Finding Lost Family

It was the height of COVID when I received an email from a man named Victor

Glezer—G-l-e-z-e-r. I was immediately startled. My father’s name was Victor

Gleser—G-l-e-s-e-r—and he had passed away when I was just 12 years old.

In the email, this new Victor told me that he believed we might be related. Seeing my father’s name appear so unexpectedly felt almost like a ghost reaching out from beyond the grave. Despite my concern that the email might be some kind of fraud, I responded, anxious to learn more.

What I discovered changed what I had always understood about my family’s history.

My father’s father, my grandfather, had survived the Nazi concentration camps and emerged from the Holocaust believing that his entire family had been murdered. But, unbeknownst to him, two of his brothers had survived as well. While my grandfather escaped Europe after the war, his brothers remained trapped behind the Iron Curtain in Soviet-controlled Lithuania. In the 1980s, they were finally able to leave Lithuania and immigrate to Israel.

For decades, the brothers held on to the possibility that other members of their family might have survived, but they could find no record of what had happened to my grandfather. They had children, and eventually their children continued the search for the family that had disappeared.

It was not until 2021, when previously inaccessible records had been digitized, that the connection between the Gleser and Glezer families was finally uncovered. The difference of a single letter had helped keep two branches of the same family apart for generations.

And even more remarkable, Victor Glezer and my father had been named after the same relative, who was murdered by the Nazis. Victor was, in fact, my father’s first cousin.

In April 2023, my children and I traveled to Israel to meet our newly discovered family for the first time. As we stood outside their door, my daughter looked at me and asked, “What if they are tricking us?”

But the moment the door opened, that fear disappeared. We were welcomed by a huge family with incredible warmth. Almost immediately, we began noticing similarities—in our appearances, our mannerisms, and the stories we shared. These were people we had never met, yet somehow they already felt familiar.

Since that first meeting, we have visited one another several times and developed strong relationships. Finding this family has given me something I never expected to have: a new connection to my father, whom I lost when I was so young. Through them, I have learned more about who he was, where he came from, and the family history that the Holocaust had nearly erased.

The Nazis succeeded in separating our family for generations, but they did not succeed in destroying it. More than 75 years later, two branches of a family that had believed the other was lost found their way back to one another. I hope my children will carry these relationships forward and ensure that this family, once separated by history, remains connected for generations to come.

-Teddy Gleser