Every name in our family tree was once a beating heart, a living soul who loved, dreamed, and faced choices we can barely imagine.
For Scarlett Johansson, one such name was Saul Schlamberg – her great-grandfather who crossed an ocean with nothing but hope in his pockets.
In 1910, young Saul stood at a crossroads that would echo through generations.
He was just 24 when he said goodbye to his brother Moshe in their hometown of Grujec, Poland. Neither could have known it was their final farewell.
While Saul built a new life on New York’s Lower East Side, carefully stacking bananas in his grocery store and learning the rhythm of his adopted home, Moshe remained in Poland with his family.
Some choices carry the weight of destiny.
By 1939, Moshe had built a beautiful life of his own. At 60 years old, he and his wife had filled their home with the laughter and love of ten children. Their youngest, Zolota, was just entering her teenage years at 14.
Then the world turned dark.
When Hitler’s armies marched into Poland, the Schlamberg family’s story became one shared by millions of Jewish families – forced into the Warsaw ghetto, where over 400,000 souls were compressed into less than two square miles of suffering.
Parents watched their children starve. Brothers lost sisters. Hope became as scarce as food.
Through tears, Scarlett learned the fate of her family. Documents from Israel’s Holocaust Museum revealed that Moshe vanished without a trace. His children Zlata and Mondal, just 15 and 17, perished in the ghetto.
Meanwhile, across an ocean, their uncle Saul continued his simple life selling fruit, perhaps never knowing the full story of what happened to the family he left behind.
Two brothers. Two paths. One family’s heart split across continents.
When the truth finally emerged, it struck deep. Scarlett’s eyes welled with tears as she connected with this lost piece of herself – this branch of her family tree that had been waiting to be found.
“It makes me feel more deeply connected to that side of myself,” she shared, her voice carrying the weight of generations.
This is why we search.
This is why we dig through documents, decipher old handwriting, and piece together fragments of the past.
Because sometimes, in uncovering these lost stories, we don’t just honor those who came before us.
We discover pieces of ourselves we never knew were missing.
And in learning their stories – their triumphs, their tragedies, their impossible choices – we ensure that they’re never truly gone.
They live on in our hearts, in our memories, and in the stories we pass down to the next generation.
Because every family story deserves to be told.
Even – especially – the ones that break our hearts.
