How it began

Left: Elfrieda and her mother in Germany 1946-48

Elfrieda and her mother, Eva, came to Canada in November 1948 as a family of 2. They were refugees from eastern Europe, who along with tens of thousands of others, were seeking a new life in a new land. Relatives (her mother's aunt and family) helped them get settled. Elfrieda grew up without siblings, and without knowing any aunts or uncles. Her mother exchanged letters with some relatives still in USSR, including her sister.

At age 14, Elfrieda asked her mother to tell her something about her father, and she was told a few stories and given his name and his picture. The picture had some writing on the back.

Elfrieda and I married in July 1965, and that same year her mother died of of cancer. At that point, Elfrieda was left without an immediate family, except for mine. There was no further chance to ask her mom any questions, and somehow the address for her aunt in USSR (her mother's sister) had gone missing. Years later we managed to connect with her Aunt Lena in Kyrgistan. Tante Lena's two daughters (elfrieda's first cousins) and their children and grandchildren are all now living in Germany, having arrived there from Kazakhstan in the early 1990s.

Over the years Elfrieda tried through official channels to find information about her father. These efforts met with no success. I knew it bothered her that there was this gap in her life, so in early 2009, with the help of a friend in Germany, Charly, I made another attempt at making this connection. I used a combination of new and traditional research to try to get meaningful results. With the help of our friend in Germany, the effort was successful, and contact was made with her father's family in Germany in late January. Elfrieda quickly found out how and when her father had died, and that she had five half-siblings - two brothers who had passed away in 1990, and three sisters who are living and anxious to speak with her. During that first phone call in late January, it was clear that there was joy and excitement on both sides of the Atlantic, and that they vaguely knew about her existence, but without any hard facts they could not even begin a search for her. They were just happy that she had found them. Pictures, letters, and e-mail messages have been exchanged over the past two months, and they encouraged her to come for a first contact visit.

Now we are in the final stages of preparation for this important journey. Personal face-to-face contact is now not far away.