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Suitcases in the Attic Preserved One Family’s Holocaust History

Ellen Goodwin, Artifcts
January 27, 2025

Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. Through the artifacts and stories carefully preserved and shared, we can connect with our shared history and bring forward its lessons to a new generation. We hope you find inspiration in this story, the spoken and unspoken history of a family that has now been brought into the light. We extend our deep gratitude to Deborah for sharing her story.

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Meet Deborah.  

Deborah grew up Jewish, the kind of Jewish that enjoyed matzah but also celebrated Christmas with other kids in her Connecticut neighborhood. Being Jewish, she felt different, special, “even if I didn’t know what being Jewish meant.”

While Deborah knew vaguely of her family’s migration from Austria to the United States during World War II, she knew little of the details that completely relandscaped her family’s lives.

Fast forward many years to 2003 when Deborah asked her mother about family documentation that might exist to support reparation claims for those who had property stolen as the Nazis swept across Europe. “My Mom said, ‘Good luck with that,’ and pointed up, to the attic, ‘Everything’s up there. Suitcases full. Take it.'"

Sure enough, Deborah’s great grandfather, her mother’s paternal family, had squirreled away a plethora of ephemera to document his original Vienna-based hat business, along with letters and other materials of their life. Everything they had departed Vienna for the US with, was all that remained. The rest? The rest was in secure storage at a port in Italy, destined for a ship to the US, and stolen when the Germans overtook the port. 

“It turns out, my mother’s maternal family, having left for the US a few years earlier arrived with practically all of their household items. We’re talking everything down to their 12-piece fine porcelain dinner service.” But of course, they lived in a small apartment in New York and had no need for most of the items. It all sat in storage for decades, wrapped securely in the same 1938 newspaper it shipped over to the US in.

Following are snippets from our co-founder Ellen’s conversation with Deborah in honor of today’s International Holocaust Remembrance Day. We’re sharing some of the spirit and content behind her discoveries into her own family history and the holocaust. Her Artifcted collection of family artifacts and her book Nothing Really Bad Will Happen provide you, the curious, with so much more historical color and context. We encourage you to explore and take in the themes of resilience, legacy, and survivorship.

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Ellen Goodwin: Where did all these family artifacts come from? You have a hat designed by your great grandfather, a vast collection of mementos and ephemera. Who was keeping them all this time? How has it been preserved?

Deborah Holman: Well, one part of my family lost everything, and the other saved it all.

My mothers’ father’s family essentially lost everything. They moved it into a storage container in Italy in 1941 to ship to the US once they got here. But when the Germans captured the port, everything they owned was stolen. They arrived with a suitcase and 5 bucks. The only reason I have one of the hats from my great grandfather’s hat factory in Vienna is I was able to find one on eBay!

My mother’s maternal family left earlier, in 1938, and they kept everything. They dragged all of it from Vienna and deposited it in the storage area of their apartment building. It sat there until it migrated into my mother’s attic, wrapped, unused, and never spoken of.

cabinet with china from Vienna    offwhite plate in cabinet

Goodwin: But your great grandfather’s documents, they were an exception. They made the trip with him to the US, right?

Holman: Yes, exactly. When they confiscated his hat factory, he began immediately to try and get it back. He saved every document, every letter for reparation claims. It was a whole additional suitcase in my mother’s attic I never knew about.

Goodwin: You never knew. You mean your mother never discussed it? 

Holman: Never. My mom was six when she fled here with her mother and grandmother. All she ever said were things like, “I could have been a princess,” and “Maybe I could have had a sibling,” or “We had money, and then we had nothing.” I knew her father had spent 10 months in two concentration camps, my grandmother had all the letters he sent every two weeks, but that’s it. 

My daughter was the only one to ever open a small crack into my family’s holocaust history when she interviewed my mother for a school project in the late 90s. I don’t know how accurate the memories were, but my mother shared more than I had heard before. And then that was it, “There’s no point in talking about it anymore,” were my mother’s final words on it. 

Goodwin: When going through large collections like these you expect to find certain things: passports, travel papers, letters, and the like. Did you find anything surprising?

Holman: As I was writing my book, I was feeling guilty about how I portrayed my great grandfather, the hat maker. He does not come across as a really good guy, so stern. And that’s where the title of the book, “Nothing Really Bad is Going to Happen,” came from. His view of what the Nazis were doing was akin to “this happens to Jews all the time.” He almost blew it, not getting out until ’41 because of his mindset. 

And yet, one day out of the blue, my sister called to tell me she found his wallet in a box in her house. She has no idea how it came to be in her possession. And tucked in the back of the wallet was a newspaper article, written in German. I translated it and discovered it was essentially an advice column, advising against giving your children too much before you die because if you do, they won’t learn to be self-sufficient, and they’ll want you to die prematurely so they can get your stuff.

With that article, I realized, I portrayed him pretty accurately. Guilt gone!

Goodwin: And THAT is why I tell people the things we keep speak volumes about us, what we value, and even our aspirations.

So, you have all this now, and you know more about your family history. What will become of these physical artifacts?

Holman: We’ve agreed we want to donate items of broader interest to an institution where people will get to see it all up close, somewhere more intimate. There are some museums in NYC as well as the Center for Jewish History that we have in mind. 

Goodwin: As we bring our conversation to a close, I’d like to circle back to where we began. You said as a child you didn’t know what being Jewish meant to you. What does being Jewish mean to you now after you’ve done all this family research?

Holman: Being Jewish means strength and resilience. It means “Good luck. Do what you want. We’re not going anywhere.”  

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Let this be your call to action on this International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Let this family's artifacts of the past and the people and stories they represent remind us always to stand against hate and intolerance in all its forms. We are better than our past, always improving with the lessons of history as our guide.

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© 2025 Artifcts, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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Bring Your Family Tree to Life With Our Tips

You know the expression, "If a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" Well, we wonder, if you connect all the dots of your family history and no one knows about it, did it happen? 

Today's ARTIcles story is all about how we can share our family history so that the content and the message, aka stories, are actually received. To set the stage, we're sharing the inspiration for this article, a message from a woman we'll call Susan, who is a hobbyist genealogist, and who we think is not alone in her frustration. She reached out to us via Facebook Messenger back in March with a humourous headline: "True Story: My Family Refuses to Look at My Family Tree."

Here's a rough summary of what Susan had to say about her frustrations in trying to share family history with her relatives:

“My parents and siblings ask me for historical details about our family all the time.  

      • When was that again that they came over from France? And what part of France was it?  
      • Do you have a photo of Great Grandpa {last name}?  
      • Did we have any {bank robbers, poets, craftsmen, ... } in the family? 
      • Is the family burial plot in {city} the only family plot? 
      • Did anyone in our family serve in {name of war}? 

And I have come to realize I have no great way of sharing my findings with my family because they refuse to create accounts and sign into any of the genealogy software systems I use.

I’m in my late 50s and many of my siblings and in-laws are a lot older than me, so maybe technology is a factor. But I think it’s more that they simply want the answer, not what they see as the gory black and white details we genealogists love.

That said, even with the younger ones, the nieces and nephews, the second I flash a family tree or mention “Your great grandpa on your mother’s side… ,” they zone out.

That means I usually end up sending information by text message and email. But then they lose that quickly and it doesn’t get shared with everyone, so I have to repeat this work over and over again. It takes the joy out of it.

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Better Options than Text, Email, or Intimidating Websites to Share Family History 

There are so many options available to help you share your family history discoveries, all those dots you’ve connected, black and white facts found, that will save your sanity and keep your family better connected with their history now and long into the future.  

Stick with links.* Share website links to directly relevant pieces of a family tree, photos, or documents that you might have in MyHeritage, Ancestry, FamilySearch or the like to prioritize your time and sanity. Like Susan, this is where you are comfortable operating. If they are truly interested, they can follow the simple steps to create an account. And there is usually a free option for them to do so. If that’s not the case, tell them the price and/or tell them how to sign up at a discount if you know there is a free trial period, a discount code available, or a sale coming up. Since you so kindly sent them a link, they won't have to dig - you'll guide them to exactly where the answer awaits.

Grant access to your cloud storage.* If you keep your research in a cloud-based system (like Google Drive, DropBox, Box etc.), give family members permission to view specific folders or bits of information that answer their questions, such as photos, documents, and maps. This simple approach is still better than losing things in email or text.

And please plan for the transfer of your digital genealogy assets upon death in your estate plan so all these family history treasures can be passed on to the next generation. 

* Remember that anyone can share a link but granting permission to access what that link leads to may require another step. So, with either of these first two options you may get others coming to you to request access to the same information because someone gave them the link. Hopefully the genealogy software or cloud solution you use automates that all to make it easy on you! 

Scan the photo or document, and Artifct That! There are many great app- and desktop-based options out there to scan a picture or document that you as the family keeper may be holding onto, such as the “Notes” app on many phones or the Photomyne subscription app. If you’d like assistance digitizing media, you can hire a professional photo manager, pop into a local shop that specializes in digitization and/or archival preservation, or check local libraries and genealogy centers for digitization resources, like the Vivid-Pix scan stations.

Scan those photos and docs and then do not let them get lost in text messages or 100s of photos back in a folder.

Artifct in the moment where you can then record the story and details and share with your loved ones before moving on to the next piece of the puzzle. But share where? You can ...

... Create Artifcts Circles. You can create as many Artifcts Circles, with as many people in them, as you like, for free. Think of circles like chat groups – anyone who accepts your invite can then share their Artifcts to the circle, too. You can even name another admin to add/remove people, too. People you invite need only to create a free Artifcts account to accept your Circle invitation and create and share up to five free Artifcts with the Circle, too!  

      • Sharing your stories and discoveries with Circle members means you are no longer the single point of failure or truth. Everyone will have access anytime, anywhere. But again, make sure in you've listed your primary and secondary legacy contacts in your Artifcts account settings so your Artifcts can live on. 
      • And you can crowdsource with Artifcts Circles, too. Have a gap you’re trying to fill in the tree? Wishing you had more family heirlooms, photos, or documents to back up your research? When people and estates are dispersed through time, it’s easy to forget who has what that may help to fill those gaps.  
      • Ask family to Artifct and share with the Circle. Yes, it may be more family lore than history or genealogy, but the lore is often equally as valuable to any facts you have collected. Lore is the character and color of the family history that has survived and can provide clues along your way – Artifct that! Get step-by-step details and inspiration for family circles here >

Have Fun Preserving and Swapping Stories

Next time you and your family get together, pick a theme in advance, and ask everyone to contribute to an Artifcts Circle.  

Among our favorites:  

      • Oldest family photo 
      • Favorite heirloom 
      • Secret/not-so-secret family recipe

Suggest everyone use the same tag for instant sorting of the Artifcts in the Circle to see just those created for this activity, e.g. #PicChallenge25, #Reunion25recipe.

Old family photo with all 13 kids and the parents

 
 
A rare family photo, with all 13 kids, preserved and shared with the rest of the Tirres family via Artifcts.

Happy Artifcting!

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© 2025 Artifcts, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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What's In Your Garage?

A couple of weeks ago, we introduced, four garage “personalities,” and a lot of our readers found themselves exclaiming, “Yes, that’s me!” when we described the Classic and the Whozits and Whatzits garages. One of our readers even reached out to our founders to ask if it was written about them. Sorry, it was not, it was based purely on research.  

For those of you that find yourself staring at a lot of ‘stuff’ every time you venture into your garage, this ARTIcles story is for you.  

What’s In Your Garage? 

When was the last time you took a hard look at what was in your garage? If you had to create a home inventory of the items stashed and stowed away for safe keeping or “someday,” could you? The fact is that our garages often end up being de facto storage units of last (or first!) resort.  

Over 60% of US adults surveyed by Craftsman feel their garage is the most cluttered space in their home, and more than half of the adults surveyed use their garage for DIY projects. While Pods.com found that most garages in the US contain on average $1,800 worth of tools alone! Not to mention countless other items, some of which may be financially valuable or have what we love to call heart value. 

Our co-founder Heather, who lacks a garage in Washington DC, ventured home this summer to uncover the treasures lurking in her father’s garage. Kayaks, canoes, paddles, personal flotation devices, power tools, old signs, a custom-made West Barnstable Table waiting for its next home, and even a car. A car, shocking, we know! 

When asked, Heather’s father said he’d “certainly know what the big things are, I’d know there were two kayaks and a canoe, and one car...would my insurance company believe I had a West Barnstable Table sitting in the garage, probably not.”  

As for the rest of the ‘stuff’ in her dad’s garage, that’s up for debate. Which is not at all what your insurance company wants to hear if you ever need to file a claim if faced with a house fire, flood, or other natural or manmade disaster. 

If you aren’t sure what exactly is in your garage, take a moment this week to create a quick inventory.  

  • Start with the big ‘stuff,’ kayaks and cars included; 
  • Work your way down to the smaller, less memorable items;  
  • Document anything that has financial or heart value.  

Artifcts is a great way to record the stories and values behind all those whozits and whatzits lurking in your garage. You can also use one of the many inventory apps that we featured in last week’s ARTIcles story if you really get on a roll.  

...And Is It Insured? 

Once you know what’s in your garage, take a moment to confirm with your insurance agent that it is in fact all covered by your homeowner’s insurance policy.  

Homeowner’s insurance typically includes coverage for garages, whether attached or detached, as part of the dwelling policy. Coverage for detached garages is typically limited, however, to a percentage—e.g., 10 percent—of the dwelling’s coverage amount, which according to FEMA, may not be enough for valuable contents.  

Ask your agent about any additional riders recommended for particularly valuable items (antique cars, various collections, golf clubs, etc.) to ensure you don’t inadvertently end up with more ‘stuff’ than you have coverage for in your garage. Artifcts makes it easy to quickly and privately share the details of the items with your insurance agent via email or link. It’s a win-win for sure! 

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© 2025 Artifcts, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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How to Choose the Right Home Inventory App for You

In this era of more frequent and intense extreme weather events, more nomadic lives that send us across state lines and national boundaries, and often an abundance of ‘stuff,’ we have more risk and more at risk than ever before.  

Just think, back in 1994 after the L.A. earthquake, there were more than 19,000 insurance claims filed. That was 30 years ago when the population of L.A. was approximately 3.5 million. The population of L.A. has since boomed to 12.7 million. Imagine the volume of claims from this year’s catastrophic wildfires alone! 

Home inventories offer you a baseline level of peace of mind and practicality. If you have your home and its contents well documented, you’ll be able to proceed more rapidly through the claims process and likely recover more on your claims than without. 

That means if you do nothing else, take a video of each room in your house, and store the video in a private virtual space (and back it up to a second location, too). Now in a worst-case scenario, you have something to go from to prove what you owned to your insurance company.  

Better yet, subscribe to a home inventory app. Modern home inventory apps can take you much further than a baseline inventory and serve different home and life management needs and priorities. Today we’ll introduce a few home inventory apps to illuminate the variety available and offer some insights from professionals who are using these apps to support you through decluttering, downsizing, and moving. 

Before we dive in, for those who are less familiar with Artifcts, you may wonder, how does Artifcts compare with a home inventory app?  

What we built at Artifcts is wholly different from a home inventory app. We are not worried about every spoon, bed sheet, oven, or lamp. Nor are we worried about home maintenance. At Artifcts, we built a warm and engaging experience for the curated items of your life so that you can keep the memories, even if the ‘stuff’ is lost to time, relocation, or mother nature. You can Artifct the value, provenance, and documentation, too, behind your most valuable possessions to support your insurance claims or estate planning processes. And at Artifcts, we’ve made it easy to share and enjoy with friends and family as well as advisors (e.g., insurance, estate planning, financial advisors). 

Examples of Home Inventory Apps

We checked out dozens of home inventory apps designed for private homes to understand the variety of core offerings as well as bells and whistles each offers. For simplicity, we chose four to feature here not as a promotion, but to illustrate why a home inventory app that is best for you may not be the app that is best for me. 

Listed in alphabetical order. 

FairSplit. This home inventory system allows users to manually and/or with AI-support create a personal home inventory. But the ultimate distinguishing feature, in our opinion, is the upgrade available to then use the system’s proprietary options to divide the assets in a home among beneficiaries: Divide Things, Not Families®.  Web-based only.

HomeZada. This home management system integrates inventory, maintenance schedules, financial oversight, and management of remodel budgets into a single platform. It simplifies property management, empowering homeowners to maximize their home’s value and functionality. AI-enabled to provide critical supporting details. App- and web-based.

NAIC Home Inventory App. The National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) offers this free inventory app for you to create your inventory manually as well as through scanning barcodes for improved accuracy. The NAIC also features disaster preparedness and claims filing advice. App-based only.

Pinventory. This home inventory app offers a unique and extensive collection of reports customized to particular types of objects. Use the system DIY style or hire a Pinventory specialist to create your detailed home inventory. You can also leverage its integration with MaxSold to sell select items. Web-based with a limited-functionality companion app.

How Should You Choose the Right App for You?

Before you select the inventory app for you, here's some advice from our experience: 

      • Try it out free on the device, or combination of devices, you intend to use it from (e.g., mobile, tablet, desktop computer). If you think you are going to use it mostly on your phone, test it out on the phone, not on your laptop. Not all apps work like the Artifcts app, where we have nearly identical feature sets on the mobile app and website and automatically synchronize your changes on mobile with the desktop version. 
      • Read the reviews and pay attention to changes over time in customer support, cost, and features you care about most. 
      • Pay attention to media storage (i.e., your photos and videos). What is the storage limit? And will that work for you and the items you plan to inventory? What is the cost for additional storage? 
      • Understand the security and privacy of information you upload to the app and how you will be able to share private information with others of your choosing.
      • Learn how you can retrieve (i.e., download) your inventory data if you want to provide a summary report to an advisor or loved one, or if you decide the app is not for you and you want to take your information with you. 
      • Then decide for yourself, “Does this app, at its core, do what I need?” Ignore the bells and whistles. Are your basic needs met?

What the Pros Have to Say About Home Inventory Apps & Working with Clients

We interviewed several experts in move management, moving, and home cleanouts to get their takes on all things personal home inventories. We were curious how often creating a home inventory is a part of the services they provide to their clients and why they choose the apps they do to get the job done.  

MOVE MANAGERS 

Remarkably, at most, the move managers we spoke with create inventories as a service for 20 to 25% of their clients.  

“If our client is preparing to deal with beneficiaries in court for probate or is going through a divorce, that’s when we need an inventory app so we can be more thorough,” said Marty Stevens-Heebner, Founder & CEO of Clear Home Solutions and author of "How to Move Your Parents (and still be on speaking terms). “The reality is, most other clients are satisfied with simple photos and videos that they then save to their personal cloud account.” 

A problem that arises is that for many of us homeowners and renters, even if we do a home inventory, we’re human, and we forget to update it. It is used for some transitory need and never revisited. But the golden rule from an estate planning perspective is to set a reminder to review and update your inventory and the estate plan it’s tied to at least every two years.  

From an insurance perspective, the more often you update your home inventory, the better. Make a habit of updating your inventory with life changes (e.g., marriage, death, inheritance, new baby, move) as well as with any major purchases. Each of those appliances, large home furnishings, collectibles, and the like add up quickly when it comes to replacing them if lost to fire, flood, or otherwise. 

MOVING COMPANIES

Moving and the use of inventory apps are a whole different story. We spoke with Ryan Hegarty, Director of Residential Sales for Olympia Moving, a member company of Wheaton World Wide Moving. Hegarty described inventories as integral to his company's move operations. Every item that comes into company-managed storage, is placed on a truck for inter-state delivery, or is heading overseas is managed through an inventory system. 

“But inventories are also part of our sales and planning process. We schedule virtual calls with potential clients and guide them through creating an app-based video inventory using Yembo,” explained Hegarty.

Using AI, the inventory app allows the Olympia Moving team to provide customers with immediate estimates, too.

“It also provides us with critical information to estimate box counts, dimensions of entry ways, and where we’ll need a ramp. It means a better, more efficient workflow on move day and reduction in surprises for us and the homes we move.” 

HOME CLEANOUTS

Matt Paxton, Founder & CEO of Clutter Cleaner, offered a different view on inventory apps and the home cleanout process. 

“We have to do a full inventory of a home during an estate clean out. We often have multiple family members that live in different states that simply aren’t aware of all of the items in a home. Some of the states that our Clutter Cleaner teams work in, it’s state law to provide a full inventory of assets sold and dispersed during the probate process,” explained Paxton.  

He’s also found that it’s easier to divide the items when a family is aware of what items are in the home.  

“If the family already has a home inventory, it could save them money during the cleanout process. If they don’t, we typically use Fairsplit to help a family get a full inventory before estate settlement. No matter where you are in the process, a home inventory really helps you understand what you have and what you are willing to disperse, sell, and or donate.” 

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We hope this ARTIcles story will inspire you to take a first and then a second step to inventorying your home for greater peace of mind. And if you discover an app or process that works best for you, share with us! We’d love to learn from you: Editor@Artifcts.com.

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© 2025 Artifcts, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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