I only knew my beloved childhood companion as “Mrs. Buchholz.” Between 1939 and 1942, when I was a small child, she lived with my family as our housekeeper. After she left us, I never saw her again, but she has remained a continuous and mythic presence in my memory.

Mrs. Buchholz was German. She was in her late fifties and wore her grey hair pulled back severely in a bun. My parents told me that she loved and spoiled me and was convinced that I would make the family fortune by becoming a great actress or dancer. They also recounted how she would hide me under her down comforter when my mother came looking for me at nap time.

By mid-1942, my father had enlisted in the U.S. Army, and we moved from our large house to a much smaller duplex apartment. I assume that these reduced circumstances caused us to be unable to afford Mrs. Buchholz’s services. About that time, Mrs. Buchholz left our household, but before she left, she gave me a small, old mug decorated with ivory-colored, crazed glaze and a little bouquet of yellow, orange, and blue flowers. It was lost when my last childhood home was sold, but I can still see its every detail in my mind’s eye.

As I grew up, I never asked my relatives about Mrs. Buchholz’s own history or what had happened to her. By the time I became interested in her story, none of these family members were still living. The only facts I had learned about her over the years were that she was a Jewish refugee from Hitler’s Germany and that our families were distantly related. After researching my own family tree for many years and becoming proficient in genealogy, I set out to find Mrs. Buchholz.

This was in 2005. At that time, due to an entry in my “baby book,” I knew that she had lived at our house on Beechwood Avenue in Cincinnati, Ohio, on June 1, 1939, and I knew the correct spelling of her last name, which has many English variations. Unfortunately, when I sat at my computer to start my search, I realized there was an important detail I didn’t know—her given name! Later that same year, when I was in Cincinnati, I went to the Cincinnati Historical Society, looked though some city directories for the pertinent time period and found Johanna Buchholz at our home address.

Unhappily, no Johanna Buchholz who appeared on census or vital statistic documents on Ancestry.com matched what I knew of my Mrs. Buchholz. After a few futile searches of that site’s passenger lists, I did find one Ancestry.com entry that could be my Johanna, a German Jewish women, 55 years old, married but traveling alone from Tel Aviv, Palestine, to New York in December 1937, as an immigrant to the United States. Since this was the first passenger list of that era that I had seen, I did not realize that the document had a second page. [See sidebar—Ed.]

About a year later, when I finally discovered this second page, I learned that this Johanna Buchholz’s contact in the United States was a brother-in-law named Arnold Monde who lived in Cincinnati, Ohio! Back on track, I searched in Ohio and online for any information about Arnold Monde—with absolutely no results, although now I was convinced that I had found the right person. I assumed that Monde was the brother of Mrs. Buchholz’s first husband, since the passenger list indicated that she was married. Mr. Buchholz must have been her second husband. (He equally might have been the husband of Mrs. Buchholz’s sister—if she had one—but in order to move forward, I had to assume that Monde was her first husband’s brother. Fortunately, that turned out to be correct.)

After thinking about next steps, I decided there must be various federal records regarding her refugee, immigrant,

Mrs. Buchholz

and perhaps naturalization status. Not knowing which federal office was the correct one, I started with the National Archives in Washington, DC. After many attempts to speak to a real human being, I finally learned that I needed to file a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service in order to obtain the documents associated with her immigration to this country. I mailed my formal request to that agency in March 2008, understanding that this process could take 12 to 18 months. A year later, in March 2009, I filed a request for the same information with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service’s (USCIS) new Genealogical Section, which was reputedly quicker than the FOIA route.

In June 2009, the FOIA records arrived in the mail. The primary document was Mrs. Buchholz’s application at the American Consulate in Jerusalem for a visa to immigrate permanently to the United States. This included her parents’ names (Markus and Minna Futter, father deceased and mother living in Berlin), her current husband’s first name (Walter), place of birth, and her intention to join her brother-in law in Cincinnati. This form listed her brother-in-law as Arnold Wronker, not Monde. No other relatives in Germany or the United States were mentioned. The other records were Palestine and Hamburg police certificates vouching for her lack of a police record in either place, plus verification of her arrival in New York and a copy of her birth certificate. Some documents included photographs, but the photocopies were indistinct and the pictures appeared as black spaces. I had hoped to compare any photographs of Mrs. Buchholz to the single snapshot I had of her, but that was not possible.

Now armed with Arnold Wronker’s correct last name, I searched for an obituary—a great source of information—from the Cincinnati Public Library and from Google. I found two, both containing the names of two nieces. Unfortunately, the niece’s first names were not mentioned; instead, they were referred to as Mrs. Otto Sommer and Mrs. Kurt Blumenthal. I did not know how these women were related to Mrs. Buchholz, but thought that they or their relatives could provide further information. I could find nothing further about either woman.

In October 2009, the document I had been hoping for arrived in an envelope from the USCIS Genealogical Section. Along with much better copies of the records and photographs I had already received, another record, her 1940 Alien Registration Form, showed Mrs. Buchholz living on Beechwood Avenue, Cincinnati, Ohio, at our house with Dr. Stanley D. Simon, my father, as her employer. After four years of waiting for this moment, I, of course, broke into tears of joy and relief.

In addition to an account of Mrs. Buchholz having been arrested in Berlin in early 1936 for trying to take money out of Germany without permission—as she was about to flee—and having most of her funds confiscated, this form asked if she had parents, a spouse, or children living in the United States. To my astonishment, Mrs. Buchholz stated that she had two children living in the United States.

I immediately assumed these children had to be the nieces mentioned in Arnold Wronker’s obituary. Knowing only their husband’s last names and using Wronker as a maiden name, I found one niece, Toni Sommer, immediately. With no luck finding the other niece and having just received notification of Ancestry.com’s new Historical Newspapers Obituary site, I looked for an obituary for the other daughter’s husband (whose first name I did know). Voila! There was a full obituary naming his wife, children, and grandchildren. After some e-mails and calls to the funeral home and cemetery mentioned in the obituary, I was given the name of the state in which Hilda Blumenthal had been living prior to her death. A search using Whitepages.com revealed the address and telephone number of Hilda’s daughter, Naomi Weinstein.

The knowledge that Mrs. Buchholz’s granddaughter was living in the United States and that I could pick up my telephone and call her was overwhelming. Mrs. Buchholz always had this almost magical presence in my memory, and now I could contact a real living relative of hers. I decided it would be easier to write to Naomi and explain who I was, how I had been connected to her grandmother, and that I was interested in learning more about her story. I received an immediate answer from Naomi who also put me in contact with Mrs. Buchholz’s nephew, Berney Futter, who has been able to fill in more of the family’s history. Both Naomi and Berney sent photographs of Mrs. Buchholz at many different ages, pictures of her daughters, and of her first and second husbands. Unfortunately, her second husband, Walter Buchholz, had stayed in Germany and was murdered in the Holocaust. All but one of her five brothers also left Germany in the late 1930s, as she and her two daughters had, most of them settling in the United States, with others going to Cuba, London, and Israel.

Now, thanks to her family I have finally found Mrs. Buchholz. After she left our house, she moved to New York City, where one of her brothers, Mathias, and his family lived. Although she had filled out her Declaration of Intent to become a U. S. citizen as soon as she had entered this country, she never took further action. On February 20, 1944, she died at the age of 62, probably of a heart attack, and was buried at a local cemetery. I hope my search for her and the resulting documentation of some events of her life will serve as a memorial to her. When I visit her grave, which I intend to do soon, I plan to leave her a small bouquet of yellow, orange, and blue flowers .

Margot Perry of Portland, Oregon, attributes her attraction to genealogy to her enjoyment of detective work and her interest in the past. She was employed for many years as an investigator for state agencies. Archaeology also intrigued her, and she spent two years in Israel checking out ancient tombs, walls, and ruined cities. At age 40, Margot decided to excavate her family’s past and started searching for her lost ancestors, who she realized had all contributed to who she was. She has also discovered several living relatives who are now her close friends. Unfortunately, Margot and family were unable to discover how they were related. Margot’s public family tree is on ancestry.com.