Jewish Family’s History Testifies to Holocaust Toll : Memorial: Man’s research finds 160 relatives murdered by the Nazis. Entering the names in Israel’s Yad Vashem register ensures they will not be forgotten.

More than most people, Roman Rakover is aware of the hole, torn by the Nazis, in the fabric of every European Jewish family.

A dozen years ago, the Calabasas man sat down to compile a genealogy of the Rakover family and to write its history. It took five years and resulted in a book that traces 13 generations of the family from Rakover’s great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather and two of his brothers, down to 81-year-old Rakover, his many cousins and their children.

Recently, Rakover turned to the book to find the names of family members who died in the Holocaust. He entered the names--160 of them--in official Pages of Testimony being collected by Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial and information center in Israel.

The writing of the Rakover family history and his submission of the Pages of Testimony are separate projects with a common purpose: to ensure that the Rakover name is remembered despite the Nazis’ attempt to exterminate every Jewish family.

Shraga Y. Mekel, development director of the New York-based American Society for Yad Vashem, said the 160 names will be recorded in Yad Vashem’s Hall of Names.

“This Hall of Names in Yad Vashem is the symbolic tombstone for the millions of victims who never had real tombstones,” Mekel said. “This is the way these people will be remembered.”

Since Yad Vashem began collecting the names of Jews who died in the Shoah (the Hebrew word for Holocaust) in 1955, it has uncovered the names of more than 3 million victims of Hitler’s war against the Jews. On April 12, the official Day of Remembrance for Holocaust victims, Yad Vashem began a push to collect the names of the remaining 3 million Jews murdered by the Nazis.

Mekel described the project as a “historic mission” that becomes more urgent as survivors such as Rakover grow older.

Rakover’s contribution is unusual in the large number of victims he was able to identify and the amount of information he had collected on many of them, Mekel said.

Many survivors remember only the names of those who perished, but Rakover had spent years collecting as much data as possible.

As a result, he could report to Yad Vashem the following about Floride Weindling, one of the many youngsters among his 160 victims: that she was born in Antwerp, Belgium, and that she was only 4 years old when she was sent, with her parents, to her death in Auschwitz in 1942. Only her 19-year-old brother, Frederick, survived.

Floride’s face also survives. In Rakover’s book, there is a photograph of the serious-looking little girl in a pretty dress.

As Rakover explained recently, his family came from a small Eastern European city called Rakow, the source of the family name, traditionally spelled Rakower. From there, they moved to Krakow, in what is now Poland.

“Our family lived there from 1650, according to my figuring, in the same city . . . until Hitler came in 1939,” said Rakover, born in Krakow in 1918.

His side of the family made barrels and owned their own cooperage. Anti-Semitism and violence against Jews were commonplace in Poland when he was growing up, he recalled. There were strict quotas limiting the numbers of Jews admitted to universities.

Rakover planned to become a veterinarian, but his studies were ended by the German invasion. His father and his only sibling--older brother Gustaw--ended up in the Soviet Union, where both died. Rakover survived, making ammunition for the Nazis in labor camps.

Scattered throughout the world as a result of the Holocaust, Rakowers, or Rakovers, settled in Germany, Belgium, France, Israel, England, Venezuela, Brazil, Australia, Hong Kong and Taiwan, as well as the United States. One family member remains in Krakow, Rakover said; he himself never returned after he left Poland in 1948. Reunited with his mother after the war, he went first to Paris, where he earned a degree in mechanical engineering. In 1952 he came to the United States, where he managed office machine companies until his retirement.

For Rakover, the fact that some of the surviving Rakovers ended up in Tasmania, others in Florida, underscored the importance of discovering and sharing the story of a family that had lived in Krakow for almost 300 years and whose members had included such notables as 50 or 60 rabbis.

“We didn’t come from the moon,” he said. “We came from someplace, and we have a tremendous history.

“The young family didn’t know each other,” he said of the postwar Rakovers. “So the family should not disappear as a unit, I decided to do the book.”

The first piece of the family puzzle to fall into place was a congratulatory poem that a Polish contingent of the family had sent to a New York-based member on the occasion of his marriage. Dated Jan. 4, 1903, the document in German begins “Long Live the Newlyweds” and contains the signatures of 31 family members. The document was given to Rakover by the bridegroom’s daughter, Cecil, who died in Miami in 1985 at the age of 80.

His interest piqued, Rakover began searching for his roots. Aided by his knowledge of Polish, German, French, Hebrew and Yiddish, as well as English, he turned to the vast genealogical resources of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for assistance. With its help, he obtained such invaluable documents as family birth certificates, which gave addresses, dates and parents’ names.

Rakover wrote to his far-flung family members, asking them to remember all they could about their relatives.

“Everybody knows a little bit,” he said. “When you put every little bit together, you can get a whole book.”

Rakover said his wife, Sylvia, who died in 1992, “worried that no one would appreciate the time and effort I put into the book. I said, ‘Listen, if four or five of my relatives would appreciate it, that’s enough for me.’ ”

After 1939, the chilling names of death camps began to appear in the family record: Plaszow (the camp in “Schindler’s List”), Majdanek, Auschwitz.

When he has the opportunity, Rakover urges other survivors to add names to Yad Vashem’s growing list.

“If you read the book,” he said, “the people didn’t die. They are sitting around the table because we are talking about them. This book brought all these people back from the grave. Because we are remembering, they are alive, not physically but spiritually.”