New York Holocaust Survivor Gets Family Photos She’s Never Seen With Help from a Stranger

Of the six million Jews killed during the Holocaust, many names are still unknown. But one survivor living in New York was able to help fill in some of the gaps – thanks to a stranger who works at Google.

Her childhood and most of the memories associated with it were stolen from her. Her mother and siblings were killed by the Nazis, but 86-year-old Blanche Fixler survived the Holocaust.

Then, a few months ago, a stranger called.

Daniel Patt, a Google software engineer, leads the From Numbers to Names project, which uses artificial intelligence to identify faces in a collection of 500,000 photographs from museums such as Yad Vashem in Israel and the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.

When he uploaded a photo he found on Twitter, he found two matches that Blanche had never seen before. This was news not only to her, but also to Patt.

“Blanche is the first survivor we had a match with where the survivor is still with us,” Patt said.

So he flew across the country and personally delivered them to her home in Kew Gardens, Queens.

“It brings back a lot of memories,” Fixler said as she was able to see the faces of relatives, friends and loved ones she had not seen in decades. “My aunt, Rabbi Minsh, Rutka and Moshe.”

Thanks to the photographs, she was able to reunite – 80 years in the making.

“When he brought it, I said, ‘Oh my gosh, where did you get that picture from?’ Fixler said.

Melissa Colorado talks about Holocaust Remembrance Day activities.

“I think Blanche just sort of went back in time at that moment,” Patt said. “I’d say it was sort of like time travel.”

Hiding from the Nazis in Poland, Fixler managed to escape.

“This little girl went through hell,” she said. “We couldn’t leave the house, otherwise we were immediately hit by a bullet.”

She eventually ended up in a French orphanage, where some of the photographs were taken. Fixler was able to identify half a dozen previously unknown people.

The photographs brought to mind a song she sang as a child that was music to Part’s ears: his grandparents also survived. This project is deeply personal to him as he attempts to match names with faces, even as memories of the horrors of the Holocaust are rapidly fading from living memory.

“The painting is the real thing… if something is real, you can’t deny it,” Fixler said.