Sunday, March 17, 2013

THE ONLY GUARANTEE IS MY BEST EFFORT

On 29 January last year, I received the following email from a young American-born woman living in Israel. (I have removed some identifying information)
[M]y siblings and I are looking to find out the name, and any information about my Granfather's (sic) child who was killed during the Holocaust. My grandfather has been deceased for over a decade, and he never spoke about his first wife and child who perished. We don't know much, but here's what we know:
 
[M]y grandfather was from Drohobycz in the Lviv Oblast (province). We believe he was from
Boryslaw.
 
When Hitler declared war on Poland, my grandfather] was 27 years old. He was married with a son. [He] joined the Polish army, and when it collapsed shortly thereafter, he bribed his way into the Russian army and that is how he survived.
 
We have no idea at what point or how his wife or child were killed, just that they were.
 
We are looking for information in general about his wife and child, but the most important thing is to find the son's name. Would you be able to find this out?
What are your rates for this kind of job?
I replied that "[t]here are no guarantees with this kind of search," and I discussed at length some suggestions regarding how we might approach the matter. I suggested inquiries at Yad Vashem where there might be records of their deaths and the International Tracing Service where family members - including her grandfather - might have inquired after them. I suggested contacting other researchers with common interests.

And I suggested sending a researcher to look at the births in the Civil Records Office in Warsaw, where records are held for at least a hundred years before they are sent to the appropriate archives.

Eventually they decided to try all these, but the only one that didn't come up empty immediately was the records office - and that was because it took a few months to set up. We had to provide the folks in Warsaw with a notarized authorization which included an affidavit stating that the family is legally entitled to the information.

Miriam Weiner is the authority
on what records are found where.
See her site at http://www.rtrfoundation.org/
The family authorized a search for the birth records for the years 1938-1941. Unfortunately, 1940 is missing.

It took a few months to get the notarized authorization but eventually it came, I paid the researcher and the search was done. Without success.

The family then decided to search 1935-37. Here there was some considerable delay because the researchers husband was ill.

In the meantime, the family came up with the surname of the grandfather's wife - the mother of the child - and we considered the possibility that the birth had been registered under her name. So the 1938-1941 search was done again. The family then came up with a variation of the wife's surname and yet another search was done. (The researcher did not charge for these follow-ups, perhaps because of the delay caused by her husband's illness.)

The searches were done, nothing turned up and all I could do was throw up my hands and write a final report, a page and a half reviewing the searches and the results. I had been paid a few months earlier - the exact amounts that I had paid the researcher in Warsaw plus two-and-a-half hours of my time, way less than I had actually put in.

A few days ago, three weeks after my report, I received the following email:
Thank you for the final report.

As I'm sure you can imagine, we are very disappointed with the outcome.
It's a shame that this process dragged out as long as it did, and I felt that the case could have been handled more professionally at certain points.

Do you have any recommendations for further pursuit of the information we are looking for? If it were your relative, what would your next step be? 
My work has never been called "unprofessional" before and I found the idea that were it my relative, I would have some secret trapdoor access to information, to be bordering on insulting.

I am not sure how I'll respond. I don't work with a formal contract, but that would not have solved the problem. And I did say up front that there are no guarantees except my best effort. The fact that 1940 births are missing gives us a plausible explanation for the lack of a birth record. The grandfather could have gone off with the Polish army in 1939, leaving a pregnant wife who gave birth in 1940.

Or maybe for some unknown reason the birth was in some other town, though her own family was in Drohobycz, making that unlikely. But we are already in "unlikely" territory.

And I did say at the start that there are no guarantees except my best effort. But I repeat myself.

10 comments:

  1. I am posting these additional thoughts in response to a comment made by a reader by direct email.

    The other possibility is that the birth was elsewhere. The father of the child was born in neighboring Boryslaw, so perhaps she had the baby in his town. Problem there is that both 1938 and 1940 are missing, according to Miriam Weiner.

    I do not know where the mother is from, but by far the largest instance of the mother's surname is in Drohobycz, so she is likely from there. But she could have been from one of several towns in the neighborhood and the birth could have been wherever she was from. Searching all those would likely be pouring good money after bad - but I shall point out that option.

    They'd be really annoyed at me then. And, no, I don't know if I'd do that if it were my relative.

    (In the next few years, we may find a birth record for the mother, as more records are transferred to the archives. But the mother's name is the ultra-common Rachel, so even if I found her, I would not be sure that I had.)

    One of the ironies here is that as recently as 1997, there was a living woman, here in Israel, from Drohobycz, with the same birth surname as Rachel. She may have known the child's name - if someone had wanted to ask her.

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  2. I recommend you "get curious". Ask the client for clarification about what they meant by "the case could have been handled more professionally." They may not have been referring to you at all but the other researcher who you admit took a long time. You could also ask them, "how could I have handled things differently?" And their question about what would you do if it was your family member could simply be a request for advice on next steps.

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  3. Israel,

    I just have to respond because I've "been there." I absolutely knocked myself out for a client once who not only was unhappy and rather insulting but actually only paid me a quarter of what was due. I decided to let it drop, and was as groveling and professional as I could be in my reply. It still irks me to think about it. I guess there will just BE people like that.

    Valerie

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  4. Israel,

    I agree that you should follow up and ask for clarification. It may or may not be as rough as an initial reading suggests.

    Here's why: it's hugely important to profit from this feedback. Regardless of what she comes back with, you'll know more about her reaction and can use that to avoid pitfalls with others in the future.

    I heard a neat little joke the other day: If a friend borrows $20 and you never hear from him again, it was worth the money. That might apply a bit to this situation -- might rank at the bottom of lovely experiences, but you can use it to your advantage to be happier yourself *and* to augment customers' happiness in the future.

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    Replies
    1. Matthew, it's curious to hear from you over here having just heard from you over there!

      As it happens, I heard back from the client after she saw a message about this on LinkedIn. I haven't had the time to read it carefully and respond, but the general sense was conciliatory.

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  5. Israel,

    I agree that you should follow up and ask for clarification. It may or may not be as rough as an initial reading suggests.

    Here's why: it's hugely important to profit from this feedback. Regardless of what she comes back with, you'll know more about her reaction and can use that to avoid pitfalls with others in the future.

    I heard a neat little joke the other day: If a friend borrows $20 and you never hear from him again, it was worth the money. That might apply a bit to this situation -- might rank at the bottom of lovely experiences, but you can use it to your advantage to be happier yourself *and* to augment customers' happiness in the future.

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  6. Israel,

    I agree that you should follow up and ask for clarification. It might not be as rough as the initial reading would suggest. (I find it a little odd someone would insult you and then ask you for more help in the next sentence.)

    It's hugely important to profit from her feedback, good or bad. The more you know about her feelings, the better -- you can use that to avoid sticky situations in the future. When feedback is negative it's hard to take (especially when it's unjustified), but the best we can do is use it to our advantage. We turn out happier *and* so do future customers.

    It's a bit like learning to navigate the dating world in youth. We make mistakes, we're sometimes treated unjustly, etc. -- it hurts, but the best we can do is learn from it so the next date goes a little better.

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  7. Susan J Gordon22 March, 2013 21:23

    Feedback smeedback -- the woman was rude, so why ask her for feedback? How did she come to you for help, Israel? Were you recommended? Had she used you before? Personally, I know you are a careful, thoughtful genealogist who takes his work seriously. You view "your" cases as if the missing *are* your relatives. But there are no guarantees when we delve into genealogy. Most "roads" are dead-ends, but now and then it's possible to strike gold.

    As we all know, you can't research Jewish genealogy without colliding with the Holocaust. Trying to find out what happened to people who perished is a painful and very difficult endeavor. We want to find these people and at the very least, we want to "name" them. In this case, records from 1940 are missing, gone. You do the best you can. As you say, your only "guarentee" is your best effort.

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  8. I am going to close off these remarks by thanking everyuone who read and commented, including the many who commented by duirect email.

    As it happens, the client saw what I wrote as well and we have pretty much reconciled.

    Something new for next week, though maybe a little bit later than usual. We do have other things going on these past few days.

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    Replies
    1. I do know how to spell. Typing is another matter.

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