Project aims to reunite families separated by Holocaust

A simple cheek swab could hold the key to finding missing family members among Long Island's Holocaust survivors.

That's the hope of the DNA Shoah Project, an Arizona-based nonprofit, which gathers the DNA of Holocaust survivors and their descendants in an attempt to match up family members around the world with relatives they didn't know they had. "Shoah" is the Hebrew word for the Holocaust.

"It's a way to have families that lost contact with each other find themselves, 70 years after the war," said co-founder Syd Mandelbaum of Cedarhurst.

At the Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance Center of Nassau County in Glen Cove Sunday, representatives from the DNA Shoah Project staffed a table, waiting for survivors and their families to offer their DNA for the database. About two dozen were expected to give samples.

Roslyn Lieber, 53, of Baldwin, sat down and filled out a family tree, listing all of her known relatives.

She then took a swab that looked like a tiny toothbrush, and painlessly rubbed it on the inside of her cheek to collect her DNA. The brush went into a little vial, which will be sent to the University of Arizona to be processed.

"I'm just curious to see if there's anybody left from the old country," Lieber said. Her father came to the United States from Poland in the 1920s, leaving behind aunts, uncles, cousins and others, many of whom were killed.

"It would make me feel good" to find family, Lieber said. "It's a way of reconnecting with the past."

At least 5,000 people need to enter the database before researchers can begin searching for matches, Mandelbaum said. So far, the database has about a third of that, and Mandelbaum said he hopes to meet the 5,000 mark in a year.

He tells DNA donors to expect to wait at least two to three years before hearing any news about potential matches.

Leo Rechter, 82, of Queens, is a child survivor of the Holocaust from Austria who contributed his DNA to the project three years ago.

"We all assumed our families were killed," Rechter said at the event. "If I can find one cousin who's related, it's some consolation."

Mandelbaum said he looks forward to the day he can announce that a match has been found.

"I've had milestones in my life," he said. "The first match we have, I'm going to break down and cry."