A 2nd-generation Holocaust survivor who’d resigned herself to having no relatives learned this month that she has first cousins – including her next-door neighbor in Beit El.
Chana Adorian was born in Budapest in 1944, and up until this month, knew nearly nothing about her father’s past, including how he survived the Holocaust, or that he along with his father had separated from his siblings and mother. She did not know, for instance, that her father, Tzvi Keller, had had two sisters and a brother, nor that she was named for her father’s mother. Chana grew up in Italy, made Aliyah to Israel at the age of 20, married Moshe, who was soon to become a world-famous cantor, and the two moved to Beit El in 1979. Her father had not told her about his past, and when he died in 1978, she was essentially left alone in the world. “Not including my husband’s family, of course,” she rushes to add, in a talk with another (former) Beit El neighbor, Makor Rishon reporter Ariel Kahane, “who welcomed me warmly.”
Meanwhile, another woman named Ruti Patinkin was taking part in her own chapter of Jewish history. Her father, Shimon Keller, and his two older sisters and mother had been separated from his father and older brother (Tzvi) when he was still a child. In the 1930’s, he moved to Israel on his own, and was later able to help his mother join him in Israel and thus escape the Holocaust. Shimon married, moved to Kibbutz Chafetz Chaim and had eight children – including Ruti. She ultimately met and married Yehonatan, originally from Chicago, with whom she moved to Beit El in 1982.
Within a short time, the two families – Adorian and Patinkin – found themselves living side-by-side, never guessing that the two young mothers were actually first cousins.
Ruti and Chana did discover one day some years ago that they shared the maiden name of Keller. However, when Ruti said that her family was from Germany, while Chana thought her family was from Hungary and Italy, they both assumed there was no connection – and Chana continued to assume she was “alone” in the world.
Several times, Chana later recalled, “my children would ask me about my family. I would tell them, ‘I have no idea, anything could be. Maybe we’ll find out one day that our neighbor is my cousin.” A form of prophecy…?
How was the secret ultimately revealed? The result of persistent legwork by a French investigator whose profession is to find descendants of deceased people whose inheritances have no claimants. French law stipulates that unclaimed legacies revert to the State after 30 years, and when the investigator encountered the file of one Mina Keller in 2008, marked “Deceased – 1984,” he knew that he had only a few years left to find her descendants or relatives. His relentless efforts paid off, and he soon found that Mina had one sister, who was murdered by the Nazis, and two brothers – none other than Tzvi and Shimon, fathers of next-door neighbors Chana and Ruti, respectively.
On the first Sabbath after Chana found out she had a family, the Adorian and Patinkin families shared the festive meals together – and several days later, they shared an even more dramatic occasion: Chana and her eight cousins from Chafetz Chaim were united for the first time.