What if one day, out of the blue, you opened your email to see a picture like the one attached to this blog? And if that picture was of your great-grandfather, the unknown father of your mysterious grandmother Lorraine, who had an intriguing story of changing her identity in order to marry your grandfather? What would you do?

My guess is that you would be thrilled, & immediately try to find out more. And that is exactly what happened. We were hooked! Since we were heading to France in a month, & had already planned a Roots Trip to England, why not add another trip to Lithuania, the birthplace of this handsome young man?

America, as you all know, is a land of immigrants. Most of us came from somewhere, & their journey wasn't easy. My "people" were English on both sides, & dutifully kept records in family Bibles, & elsewhere. The handwriting may have been hard to decipher, but you can figure it out. You can look up the villages & towns & research the history so easily. Planning our English Roots Trip this summer with my siblings, I was able to locate the address of the neighborhood where both grandparents lived growing up, 4 doors from each other, before they married. I also got the history of the coal mine, where Grandpa worked, before he decided that mining was DONE in his village. He needed to emigrate to the US, & start a new life, because he wouldn't be able to support his family in England. He left first, in late 1905, & she followed him in 1906, with one daughter he'd known & the new one, recently born. It's a good story, with a happy ending, since they did start a new life as farmers, had a total of 8 children, & became respected members of their small community. It turns out he was totally right in his thinking: the mine did eventually close. And unfortunately the mining cottage where they lived, & the mine itself, are all gone. In August, we will be lookng at a park instead of a mine. We will make do with a trip to the Mining Museum!

But this great-grandpa came from Lithuania, a year earlier than my English one. With a super complicated history, changing governments, & multiple languages, "Finding Ike", for Les & I was not easy, but was an incredible & thrilling experience.

Years ago, while living in Chicago, Les got intrigued with his German ancestry, & was ultimately successful in "Finding Casper" & his antecedents. It took massive perserverance, but he eventually got accurate information from St. Micheal's Church, where Casper's children's births were recorded. This led us to explore further in Bavaria, & we did find the names & dates of Casper's family. We will never forget that day, in the parish record office in Passau, when the woman arrived with a cart full of 6 folio sized books, slamming down 2 books at a time on the table. "Here are the births, here are the marriages, & here are the deaths!" I remember thinking that is really what life is, that circle that goes on & on.

So when Ike's picture arrived, in my email box, Les & I took a good look at it. Wow, what a guy! What was his story? Les' sister's information said he came from Russia, his race was Hebrew, & he arrived in Philadelphia in December of 1904, on the SS Merion, from Liverpool.

We had long suspected that Grandma Lorraine was Jewish. In fact Les' DNA shows he is 25% Jewish. He doesn't remember much of her, as she died at 53 from some kind of cancer, in AZ. The story is long, complicated, & almost unbelievable. Her real name was Belle Weizer. She met Les' grandfather at the U of Illinois when both were very young, & WWII was looming. They wanted to marry, & knew that Grandpa's family was anti-semitic, & would object to this marriage. It was a time of great suspicion of anybody not conforming to rigid rules of American society. Grandpa & Belle ran away (to Crown Point Indiana) to what was then a marriage factory, where you could get married for $10, no questions asked, no identity needed, etc.

Long story short, although her real name was Belle Weizer, she apparently changed her name (right there in the registry office!) to Lorraine Berchette. She also listed her country of origin as France & subtracted a few years from her birth date. Very effcient, to go from a Jewish girl, born in NYC, of Lithuanian (Russian at that time) Jewish parents, all with one signature. Unfortunately, she only got away with it for a few years, & she ended up ostracized by the family, & retreated to her bedroom until they managed to break away & move to AZ. My mother-in-law, married early & with several children, lived in the same household, & has told us a few stories about this very unusual woman.

Can you imagine having your mother come to visit, & introducing her as a "friend of the family"? Truthfully, we don't know if Ike ever saw his daughter again after she married. Think of what they all missed!

According to the ship manifest, Ike was born in a small town in what is now Belarus (a Russian puppet country), about an hour from Vilnius, Lithuania (a European Union country). But Vilnius is not only a city (the capitol of Lithuania), it is also a province, & something about the picture made us wonder. He didn't look like a peasant who came from a small village. Nor did, after more research, HIS parents look like peasants. They looked quite prosperous, c. 1900. We had their names, the last name different from Ike's, which we figured may have been Americanized.

This area has been Lithuanian, Russian, & Polish, & then when you throw in the Yiddish, & the American, it's a language mess. Ike's father's name eventually proved to be the key to unlock the records. Before our trip, we had tried some Lithuanian genealogists, but they got nowhere. So we decided to just poke around in Vilnius when we got there. Believe it or not, we found him.

We'd done a "Jewish tour" on Saturday, & our guide recommended that we go to the Jewish Cultural Center. In fact, she called the gal there, & told her we were coming on Sunday afternoon. Rima was ready for us, & she dove in. The wonderful Rima said that the last name "Weizer" was not a Jewish name. She fooled around with other variants of that name, & got nowhere, either in Vilnius or in Smorgon, Belarus, the town Ike had listed as his place of birth. Then we mentioned that we had another name for his parents, Wassermann, & she changed it to the yiddish version, & found Ike's father, in Vilnius, about a 10 minute walk from where we were standing.

After she found Berel, she found "Ike" (Yitschok), his 4 siblings, his grandparents, aunts, & uncles. She was a whiz at this. As she was working on this, she was continually creating a record for us, which was on Les' email when we got back to our hotel. We even had a street name, from a census, but no number. So of course we checked it out, although it's the longest street in town, & after 2 world wars, the Nazis, & the Russians, there is no real way to zero in on a house, which most likely was torn down & replaced several times.

On our various tours, we showed the picture of Ike to every guide to ask them how they thought he would have been able to LEAVE Lithuania in 1904. Almost all Jewish young men were conscripted into the Russian army at a very early age (sometimes 12 or 13). He appears to be wearing a Russian sailor's hat in the picture. The Russians at the time were involved in a war with Japan, & it was a total mess. He would, according to 2 guides plus Rima, want to get out if he could, since the conscription was for 25 years, & he would most likely have to fight the Japanese. Rima thinks he got a fake passport, & changed a few things, so he couldn't be traced. His name, the month & day of his birth (but not the year), & his occupation were most likely deliberately modified.

It was, indeed, the father's name, Berel Wasserman, when changed to Yiddish, that traced him. Even the fact that he had 2 names made a difference. Wow. Unlike "Finding Casper" so many years ago, this search was heavily dependent on the internet. But it still took dedicated people, who were willing to help us with the search. And, as in Casper's search, it all came down to the births, the marriages, & the deaths.

But BEHIND all the records are real people, who overcame tremendous odds to get where they felt they needed to go. For my Engish grandparents, immigration was life changing. They went on to lead long lives & have many children. But for Ike, & for the rest of his family, it was a very significant & ESSENTIAL turning point. Had he stayed in Lithuania, he might have died fighting Russia's war with Japan, or during the Russian Revolution, or in WWI. And the chances he would have survived the Vilnius Ghetto (1941-43), are very slim. As a matter of fact, he died of cancer, in Chicago, in 1942 anyway. And of course, Les never knew him, since Les was born in 1947.

We are thrilled that we had the opportunity to visit Vilnius, Lithuania this summer! It's a beautiful walkable city, with 2 lovely rivers running through it, embraced by shaded parks. At one time Lithuania was the largest empire in Europe, & Vilnius became a very important center of learning for all people, with its university still existing today. The Jews, increasingly forced into the "Pale of Settlement", had times when they thrived. At other times, life was very difficult. Between the Nazis & the Russians, the remnants of Jewish life are gone, but the history is still there. If you are interested, please look through the picture albums relating to Lithuania & Vilnius, its capitol. We've arranged them into eras or themes: Vilnius Old Town, Lithuanian history, Jewish History, the Soviet Era, Lithuanian Food, and, of course, Finding Ike.

Shalom.

Elise & Les