I received an email dated December 18, 2018, in Russian, from Julia Malykhina of “Memorial” apologizing for the delay in replying to my inquiry “due to workload of employees.” She explained that the party to contact was the Office of the State Security Committee for the Brest Region and gave me their email address. That all sounded very familiar as a place that Boris had had contact with without any success. Nevertheless, since Boris had been out of the picture already for several months, I was willing to try again. Julia also gave some suggestions of what we should ask for and what documentation (identifying Dorothy’s relationship to the party being inquired about) should be included. There were some points in her letter that were not clear and I wrote to her for clarification. I hope her reply now will not take as long as her first reply.

In mid-January 2019 I had not heard from Julia Malykhina. If the length of time that it took for her last reply was any guide, I wouldn’t receive a reply to my last email until mid-2019. I therefore decided to go ahead with the letter to the State Security Committee without waiting for her clarifications. Having learned previously that letters to Russia or any other part of the former USSR have to be written in Russian, getting a translation was my first task after drafting the letter. Writing the letter was easy, but getting Google Translate to convert it into Russian took me a couple of hours. But I got it done and mailed it “Registered—Return Receipt Requested.” Since Julia had mentioned that proof of relationship would be required, I also included copies of birth, marriage and death certificates, hopefully thereby linking Dorothy to her father. Unfortunately, one crucial link was missing. We had no documentation of Dorothy’s mother marrying Alexander. So, we hoped for the best. If what I have heard in the past of the authorities in Belarus is true, don’t hold your breath awaiting a reply.

The reader might recall that I had written a letter in English to the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation. That was before I learned to have my computer translate English into Russian. On January 19, we received a letter from the Embassy of the Russian Federation in Washington telling us that the Ministry of Defense has no translator and that therefore they could not act on our letter. Can you believe that? The Ministry of Defense has no translator! Anyhow, it means I have to draft a new letter and have my computer translate it into Russian. I did it and the letter in Russian went out on January 22. Who knows when I will get a reply.

I did not receive a reply from Julia Malykhina of “Memorial” until March 8. But since I had not waited for her reply but had already written to Belarus on my own, no action was required. Now I am waiting for replies to my Russian letters from Russia and Belarus.

We heard about a book, “Brichah,” about the clandestine organization that Alexander had been working for when he got caught and executed. We obtained the book, which was published by JewishGen, which is affiliated with the Museum of Jewish Heritage. In almost 300 pages the book describes the activity of the Brichah including lists of names of active participants in the organization. But Alexander’s name does not appear in any of the lists. Since we know for a fact, as confirmed by many who were rescued by Alexander, that he was a member of Brichah, I wrote to JewishGen today on March 26, 2019. As I said previously, I will leave no stone unturned, and this is another stone.

As mentioned above, we had written to the Russian Central Archives of the Ministry of Defense in Russian after they had rejected our letter in English, since they have no translator. That was on January 20, 2019. We received their reply, dated April 22, forwarded to us through the Consulate General of the Russian Federation in New York. Unfortunately, the reply was as expected. They could not find anything in their records since the name is a common name. They request more details, which naturally we cannot give them since we do not have them. I was not going to bother to even have it translated unless it contained some valuable information, which it didn’t.

I also received a reply from JewishGen in an email dated May 7, with an apology for the delay signed by Anne Viccari. The reply contained a number of suggestions for my obtaining information and help from their organization. Everything she said sounded so familiar, but I followed her suggestions to register. I was not really surprised when the system informed me that I was already registered! Wherever I turned, the system had me already, in other words here was nothing new again. I had gone that route before with no results. Nevertheless, I signed up with their Belarus Discussion Group.

(To be continued next week)

Norbert Strauss is a Teaneck resident and Englewood Hospital volunteer. He frequently speaks to groups to relay his family’s escape from Nazi Germany in 1941.

By Norbert Strauss

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