Tiszabogdány · Subcarpathia

Engineering Remembrance

One surname. One shtetl. One trade. Together again, over 80 years later.

Helman · Tiszabogdány · Fuhrmann

A repeatable method for recovering family histories from online archives through AI-assisted record linkage. Developed on a Holocaust case, and not limited to one.

Buchenwald intake photographs of Lajos, Michal and Zacharias Helman, 2 June 1944, boards 322, 323 and 324 — Buchenwald intake, 2 June 1944. The placards read A 2 6 44, then the board number. Two brothers and their uncle. All three born and raised in Tiszabogdány, all three arrested there, all three Helmans and all three carters by trade, *Fuhrmann* on the form and *balagula* in Yiddish, photographed one behind the other about a week after Auschwitz and housed together in the tent camp at Z-4. Their cards were then filed apart for more than eighty years. Here they are side by side again. Arolsen Archives · prisoner cards 56906, 57103, 57101

Where it started

Helen Landó Helman was born in Tiszabogdány, a village in the Carpathians, and she was the only one of her immediate family to survive the war. Her mother, her father and five of her brothers and sisters were murdered in 1944. For decades there was nothing of them: no photograph, no grave, no dates.

In 2019 the Arolsen Archives put their holdings online and one prisoner card surfaced, her father’s. The family assumed that was the end of it. The research began in 2026, and it is now a dossier of more than three hundred records. None of it required travel. Read how it was found.

The standard

An identification is admitted only where independent record types corroborate one another without contradiction, and every linkage is verified against the primary document. Where the evidence supports a probable conclusion rather than a proven one, it is stated as probable.

Helen · 1929 to 2013

Helen at Kloster Indersdorf, 1946, with her friend Ibi Weinberger — 1946Indersdorf, Germany, with her best friend Ibi Weinberger (middle)

Helen in Chicago, 1947 — 1947Chicago, USA

Helen, studio portrait, 1950s — 1950sStudio portrait

Helen with her granddaughter Sam, 2000 — 2000With her granddaughter Sam

Helen with her granddaughter Sam at her high school graduation, 2010 — 2010With Sam, Huntington Beach High School graduation

“We all have stories to tell. You know, all of us have some kind of story to tell.”

Helen Landó Helman, speaking at a high school, 2003

If you are trying to find your own family

Write to me. I read everything, and if I can point you at the right collection I will. Start with the method and the databases.

sgrajews@stanford.edu

Speaking at the World Federation of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Descendants, 36th Annual Conference, Philadelphia, 23 to 26 October 2026.

The signature of Zacharias Helman — Zacharias Helman · Buchenwald registration form, 2 June 1944