Five rounds. Five real records.

Round 1 · Reconstruct · Buchenwald · 2 June 1944

Read the card

Zacharias Helman, Helen's father. For years, all we looked at was his photo.

1. Warm-up. Type his prisoner number, as it is on his Buchenwald card.

   57101. Searching a number like this in Arolsen is how I later found the other Helman cards. And notice whose card this is: KL Weimar-Buchenwald, top left. Auschwitz is where he was admitted first, on 26 May 1944; the Überstellt column beside it says he was moved to Buchenwald on 2 June 1944.

2. The prisoner card says born 4.11.01, read the German way as 4 November 1901. Which record do you trust for his birthday?

   

   11 April 1901, in the birth register, made when he was born (the index row beside the card is taken from it). The camp clerk swapped the day and the month. I started with JewishGen too. The index is easier for a beginner, and the real record holds more. Learn both: the index helps you find them, the scan proves it.

Reconstruct Trust the record made at the time of the event, and note where later records disagree.

Arolsen Archives · Buchenwald prisoner card (Häftlings-Personal-Karte) 57101, Zacharias Helman

Round 2 · Correlate · Buchenwald · the intake list

Read the neighbors

The nominal roll of the thousand men who reached Buchenwald from Auschwitz on 2 June 1944, listed by prisoner number. Zacharias is lit up, at 57101.

1. Zacharias is lit up. Which line would you look up next to learn about his family?

   Helman, Michal, 57103: another Helman, worth checking, with a photo of his own. Whether he is family, round 3 will test. A surname you know a line or two away is worth checking first: families travelled together and were registered together.

2. Two pages earlier, page 6, there is one more Helman. Find him and type his full prisoner number: five digits.

   56906: Helman, Lajos, one more Helman on the same roll. Whether he is family, round 3 will test. 56892 at the top, 900 rolls the hundreds over, so 6 means 56906.

Correlate Read the whole list. Family travels together.

Arolsen Archives · nominal roll of the 1,000 Hungarian-Jewish arrivals at Buchenwald, 2 June 1944, roll dated 10 June 1944, pages 8 and 6, scans 0002077 and 0002075

Round 3 · Verify · Buchenwald · registration forms

Were they brothers?

Lajos and Michal Helman, registered the same day.

1. Lajos and Michal: which line matches on both forms?

   House 330 on both forms, with the same trade and the same village.

2. The mothers' first names differ: Hany and Wilhelma. With what you've found, were they brothers?

   Yes. Count what agrees: a small village, the same house, 330; born less than a year apart; the same surname and the same trade; and the mother's maiden name, Petranker on one form and Pelranka on the other, a variant that belongs in the name matrix. The first names differ, Hany and Wilhelma, and both are in the matrix: one woman, written down by two clerks. One first name that differs isn't enough to reject a match.

3. Two civil birth records, from Bohdan's registrar, not a camp. Which surname do both give for the mother?

   Petranker, on both. Leib is Lajos: born 9 December 1924, the date on his camp form. But is the Mordko row really Michal?

   Is Mordko Michal? Match the fields, row by row.

   Michal on the camp records · Mordko on the birth index

   Field	Camp records	Birth index	Match
   Name	Michal	Mordko	Hebrew name
   Born	15 Oct 1925	15 Sep 1925	1 month
   Village	Tisro Bogdany	Tiszabogdany	Same
   Mother	née Pelranka	PETRANKER Hany	Same family

   Mordko is his Hebrew name; his family's photographs label him Mechl. The same mother and the same village. The dates are a month apart, on a birth registered late, in 1932. Lajos and Michal were brothers, now on an independent kind of record. A 'Helman' search misses Mordko: his father's field is blank, so the index files him under his mother's name. Add Mordko to Michal's row of the matrix.

Their parents. Their father: Miksa (Mišel, Misael, Miska) Helman. Their mother: Hany Petranker.

Why records differ. The village registrar knew the families and heard the same few names. The camp clerk heard all of Europe in one day, in a loud room, fast, often through another prisoner interpreting. That's why the record made closest to the person is usually the one to trust.

Verify Don't reject a match on one field. Anchor on several together.

Arolsen Archives · Buchenwald registration forms, 2 June 1944, prisoners 56906 (Lajos Helman) and 57103 (Michal Helman)

Round 4 · Normalize · Kloster Indersdorf · March 1946

What's wrong with this DP card?

Helen's registration at a children's DP center in 1946. Under it, her civil birth record from 1929.

1. Helen's birth record says 13 April 1929. Does the date in box 6 of her DP card agree?

   

   20-IV-1931. On paper she was two years younger.

2. Here is a typed transcription of Helen's entry. One reading is wrong. Whether a person or an AI typed it, check it against the scan: which field is wrong?

   Yes: the number. AI reads, you check. Read the left margin: each entry's number sits at the bottom of its entry, beside the year. Down the page: 79, then an entry crossed out, numbered 80; then 80 again, Anna's; then Helena's; then 82. Now, what does her number really say?

   What is her real entry number? Type it. (Up close, then Whole page, shows the whole margin.)

   81. The 1 looks like a 7, and the page settles it: 78, 79, 80 crossed out, 80, 81 Helena, 82. I read it as 87 at first, and fixed it from the full page. AI reads, you check, against the scan, every time.

3. Compare the DP card with her birth record under it. Which box ties the DP card to her, so you know it is her? Tap it.

   

   Helman Zacharia and Laundav Rozi: both parents named, and both agree with her birth record. That's how I knew it was her. And why her birth record gives her no surname of its own: her parents had married religiously only, with no civil marriage, so the state registered her under her mother's name, and her father acknowledged her in the margin note. Landó-ová is Landó with the Czech feminine ending, -ová.

Normalize On DP papers, trust the parents' names first.

Arolsen Archives · A.E.F. D.P. Registration Record, Kloster Indersdorf, 27 March 1946 (Arolsen 67988803)

Round 5 · Verify · My research log

Keep, set aside, or cross off?

Leads that looked right when I found them. Sort them.

1. A passport for a Dávid. I was looking for Zacharias's brother, David Helman, born 1902. A passport file for a “Dávid” turned up in the Uzhhorod archive, right era. The finding aid: David Auslender, born 1907, emigrating to New York. Zakarpattia regional archive, Uzhhorod · Fond 12, Opis 2, Delo 392, the passport file · not shown: no scan of the file is held here; it was identified from the archive's finding aid

   Where does this lead belong?

   Crossed off. A different surname and a different birth year: someone else.

2. A birth record for Roza?. Helen's mother is proven: Landó Rozi on Helen's birth record, Laundav Rozi on her DP card. What I didn't have was Roza's own birth record, the one that would name her parents. A Roza Landa, born 1911 in Uglya, looked like it, and was my best candidate for a long time. Then the birth records of Helen's brothers and sisters gave their mother as Ruchla Landa, of Ganya, not Uglya. Roza's own birth entry has never been found, so her children's records, each naming their mother, were the best evidence of who she was. Uglya is about 15 km from Ganya, Roza's maternal village, in the same Tiachiv district: close enough that a Roza Landa from there was a serious lead. Bohdan civil birth registers, 1934 to 1938 · Fund 1606, Opus 9, Delo 321 and 354 · Uglya births, Delo 385 (index only; the scan isn't held)

   Is the Uglya birth record Roza's own?

   Set aside. The siblings' records point to Ganya, but pointing elsewhere isn't ruling out. I kept this one on the list for a long time.

   The 1921 census, Ganya. Then I read the 1921 census. In Ganya, house 48: Simon (Simcha) Lebovics, his wife Sura Landa, and their daughters, Ruchlya among them: Ruchla is the Yiddish form of Roza's name, written Rozi on Helen's birth record. And the Uglya Roza's own birth record names her mother as a Perl. In 2008 Helen named her mother's sisters, Malka and Gittle; the full census sheet lists Malka and Gitla among the daughters, below the lines shown here. 1921 census of Subcarpathia, Máramaros county, Teresva district, Gánic (Ganya), house 48 · Hungaricana, pages 133–134 · Uglya births, Delo 385

   Roza's children's records name their mother as Ruchla Landa, of Ganya, and the census shows a Ruchlya in Sura Landa's house in Ganya. The Uglya Roza was born in Uglya, to a mother named Perl. Is the Uglya birth record Roza's?

   Crossed off. Helen's mother was Roza Landó, proven by Helen's birth record and her DP card, and she grew up in Sura Landa's house in Ganya. The Uglya Roza was someone else. Set aside first, crossed off once the census was read.

Verify Probable is not proven. When you can't prove it or rule it out, set it aside: it's hard, and that's allowed.

From my research log. 1921 census, Ganya, house 48 (Hungaricana); each card names the document behind it.