Holocaust Survivor's Family Reunites Through DNA Test

When Adriana Turk’s brother died last year, she thought she was left alone in the world, as she thought the rest of her family had been killed in the Holocaust. But at the age of 74, she decided to do a DNA test to find out more about her heritage. What she found has changed her life: an entire family tree including dozens of distant cousins, relatives and their children, spread across the world.

Adriana was born to a German Jewish father who fled Nazi Germany in 1937. She knew that her grandmother had died in the Warsaw Ghetto while her aunt, uncle and their two young children were killed in Auschwitz. However, she discovered the descendants of three Holocaust survivors from her grandmother’s family line through MyHeritage DNA.

Adriana met one of her newly discovered relatives, Raanan Gidron, 73, a psychotherapist living in Israel. They spoke about how it felt to see each other in person for the first time. “It’s unbelievable,” says Adriana, beaming. “I didn’t get loved much as a child, I didn’t get intellectually stimulated. My father never told me who I was.

I only had one sibling and neither of us had children. I’ve got two cousins on my mother’s side who don’t speak to each other. That leaves a pretty empty space.” Raanan has spent days taking Adriana around the homes of family members and the pair have spent hours working out the nitty gritty of their family tree.

They believe this technical work is a gift for future generations. “We are filling in places that are empty on the family tree and we’re making corrections,” says Raanan. These have included some difficult discoveries too, including a relative who they believe was alive but later discovered that she had not survived. They have traced their ancestry all across Europe into the 1300s. “It’s a bit like a jigsaw,” he says. “The next generation will definitely have a much clearer picture about what happened.” Adriana has also had the opportunity to meet family members in Germany. “They were very generous and loving.

I kept seeing my father’s face in a relative and thinking: ‘That’s my daddy’s nose’. It’s just been overwhelming.” Raanan says that the experience has been particularly special amid rising levels of antisemitism across the world. He recalls being accosted in Germany with racist abuse and being told to “go back” in the middle of the street. “We know what is going on but we are concentrating on family,” he says.