About this archive

This is the family history of Ben Soffer (born Goldberger) and his wife Brooke (Bracha), gathered so that children, cousins and the generations after us can know where we come from. It follows many lines at once: Goldberger, Berkovits and Klein; Lebovics and Gottlieb; Freilich, Nadel and Wachtel; Schechter and Knoll; Moskovic, Fried and Jager; Lazerowitz, Potok and Olshevski; Soffer, Engel and Green.

How to use the site

HomeThe timeline, then each family line with its people, documents and pictures. Click a family name above the timeline to show only that family across the whole page.

Family treeEvery person we have found, one tab per family. Click anyone to open their page with dates, a short biography, sources and attached documents.

MapThe towns and cities the family came from and passed through, with the people from each place.

Yahrzeits & In MemoriamHebrew-calendar dates of passing, and a memorial to those murdered in the Shoah.

Some scans open in a viewer with numbered highlights showing exactly where on the page a name or date appears. Markers you will see: ✡ Shoah for family members murdered in the Holocaust, living for living relatives, and photo needed where we are still looking for a picture.

How we found everything

The archive began with what the family kept: photo albums, letters, certificates, and the stories of our parents and grandparents. From there we went to the records themselves. Wherever possible each fact on the site rests on a document, and the document is attached so you can see it for yourself. The main sources:

Family memory and papers: albums, letters, wedding and family photographs, and conversations with relatives.
Recorded testimonies: USC Shoah Foundation interviews with Leo and Gustav Goldberger and with Moses and Lazer Lazerowitz; Milan Goldberger's Yad Vashem interview; and Zeidy's Book, the diary Moses Lazerowitz wrote night after night in his basement.
Jewish and civil registers of births, marriages and deaths from Slovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Croatia and Ukraine, reached through JewishGen, JRI-Poland, Gesher Galicia, FamilySearch and the state archives themselves.
Holocaust records: Yad Vashem's Pages of Testimony and names database, the Arolsen Archives (camp and displaced-persons files), the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, and the Danish Jewish Museum's records of the 1943 flight to Sweden.
Immigration and American records: ship manifests, naturalization papers, census returns, draft cards and State Department files from the US National Archives, and New York City birth, marriage and death certificates.
Cemeteries and yizkor books: gravestone inscriptions (which often name a father) and the memorial books written by survivors of each town.
Online family trees such as Geni, used only as leads and checked against original records before anything goes on this site.

Much of the searching and transcription was done with the help of an AI research assistant working under Ben's direction. Its findings are checked against the original documents, and the document is what we publish.

How sure are we?

Documented facts cite their record, and the record is attached where we have it.
Family tradition is labelled as such. Some cherished traditions, such as descent from the Noam Elimelech, do not hold up on close research, and the site says so plainly rather than repeating them.
Machine transcripts of testimonies are rough working copies. Timestamps let you check any passage against the person's own words, and the recording is always the authority.
Where sources disagree (a birth year, the day of an escape), we show both and say which record says what.

Protecting living family

Because this site is public, living relatives are treated very differently from those who have passed away:

No photographs of living people are shown.
Birth years only, never full birth dates, for anyone living.
First names are private. Living relatives appear as “Private” with a family name, with no biography, documents or birthplace. The exceptions are Ben, Brooke and their parents and grandparents, and a few relatives whose stories are already public in museum archives.
No personal documents of the living (certificates, passports, applications, addresses, phone numbers) are ever published.
Living relatives' names are also hidden inside the biographies of their parents and grandparents.

Want to be shown, or hidden?

If you are a living relative and would like your name, photo or story to appear, we would be glad to add it, with your consent. Just write to Ben and tell us what you are comfortable sharing. Parents can decide for their minor children.

And the other way around: if anything here is about you or your family and you would like it changed or removed, write and it will be taken care of promptly, no questions asked.

Help us grow it

Photos and papers: upload them privately on the Guest Book page or email them. Uploads go only to Ben; nothing you send is published without your agreement.
Names and faces: if you can identify someone in a picture, or know a maiden name, a Hebrew name or a date of passing, please tell us.
Corrections are always welcome. Records can be wrong and so can we.

Your privacy as a visitor

The site uses no cookies, no advertising and no tracking. The visitor counter on the home page stores no addresses, only an anonymous code. Notes you leave in the guest book are shown on its wall, and files you upload stay private.

Credits

Photographs and records from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, Yad Vashem, the USC Shoah Foundation, the Arolsen Archives, the US National Archives, the NYC Municipal Archives, the Danish Jewish Museum and the other archives named on each item remain the property of those institutions and are shared here for family history. Many USHMM family photographs were donated by Leo Goldberger. Thank you to every relative who opened an album, answered a question or sent a scan.

Contact

Ben Soffer, doc@drbensoffer.com. See also the Contact page for what we are looking for.