My aunt, who invited me on this trip, and cousin talked about the magical surprise of seeing the Eiffel Tower sparkle at night. And there it was!

Welcome to finding footsteps in Poland.

When my mother was showing a photo album from her childhood, I asked, “Who is that little girl next to you,” and she named her, Susi Benkendorf.  My mother had talked about a Jewish family who disappeared after the Anschluss, but I didn’t know she remembered the name and that they went to Prague.  Or that Susi’s father was my mother’s father’s law partner.  I found them on a website of Holocaust victims, and a coworker was visiting Prague.  I asked my coworker to look for their names among the Czech Holocaust victims listed on the walls of the Old Synagogue Museum in Prague, and she found them.  The online information was that Susi and her parents were on one of the first train transports of 1,000 Jews at a time from Prague to the Lodz Ghetto in Poland, where they were murdered. The Lodz Ghetto at that time was sealed and organized for slave labor.  If Susi survived so long, 11 months later, all children under age 10 were taken away to the Chelmno camp and killed in gas vans because they were too young to work.  If Susi’s parents survived so long, when the ghetto was liquidated a few years later, it was by shipping the inhabitants to Auschwitz.  So that is why I am visiting Poland.  
https://www.holocaust.cz/en/database-of-victims/victim/141089-emanuel-benkendorf/