Episode 79 - The Lost Brother

Usually a Skype call begins with a clamor of several similar, almost identical, questions: “Can you hear me?”, “Can you hear me now?”. But not this one. This one started with a series of quiet smiles, followed by all eight? people on the call bursting into tears. One end of this call is New Jersey, the kitchen table of the Katz family. The other end, a remote part of Russia called Sakhalin Island, near Japan. In April of 2016, Jess Katz picked up again on a search she'd been conducting for most of her life, a search which she most likely expected to lead her to archived documents or in the best case scenario, a photo. She was continuing a cross-generational search for her grandfather’s long lost younger brother. Her grandfather never had the fortune of meeting his younger brother after the Holocaust ripped them apart. Unfortunately, neither did Jess. But her search was definitely not to no avail. Jess Katz joins us today to share her inspiring story.