A DNA test found MY LOST FAMILY

Clare Reay never expected to solve the mystery that haunted her mother

- KATE GRAHAM

To most people, this photograph of my mother and grandmother is simply a black-and-white image of a pretty young woman holding a baby. She has a half smile on her face as the child tries to wriggle free. But to me, it’s both heartbreaking and incredible. The baby, Evelyn, is my mum, and the woman, Dora, my grandma. Mum never had the chance to see the photo, never even knew it existed. She died, aged 69, believing her mother had perished in a concentration camp. Mum couldn’t have dreamt that, across the Atlantic, Dora lived to be 71 years old, desperately searching for her lost baby all her life. But with one DNA test, in March 2020, I accidentally uncovered the truth.

Without a date of birth, a name or any paperwork, Mum’s early years were all questions and no answers. She believed that she’d been born in Bergen- Belsen concentration camp in Germany in 1945. When it was liberated that same year, she somehow ended up in an orphanage in Israel, to be adopted by parents who brought her to the UK. Everything else was a blank, and she tried, somehow, to fill that unknown space.

Perhaps her father had been an SS officer, and that explained why she was spared when so many others were murdered. One thing she was sure about was that her mother Dora must have died in the camp because otherwise they would have been liberated together.