Sidebar: Gene pooling

With a simple, painless harvesting of DNA cells from the inside of their cheeks, local Holocaust survivors and their offspring will have a chance on May 20 to help solve nagging mysteries and perhaps unite with long-lost relatives.

Researchers from the DNA Shoah Project will be in Whippany to take samples from volunteers and add them to a DNA database.

By cross-referencing genetic information, the project's founders hope to identify unnamed victims of the Shoa, unite family members, and even assist European governments to identify victims.

The collection will begin at 3 p.m. at the Aidekman Family Jewish Community Campus in Whippany.

The program is being sponsored locally by the New Jersey chapter of Generations of the Shoah International and the Holocaust Council of MetroWest.

"The largest groups of people we want to sample are those who survived the war and were three to 10 years old when the war ended," said Syd Mandelbaum, the Cedarhurst, Long Island, scientist who cofounded the project.

"Many survivors were in orphanages or given to gentile families. There were thousands of families who could potentially be their relatives."

The one-time science teacher and medical researcher founded the project last November, and insists it is "for the living."

But Mandelbaum also sees the potential of tracing the dead whose remains are in unmarked graves throughout Europe.

"The reality is, of the six million Jews, only one third were gassed and cremated," said Mandelbaum, who spent 10 years working with DNA at Johnson & Johnson in New Jersey and Massachusetts. "Four million were murdered and buried in shallow graves in Europe. As construction is going on – new roadways, construction of airports, malls are being built, and lands are being cleared – the remains are surfacing," he said.

Mandelbaum said that DNA samples from bones could help solve many cases of missing persons.

"We don't know if we'll ever deal with mass graves. It is not on our radar screen right now," he said in a telephone interview. "But we definitely can use 2007 technology and advancements in the field of forensics to offer potential family reunions."

Gina Lanceter of Montclair is among those hoping for such a reunion, or at least the knowledge of what happened to her brother, Zygmunt Hochberg, since they said goodbye to one another in June of 1941.

She was 12. He was 18 and had just completed high school. He left home three days after the Nazi army occupied their town of Brody in Poland.

"He and his friends didn't want to stay with the Germans. So they headed toward Russia," she said. "There were two groups of students. The one who went to the left, some came back. The one who went to the right – which unfortunately was my brother's group – no one ever came back. There was no trace whatsoever."

Zygmunt Hochberg would have turned 85 in April. At the age of 78, his sister still nurtures a faint hope that he is alive.

"I still have stupid feelings that maybe he is someplace in Russia and has amnesia and doesn't know who he is," she said. "But with the years passing, my hope fades."

Lanceter, whose daughter Dina Cohen is coordinator of GSI-New Jersey, plans to donate her DNA on May 20, and at a May 1 meeting of Cafe Europa, the MetroWest friendship society for survivors, she urged others to follow suit.

"Some people know for sure about their siblings. I don't," Lanceter said. "So sometimes knowing – as painful as it is – is better than not having a closure. I don't have a closure. As painful as knowing he died would be, I'd know that's it. Not knowing is even worse."

Mandelbaum assures participants that they need not worry that the information from the DNA will be used to invade a donor's privacy.

"The information harvested from the survivors and their families will be stored in the state of Michigan, which has the strongest laws in the nation with regard to privacy," he said.

The moment the DNA is swabbed from their mouths, the donors' names are no longer attached to the samples. "They become barcodes," said Mandelbaum. "The barcode goes on the sample, and the sample goes to our lab."

The lab is connected to the University of Arizona, which has donated $2 million to cover the cost of 10,000 genetic tests.

A major byproduct of the project will be a new curriculum for teaching about the Holocaust in science classes.

For Lanceter, the issue is a very simple one. "I don't know if the DNA might help me find my brother. I hope so. What do I have to lose?"

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Gene pooling

Holocaust survivor Joe Mandelbaum, father of project
director Syd Mandelbaum, collects a DNA sample from his cheek.
Photo courtesy DNA Shoah Project

THE DNA COLLECTION program that begins at 3 p.m. on May 20 at the Aidekman Family Jewish Community Campus in Whippany will be open to Jews and non-Jews alike. Those who wish to donate DNA but are unable to attend can contact project director Syd Mandelbaum | 516-295-0670.

"We will send a kit with instructions and a consent form that has to be signed. Then the person can send that to the lab in Arizona," said Mandelbaum. "But on May 20, we will be there to hand out the forms and help people fill them out if it's needed."

Although there is no charge for survivors, their children and grandchildren are asked to make $20 contributions for each sample to defray the University of Arizona's processing costs.

For reservations or information, contact the Holocaust Council of MetroWest | 973-929-3194.