Despite the more than 60 years that have passed since the Holocaust, many survivors still hope to find missing relatives, or in the case of young survivors, to find clues to a missing past.

American survivor George Salton, born in Poland as Lucjan Salzmann, is seeking his older brother Manek. George, 83, had heard that Manek was killed while fighting the Nazis as a partisan. He renewed his search after his daughter Anna found Manek's name on a list of residents of Tyczyn, Poland, who survived the war.

Salton and his family have turned to a variety of agencies, including the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Red Cross, in hopes of finding Manek. In addition, the family is publicizing the story in hopes that someone with information on the case will hear of George's search.

In recent years, new technologies have made it easier to track down individuals around the globe, leading some survivors to renew their search.

Some survivors are searching for missing or deceased family using the DNA Shoah Project. The project takes DNA samples from Holocaust survivors or their descendants with the goal of reunited relatives, identifying the remains of Holocaust victims and giving their families a gravesite at which to mourn, and helping those who survived the Holocaust as young children to learn about their biological families.

Many survivors who lived through the Holocaust as young children are also searching through organizations such as Missing Identity, which allows survivors to post their information online in hope that someone will be able to fill in the missing details. Searchers often do not know even their year of birth or their family name.

While many Holocaust survivors never discover what happened to relatives, several have found missing family even after many years.

In 2003 George Gordon, born Jerzy Budzynski, discovered that his mother and sister had survived the Holocaust. Gordon had been told that his entire family was wiped out. His mother had passed away years earlier, but his sister Krystyna was alive and living in Poland, and the two were reunited.

In 2008, survivor siblings Irene Famulak and Wssewolod Galezkij were reunited after 66 years. For decades, Irene lived in the United States while Wssewolod lived in the Soviet Union, where information on Holocaust survivors was sealed; only in the late 1980s was he able to begin searching for his lost family.

In 2010, Albert Idelson, who was born during the Holocaust, met his half-sister Lilian for the first time. The two had each been unaware of the other's existence for more than six decades.

Many others have found long-lost cousins or other extended family through the Yad VaShem database or the Red Cross.

via israelnn.com