USEFUL SOURCES

Plock Yizkor book Soon after the war Jewish survivors of the Holocaust began to record in Yizkor books what they remembered about the people from their community who were killed. The Yizkor book for Plock, where Jane’s family were from, revealed that Jane’s great uncle Herman Temerson hid outside the ghetto on the ‘Aryan’ side. This was a vital development in the search for what happened to him and his family. International Tracing Service The International Tracing Service Archive was essential to tracking the movements of Jane’s great aunt Jadwiga. We knew she survived the war, but didn’t know where she went. Letters from Jadwiga’s brother-in-law to the Red Cross showed him trying to get her to Geneva to be with her sister. Immigration papers We’d heard a family story that Jane’s great aunt Michaela and her family fled France for Switzerland during the war. Speaking to historians led us to the Swiss Federal Archives where we were told immigration records were preserved. Papers for the family were a rich resource of detail, plotting their movements and telling us exactly where and when they crossed the border. Visa documents Held at the National Archives in Paris, these documents showed the noose tightening as Aron Singalowski struggled to get the visas to get him and his family out of France. They reveal Aron turning to every embassy he can, and even trying a doctor’s sick note. By 1942 the reply from the Vichy authorities is always ‘visa refused’.

Alice Fraser is a researcher on

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