I was looking for my roots, for a connection to my heritage. My late father was a Holocaust survivor and I was investigating his life before the Nazi invasion when the pandemic closed many archives down. But I kept researching online and when Europe started opening up again in the spring, I arranged for us all to visit the Polish town of Nowy Sącz on a virtual tour.
Neither my children nor their significant others had ever met my father or knew of his world. But, at their upcoming wedding, my son and daughter-in-law will get married in my father’s tallit, so it felt like an especially good time to share my passion and show them all their links to our past. To help with the historical context, an expert guide would take us around the town where two Hasidic dynasties were founded (Sanz and Bobov) and, crucially for me, where my father grew up.