with individuals born in the early 1700s, ranging through to 1927. Uh, so the subsequent research and the restitution is all done in compliance with German property law. We're relying on a variety of resources to build out family trees. So sometimes we discover that an owner has surviving descendants, other times we can only identify nieces, nephews, cousins. We're documenting all the findings and provide a dossier to the library outlining what we've discovered. We do also make initial contact with the successors and introduce them to the library. And after that, the the books are retrieved from the shelves, the appropriate paperwork is completed, and the items are packaged up with care and shipped to the families.

Crista Cowan: 25:52

That's amazing. And it seems like maybe a process that's been refined over a lot of years to get to this point so that more people can participate. And and I think that that's really a tribute to those who started this project. Yeah. So um focusing on, and you're gonna have to make sure I pronounce this correctly. Is it Icefeld? Yes. Okay, so the Icefeld prayer book. Um, what information did you have to start with with that book?

Meredith Kratzer Sellers: 26:21

Yeah, so for Hertz Icefeld's book, the handwritten notes on the inside of the work included a name and a specific municipality in Bavaria. So the the municipality is Calm involved. And this had led to the initial theory that the Hertho we were looking for was uh a woman, then young girl born in that German town in 1912. And so from that starting point, uh it was to need to build a family tree, uh, focusing on the surviving relatives and make sure that we had consistency between the provenance information and the genealogical research.

Crista Cowan: 27:11

And so walk us through that. Like what other, like what records were you using? How like how did you even identify her to begin with?

Meredith Kratzer Sellers: 27:21

Yeah, as we can imagine the the complexity is quite dependent upon the name of the book owner. Um, so luckily, uh, in the case of Hertha, it's it's quite an uncommon name. And I, in my initial searches, had found a list dating from 1946 from a displaced persons camp that referenced uh a Hertha Eisfeld with ties to the specific hometown I was looking for, um, which was a very encouraging clue because that suggested to me that Herta had lived to adulthood and was being sought out by uh a Holocaust survivor. I was subsequently able to locate uh a US Social Security application and claims index uh entry, and that listed uh Hertha Bach born Eisfeld. Once again, we importantly had that link to her birthplace, Tom, in Bavaria. Uh so that suggested to me she had entered the US in the 1950s and uh was a jumping off point for the the subsequent research.

Crista Cowan: 28:38

And then and then from there, so if you found her in a social security claims application, that means she's deceased at that point. And so so then how are you how are you finding the rest of her family?

Meredith Kratzer Sellers: 28:49

Yeah, yeah, piece by piece. Um, so I discovered a corresponding index entry from the Florida death index indicating she passed away in Miami-Dade County in 1998. And uh luckily for me, there was a photograph of her gravestone on Find a Grave. And the inscription on that contained the text, beloved wife, mother, and daughter. So that gave me the confidence that at least at the time she passed in 1998, she had a surviving descendant. And so then you go to what next? Then we're typically switching to white page type sources, social media, LinkedIn, uh trying newspaper clippings, trying to find anything that can help us work forward in time to those living individuals. And so I had my eye on a specific group of Bach family members who were still living in Florida.

Crista Cowan: 29:58

And did you have an obituary to guide you through this to like to give you names, or were you just going strictly off a surname and a location?

Meredith Kratzer Sellers: 30:05

I was going off of some white pages type entries as well as location information. Uh I actually don't believe I was able to find an obituary for her.

Crista Cowan: 30:17

And so then is that the point at which you reach out to these people and start asking questions?

Meredith Kratzer Sellers: 30:24

Yeah, we do a lot of research up front. Uh we want to make sure we understand um sort of the breadth of the family that we're looking for. And in this case, it seemed to me that uh her surviving descendants and their family unit was actually quite small and and closely co-located in Florida. So that was the stage at which I thought about reaching out to them. Okay.

Crista Cowan: 30:50

So are you learning the story of her and her life through your research, or are you really just trying to narrow straight down to the descendants? Um, or so are you learning it during your research process, or are you learning it after you contact the family and they share more information?

Meredith Kratzer Sellers: 31:08

Yeah, I would say in this case it's a mix of both, right? As we are collecting records, we're finding newspaper clippings talking about someone's bar mitzvah, we might be finding um, you know, a stumbling stone biography for for some of our other book owners that lists information on living relatives. So it really depends.

Crista Cowan: 31:32

Okay. And then as you're doing this research, I suspect you're also using social media.

Meredith Kratzer Sellers: 31:37

Yep.

Crista Cowan: 31:38

And I I know I use Facebook quite a lot when I'm doing uh genetic genealogy and trying to connect the dots. And so you had an experience with Herda's granddaughter as you were doing some of that research, yes?

Meredith Kratzer Sellers: 31:50

I did, I did. Um, you know, I think those of us that have been doing this research for quite a while sometimes have a moment that we find a little, I don't know if it's prophetic or interesting, that moment where you spot that someone you've been researching and just found that critical record for maybe passed away on a date that's meaningful to you. Um, and so in this case, I part of the process, I'm looking up potential Facebook profiles and I pull up what I think is a Facebook page for Hertha's granddaughter, and I see the indication you have one mutual friend. So I clicked on the connection only to discover it was actually my dear friend's husband, who, like Alexandra, lived in the Miami area, works in the legal profession, made perfect sense. And so within Bennett's actually, I'm texting saying, Do you know this person in real life? And having to explain why that's a question that's important to me.

Crista Cowan: 32:59

Right. So, how then um do you approach Alexandra and the family with this information?

Meredith Kratzer Sellers: 33:06

Yeah, so that helped a lot in this instance. I was able to obtain an introduction through this mutual connection. As you can imagine, many of the families we contact are initially quite skeptical about our efforts and intentions. Uh, so it's actually a great benefit that we can often direct them to the holding information in the Nuremberg Library catalog so they can verify our inquiry. And shortly after I was able to share information about the item with Alexandra and her father, they were able to look at the scans of the work and actually confirm that the handwriting was her grandmother's script.

Crista Cowan: 33:50

Well, that's amazing. So I would love if you would share with us just a little bit about Herta's story, you know, what you discovered, but also what the family shared with you and what Herta's family's experiences were during World War II.

Meredith Kratzer Sellers: 34:07

Yeah, and the Bach family has been incredibly gracious in sharing this information with us. Um, you know, Hertha fled from Germany uh and ultimately ended up in what was then mandatory Palestine in the 1930s. Um, while she fled and survived, her older brother Gerhard actually fought in the French resistance. Uh, he was captured, uh deported from Jancy and killed at Auschwitz. Uh so his name is actually inscribed on the Shoah memorial in Paris. And Arta married. Uh she and her husband had one son uh before emigrating to the US in 1954. They failed on the SS constitution from Italy to New York, and uh she would go on to become a naturalized citizen in 1959.

Crista Cowan: 35:09

Wow. And did they go straight to Florida or did they settle somewhere else first?

Meredith Kratzer Sellers: 35:14

Yeah, they were initially in the Northeast in Connecticut. Um, and their only son went on to obtain a degree from the University of Miami School of Law and raise a family in Florida, uh, practicing as an attorney. Uh so his daughter, Alexandra, would go on to attain a law degree from the same institution. And his son is also currently uh a county court judge in Miami-Dade County.

Crista Cowan: 35:42

As you connected with Alexandra and her father, Lewis, like uh what was there other things that Lewis shared with you about his mother?

Meredith Kratzer Sellers: 35:53

Yeah, I mean, they were, I think, just incredibly grateful for the opportunity to have the book returned to them. Um Alexandra had later shared with me a photograph of a memorial plaque to Herta in her hometown. And I found the inscription on it very touching. So it actually says um, an evil spirit of barbarism and its submissive lackeys robbed her of her home and family, sad memories and painful longing, but also true friends bound her to her native country to the end. And you know, I when I was thinking about that, the inscription, you know, it references that it references these sad memories, and I think that's why it's even more poignant that the restituted item uh recalls this time in Herda's life prior to that strife, prior to that heartbreak, her time as a school child practicing cursive in a prayer book.

Crista Cowan: 37:07

Yeah, so so this prayer book, right, like it's not just a book. It is not just a book. So you have you reconnected them with the library, and then the library packages it up and ships it to the family. Um, do you ever get to hear the rest of the story or have continued contact with the family or know what their experience is like receiving that item?

Meredith Kratzer Sellers: 37:34

Yeah. So Alexandra shared with me that her and her father live blocks apart. So her father went to her house for dinner and they were able to open the package together. Um, and some of our families have been able to take photos and videos of this process, which is just a joy to receive.

Crista Cowan: 37:54

I love that. That's really beautiful. Um, you know, beyond the great historical significance of this work that you're doing, um, like there's a lot of emotional impact here. And in some cases, that impact could be um reopening things that a lot of people try to bury or not think about or not talk about. In some cases, it could be um painful, in some cases it can be healing, I think. Um what what aspects of this whole process are most meaningful to you as you think about that?

Meredith Kratzer Sellers: 38:28

Yeah, I mean, I think those of us involved in this process, there's this mixed emotions. It's both sort of wonder at this process as well as the sorrow that these items survive when so many people didn't write. It's this craving to understand if these books could talk, what would they tell us? Um, I think for me, one of the really unique aspects that I alluded to is that we're returning what are in many cases like everyday household books. They're not clipped portraits, lost Raphaels. And yet when a family member unwraps the package, they recognizes the handwriting, they're just amazed. Um and as you're familiar with Jewish genealogy, um and those listening might be there's a a Hebrew word mitzvah, which you know strictly translates to commandment, uh, but is often interpreted as you know a good deed. And I think those of us that have volunteered with this project have just gained an incredible sense of fulfillment, including by the new connections we've formed, as well as just the joy that we've brought to these families. I love that.

Crista Cowan: 39:53

If people, if other people want to get involved in this, what do they need to do?

Meredith Kratzer Sellers: 39:58

Yeah, so you can go on. Line right now and review the list of looted books on the Jewish Gen site, also on the Looted Art website. So if you spot a connection to one of those names, you are welcome to contact me, Karen Franklin, the Nuremberg Municipal Library. We're often also looking for those with genealogy backgrounds or translation capabilities.

Crista Cowan: 40:35

Then we'll make sure we include links to all of that in the show notes so that people can access that readily. So some people might be a little bit confused or want to understand the connection because right now we're in the middle of season two of the podcast and we're talking about America 250. And if they've made the connection by now or not, I don't know. But this story about Herda and her family is representing the state of Florida. And there's a million stories we could have told about the state of Florida. It's it's got the oldest European settlement in the nation. And certainly we could have taken an angle and talked about that. There are, you know, Cuban ties, there are, there are just so much rich history in Florida. But as we think about connecting this story from Germany to Florida and the role that that Florida plays as a safe haven, even today, for a lot of Jewish families, but especially in those years immediately following the war. But I love that Florida has played that role and and becomes a character in this story as this place where Hertis family lives.

Meredith Kratzer Sellers: 42:06

Yeah. And uh, I referenced my own ancestors who who settled, you know, initially in in New York City in St. Louis, but my grandparents lived in Fort Myers, Florida, uh, for the last 20 years of their lives. Um they were active in their community. I had the pleasure of of visiting them. And so I think it's just wonderful that Herda's descendants made Florida their home and have flourished there and just excelled in their chosen past.

Crista Cowan: 42:40

Yeah, absolutely. Well, Merida, thank you so much. Thank you for the work that you're doing. I think it's so important and meaningful. Um, and thank you for sharing Herda's story with us today.

Meredith Kratzer Sellers: 42:50

My pleasure.

Crista Cowan: 42:53

Studio sponsored by Ancestry.