Where In Jerusalem Is Asher?

I wrote this posting almost a year ago about using a Page of Testimony from the Yad Vashem database to track down a family member named Asher now living in Jerusalem. Asher belongs to a branch of my family that stayed in Ukraine after the rest of the family immigrated to the United States. While Asher made aliya in 1935, his parents remained behind and were murdered in Rovno during the Holocaust by the Ukrainians and Germans. Asher served as in officer in the Haganah during Israel's War of Independence, and and later worked as a professor for many years before retiring

During our phone conversation last December, Asher proved to be an amazing source of genealogical information. He told me that he even still kept the Yiddish letters from his grandfather Shmelik (my great-grandfather's brother) who immigrated to the United States in 1921. At the end of our half-hour conversation, Asher told me that he would send me a long detailed letter about our family after he and his wife moved to a new apartment in Jerusalem the following week. Given the warm tone of our conversation, I expected that to receive the first letter in a month or two. After twelve months, I still had not received a letter and I wondered whether he lost my contact information in the move to the new apartment.

Last week, with the help of my friend Yitz of Heichal HaNegina in Jerusalem, I was able to find Asher's new address and phone number. I quickly called Asher's new number and we spoke on the phone for a half-hour and caught up. Asher is now 91 years-old and has trouble hearing. At one point in the conversation he needed to call his wife to get on the phone with us to help him understand what I was saying.

In 1920, Asher moved from our family's shtetl to the larger city of Rovno when he was only five years-old, nevertheless, he still has a faint recollection of his birthplace. He remembered that his house was located in the main square in a building where his maternal grandparents ran a small grocery store. Before ending our conversation, I told Asher that I would send him some pictures of what the main square looked like during my visit in 2001 so he could try to identify the location of his house. Since he has difficulty writing, I plan to call him back in a few weeks after he has had a chance to look over the photographs.

Between World War II and a fire in archives building in April 2003, many of the records from my family's shtetl have been destroyed. Along with the photographs, I sent Asher a number of question about our family's history. Asher remains my only hope in breaking through the genealogical brick wall.