JTA — As a Jewish food writer and anthropologist of sorts, Joan Nathan had always been interested in her own family’s history. The “Julia Child of Jewish cooking” has even written about it in her recent autobiography, “My Life in Recipes.”

But many details about her father’s family, some of whom had perished in the Holocaust, were scant.

On a recent Thursday morning, Nathan spent two hours at the Ackman and Ziff Family Genealogy Institute in Manhattan, where those secrets would be uncovered as part of a new program called Histories and Mysteries. Nathan learned about the fate of a great-aunt, who was confined at Theresienstadt, and her grandson, who by a circuitous, ultimately tragic path is remembered by Catholics as a martyr.

She discovered not only what happened to those relatives, but saw photographs of them and their homes, and read newspaper articles and letters about them.

“My father talked about his family so much,” Nathan, 83, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “But it seemed far away. And now that I know more, it’s much closer.”

The free program, launched January 7, uses genealogy, crowdsourcing, archival records and photographs, and aims to answer unsolved questions about and restore connections between families that were victimized by the Holocaust. So far, about 50 people have applied to have their families’ mysteries solved, and 12 cases are actively being researched by the team, which includes volunteers, said a representative for the Center for Jewish History, where the genealogy institute is housed.

As long as the research question seems solvable, it may be selected for the program. (Geographic areas where there was little official documentation, or inquiries with unknown or common names, may be difficult to research.)

Histories and Mysteries is funded by a nearly $300,000 grant from The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany — commonly known as the Claims Conference — and is supported by the German Federal Ministry of Finance. It’s an additional service of a center that already offers visitors access to a range of online databases and research guides, with staff available to assist with a search. Holocaust survivors and their immediate descendants can also make appointments for in-depth searches.

Nathan’s story was shared on the Center for Jewish History’s social media channels on April 14, in commemoration of Yom Hashoah, Israel’s national Holocaust Remembrance Day.

“Every name recovered, every connection restored, is an act of remembrance that reaches far beyond a single........

© The Times of Israel