RLP 382: Holocaust, Secrets, Politzer Saga: Interview with Linda Broenniman

Nicole (1s):
This is Research Like a Pro episode 382: Interview with Linda Broenniman. Welcome to Research Like a Pro a Genealogy Podcast about taking your research to the next level, hosted by Nicole Dyer and Diana Elder accredited genealogy professional. Diana and Nicole are the mother-daughter team at FamilyLocket.com and the authors of Research Like a Pro A Genealogist Guide. With Robin Wirthlin they also co-authored the companion volume, Research Like a Pro with DNA. Join Diana and Nicole as they discuss how to stay organized, make progress in their research and solve difficult cases. Let’s go.

newspapers.com (41s):
This episode is sponsored by Newspapers.com.

Nicole (44s):
Hi everyone, and welcome to Research like a Pro.

Diana (47s):
Hi Nicole. How are you doing today?

Nicole (50s):
I am fantastic. How are you?

Diana (52s):
I am doing well. I am really excited because I get to start writing my report on my Dillards. And the funny thing is that I have discovered a new avenue of research and so, you know, this avenue that I’ve taken this time is pointing me to something new and that’s exciting. And I also love getting down all of my ideas in my computer, you know, getting things written out. So I am looking forward to that stage of the research process.

Nicole (1m 22s):
Yes, it’s always great to synthesize the research that you’ve done and yeah, it is a little funny when your project doesn’t pan out the way you thought it would like you said, but then you do have new ideas to go forward and find something different.

Diana (1m 36s):
Exactly. Well, let’s do some announcements. We are looking forward to our Research Like a Pro webinar series coming up on November 15th at 11:00 AM Mountain Time. The title is Autosomal DNA Analysis Helps Pinpoint Probable Parents for Cornelia Ingersoll. And our presenter is Alice Childs, who is one of our team members and our good friend and an amazing researcher. So just a little bit about this topic, Cornelia Ingersoll was born about 1788 in Carmel, Dutchess (Later Putnam) County, New York. Cornelia’s life after her marriage to Henry Stogdill was well documented.

Diana (2m 16s):
However, extensive documentary research in the Carmel area failed to reveal her parents’ names. Autosomal DNA analysis left little doubt that Cornelia was the granddaughter of Josiah Ingersoll, Sr. However, Josiah fathered multiple children with two different wives. Autosomal DNA analysis combined with additional documentary research helped pinpoint Cornelia’s most likely parents. So we will be covering all sorts of interesting topics, including DNA analysis of multiple test takers, half relationships, network graphs, New York research, pre-1850 research, probate records and church records.

Diana (2m 56s):
So if you’ve ever done any New York research back in this era, you know how difficult it is and DNA is really key in figuring this out. So a little bit about Alice. She is an Accredited Genealogist® specializing in U.S. Research, specifically in the Mid-Atlantic states of New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Jersey, and Delaware. And she is a graduate of our Research Like a Pro and Research Like a Pro with DNA study groups, and has served as a mentor for both groups. And we are just thrilled to have her coming on the webinar and teaching all about her case. Our next study group for Research Like a Pro will be the study group including DNA, and that begins in February of 2026.

Diana (3m 39s):
So you can watch for registration for that, which will be coming up in a few weeks. And if you’re interested in being a peer group leader this time and have free registration, our application is on our website. You can join the newsletter that comes out every Monday and learn all about new blog posts, upcoming lectures by Nicole and myself, coupon codes, all sorts of good things in that newsletter. And then we are excited because the Texas State Genealogy Conference is happening this week. We’ve been looking forward to it for two or three months and discussing it. We will both be presenting lectures. Nicole is talking about cotton farming through generations using tax records to track economic status and then also AI and genealogy enhancing your research process.

Diana (4m 28s):
And then I am teaching Small Bites, Big Impact: Crafting Focused Narratives to Illuminate Ancestral Lives, and From the Embers Uncovering Female Ancestry through Cluster Research and DNA When Records Perish. So we hope that many of you will join us. We’re excited to be presenting those. It’s all virtual and so you can watch from the comfort of your home.

Nicole (4m 53s):
Yeah, it’ll be a great conference. We really like teaching about our research in Texas. We have a lot, so it’s fun to be a part of that one.

Diana (5m 3s):
Right. Well, we have a guest today. We’re excited to have Linda Ambrus Broenniman, and we are going to hear all about her amazing research and book. So a little bit about Linda. She grew up in Buffalo, New York, and is the middle child of seven, born to Hungarian physicians who survived World War II and started their new life in the US in 1949. Linda graduated from Swarthmore College with a BA in Psychology and went on to get an MBA from Carnegie Mellon. Several years after graduation, she left mainstream corporate America to follow her path as an entrepreneur.

Diana (5m 45s):
She let her passion for uncovering hidden potential in unexpected places guide her, and she allowed this passion to fuel the search for her hidden family. A Wilbur Award recipient, Linda is a Generations Forward speaker for the Holocaust and Human Rights Education Center. Linda lives in Great Falls, Virginia with her husband, Ed. Well, hello Linda, and welcome to the podcast.

Linda Ambrus Broenniman (6m 10s):
Hello Diana and Nicole, it’s so wonderful to be on your podcast. Thank you for having me.

Nicole (6m 16s):
We’re so glad to have you. Well, I think all of this started with discovering some remarkable hidden family secrets that go back so many generations. Tell us more about these secrets you discovered.

Linda Ambrus Broenniman (6m 31s):
Well, I think the first secret that I discovered was that my father’s family was Jewish, but that didn’t lead to very much for many years. I sort of ignored that. But later on, 30 years later, I decided that I really wanted to look into my family’s history. And quite frankly, I never knew names such as Politzer and Misner and Veron, that these names were connected with my family. So I was able to go back and through a whole variety of, of things that I think we’ll get into later, I was able to find documents and books and all sorts of things, but they were all in Hungarian.

Linda Ambrus Broenniman (7m 16s):
So I worked with a Hungarian researcher and we were able to go back eight generations and find mostly the story of the Politzers, which was my father’s Hungarian Jewish family. So fascinating stories, just each generation, just amazing in the kinds of cataclysmic events that they overcame and, and were resilient and had so much courage to go on to the next.

Nicole (7m 48s):
Wow. It’s crazy that this was a secret in your family about, you know, being Jewish and then you discovered that it was probably such a surprise and it makes sense that you wanted to go and look into your family history to uncover all of that.

Linda Ambrus Broenniman (8m 4s):
Yes, I found out that my father’s family was Jewish when I was about 27, but as I said, I was busy, you know, at 27 you’re trying to figure out what your career is. I was in graduate school, so I’d sort of ignored it, but there was always that gnawing feeling of why are they keeping them secret? And and I really just wanted to find out. And as I said, finally in my sixties, I, I took the time and, and was able to really dig in and learn about this amazing family.

Diana (8m 38s):
I think it’s so interesting how you had those questions, but it took many years for you to really start acting on it. And I think that’s the way it is with a lot of us. We, you know, know we wanna eventually dig into our family history and learn more, but sometimes it’s just the right time in your life. So it sounds like that’s what happened with you.

Linda Ambrus Broenniman (8m 59s):
Well, it was both the right time of my life, but also I wish I had done it sooner, but when I tried to ask questions, there was this, you know, web of secrecy, which was really hard to penetrate. So when I would ask my grandmother or my my father, my father was, you know, com.. Wouldn’t answer anything. But even my mother, I thought sometimes she told me the truth, but I learned later that they were sort of half truths and she was still protecting my father. So it was difficult to penetrate this web of secrecy and wasn’t really able to, to get much information until, unfortunately, after they died, so.

Diana (9m 44s):
I know, don’t you wish that you could have just had the conversation with them when they were alive? That’s, I think it’s a regret of all of us. You, you just, when somebody passes, doesn’t matter if you’ve asked some stories before, you always wish you could go back and ask more, especially in this case.

Linda Ambrus Broenniman (9m 60s):
Oh, absolutely. I, I think about my grandmother who, who lived with us. She was born in 1902 and she would’ve known some of these incredible people that I found. For example, she would’ve known Adam Politzer who died in 1920, but he was, to this day, he’s still considered the father of otology, which is the study of the ear. And most ear, nose and throat surgeons today would know his name. So, you know, people like that. And there were several in our, in our family who were just these incredible people, incredible stories. And if I could have heard them directly from her, it would’ve been, I think, so much more enriching.

Diana (10m 43s):
It would’ve been neat. Well, in, in the bio I read, I read about that your parents survived World War II and were Hungarian physicians, and they started their new life in the US in 1949. And so tell us about that, because they are coming to the US after just a horrible time in Europe, and I know the book goes into that, but you know, what, what were your feelings about learning about what it took for them to leave and, and come to the US?

Linda Ambrus Broenniman (11m 17s):
Well, I think what I learned was truly shocking to me. My parents were 18 when they met. They were medical students, and that was in 1942. So in 1942, the war had not yet reached Hungary. Hungary was one of the countries that remained outside the war until 1944. But when the Germans marched in, in 1944, it was more intense than than anything. More Jews were rounded up and either transported to the concentration camps and murdered, or else they were just rounded up and, and marched to the Danube and shot into the Danube.

Linda Ambrus Broenniman (11m 57s):
So it was very intense, several months. So what I’ve learned, for example, first of all, my grandfather, my father’s father, was arrested and taken to a prison and then a labor camp, and then eventually Auschwitz and then Dachau. And so the last time they saw him was April of 1944. In May of 1944, my father was conscripted into a Nazi labor camp. And that was a complete shock for us. And you know, I, I can imagine how incredibly traumatic that must have been for him. At the same time, my mother was not Jewish, my mother was Catholic, and my mother, her best friend from grade school was Jewish.

Linda Ambrus Broenniman (12m 45s):
And her best friend came to her and asked her if she would move into a factory to hide Jews who were at risk, including her best friend and her family and her boyfriend and his family, and, and numerous other people. So my mother moved into an abandoned factory complex and saved Jews. And I learned that my father actually escaped from the labor camp when it was bombed, but he, with five other men escaped and then were captured twice more and escaped those times. And eventually he made it back to Budapest and he in, and one of his fellow escapees also moved into the factory complex as well as his mother, my grandmother.

Linda Ambrus Broenniman (13m 35s):
So my mother saved numerous people, and apparently when they ran out of space, she started to hide people in the Histology lab at the medical school. So years, years later, and we didn’t find this out, we didn’t find any of this out until 2006, when the Israeli government nominate, honored my mother as Righteous Among the Nations. And for your listeners, if they don’t know what that is, it is the highest honor that the Israeli government gives non-Jews who saved Jews during the Holocaust.

Linda Ambrus Broenniman (14m 15s):
And her name is in inscribed on the wall of honor at Yad Vashem, which is the Holocaust Center in Jerusalem, along with such names as Oscar Schindler and Raul Wallenberg and Irena Sandler, which are some of the names that your, your listeners might know of. So she was honored and it’s, it was just remarkable, remarkable to think of her courage and bravery.

Diana (14m 42s):
Oh my goodness. That just gives me chills thinking about, because you know, I’ve seen the movie Schindler’s List and oh my goodness, she must have been so brave. That is amazing. What a story.

Linda Ambrus Broenniman (14m 55s):
Yes, she was remarkable. And, and you know, you think about for nine months from, you know, May of 1944 to February of 1945, almost daily, you know, she faced terror and hunger and cold almost daily. The Nazis would knock on the, the gate of the factory complex asking to search the premises. And you can imagine the terror of that. Had they found anybody, everyone would’ve been shot. So remarkable to think what, what she lived through and what she did, what she did out of love for her friends and fellow human beings.

Nicole (15m 35s):
Wow. I’m just very impressed that she was able to keep this all a secret for so long. And there must have been a reason that she wanted to keep it secret, that your father too. So tell us more about the secret. And so at what point did you discover that not everything was, as it seemed in your upbringing and the way your family identified as Catholic, and, and then tell us more about the house fire and just any hints that came up in your younger life.

Linda Ambrus Broenniman (16m 6s):
Yeah, thanks. So I think when, when they came in 1949, first of all, the US was fairly anti-Semitic at, at that point. And so I think it was just easier for them to, you know, to pretend that my father was Catholic. I mean, he had converted so it was easier. And I think they just wanted to escape the trauma of what they had lived through. So they never talked about it. And over the years, you know, they loved Hungary, so they would talk about Hungary and you know, when my grandmother came, we had a, a portrait of my grandfather hanging up in the living room.

Linda Ambrus Broenniman (16m 47s):
And I remember asking her once, you know, tell me about him, how did he die? And she just gave me some excuse that he was a political prisoner and was taken to a prison, which of course we know now isn’t true. But, but it’s that kind of, you know, there’s just this, whenever I asked a question, it would, it was a short answer and you could tell it, they just wouldn’t tell the full story. So, and my father was a master at deflecting, but a couple hints I think. I went to Budapest with my parents twice, and the second time was right after the wall came down. It was just my parents and myself.

Linda Ambrus Broenniman (17m 30s):
So, and my father was busy doing some consulting, so I was able to spend time with my mom and I asked her a lot of questions, but you know, as I mentioned before, she sort of half answered them. And I found out later that, you know, there was a lot that she left out or there were some things that she just wouldn’t admit to. But she did mention, you know, at that point she had mentioned, oh, I hid some people. But unfortunately my history was not good enough, so when she said that, I couldn’t, I didn’t have the context to ask the right questions. So that was part of, you know, fast forward when I really started looking into this, what was important for me is to really understand history so I could make sure that I was asking the right questions.

Linda Ambrus Broenniman (18m 21s):
But, you know, there were some little hints, but, but they were pretty tightlipped about everything, so it was hard to get beyond the short answers. Then I really didn’t learn much more until 2006 when we were at the Israeli embassy. And really after that, I got in touch with Ava, Ava was my mother’s childhood friend who she had saved. And Ava at that point was, she and her husband were world renowned physicians, but living in Sweden. And they came to Baltimore for a medical meeting and I asked if I could meet with her.

Linda Ambrus Broenniman (19m 1s):
I mean, she gave me some more information, but it was limited. And, and, and she would start down a avenue and then she would say, oh, this is just too painful to remember, I can’t, you know, I can’t tell you more. So I think it was so difficult for people to go back and talk about those traumatic years that it was just very difficult to get information. And I didn’t really get more details until 2011, actually after 2011. But in 2011, my parents house caught fire, and my mother had had Alzheimer’s at that point for years and unfortunately she died as a result of burns she received in the fire.

Linda Ambrus Broenniman (19m 44s):
But in the chaos of trying to save things, my older sister pulled out a box and she then she forgot about the box, because the box got put in the back of a closet in her home. In about 2015, 2016 was when I had decided it was time for me to really look into my family’s history. And my sister happened to find the box at the same time and sent it to me. And when I opened it, it was filled with a lot of old documents and letters, almost illegible letters and a lot of photographs.

Linda Ambrus Broenniman (20m 26s):
And these were, these were photographs from some, from the 1800s. So when you think about what was in that box, it would had probably survived World War I and World War II and the Hungarian Revolution, and then of course my parents’ house fire. So it, it was remarkable what was in there, but everything was in Hungarian, which I didn’t speak, and I, I tried to use Google Translate or Microsoft Translate, and Hungarian is a very, very difficult language, so that didn’t do very well. So through a friend of a friend, I found a researcher in Hungary and he, he was just an amazing sleuth and found things in places that, you know, I don’t think anyone else could have found.

Linda Ambrus Broenniman (21m 15s):
He, he found, you know, land registers and tax registers and phone books and school reports and, you know, and books, both books written by my relatives and books written about my relatives. So that was an, a remarkable find. And one of the books he found was a book written by my father’s cousin who was 10 years old when the Germans marched into Hungary. And he was autistic, he was a musical genius and he was, he was a savant of source, you know, much like Justin Hoffman’s, portrayal of the Rainman.

Linda Ambrus Broenniman (21m 56s):
But in his book he described, you know, what people wore, what food they ate, what music they listened to. And sort of throughout all this trivia, we found out about a lot of the actions and, and the things that happened to my parents’ family and my parents. So between the letters and, and that book, it was, we were able to piece together the stories that I wrote about in my book.

Nicole (22m 22s):
Wow. That’s a lot of information that you were able to find with the researcher and, and then the book by your father’s cousin. What a treasure that he was able to write about those little things that give light and information to the world and culture that they were living in in that moment.

Linda Ambrus Broenniman (22m 41s):
Exactly, yes, they were true treasures.

Nicole (22m 44s):
I love that. Well, let’s have a quick word from our sponsor.

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Diana (23m 46s):
Well, Linda, I am looking at your book that you wrote about the family stories that you discovered and it’s such a beautiful book. Good job on that. I think we all wanna write something like this, but you did it.

Linda Ambrus Broenniman (23m 57s):
Thank you so much.

Diana (23m 60s):
And I love how at the beginning of each chapter, you’ve got a family tree and have all the different names, and then you have stories about some of the most notable people. So obviously you couldn’t put in everybody in this, but it looks like you found some really specific people that you wanted to discuss. So was that easy to pick those out? Who were some of the ones that you really wanted to cover in the book?

Linda Ambrus Broenniman (24m 29s):
Yeah, thanks. Just as you said, it’s such a huge family and it was really hard to choose who, but in the beginning, you know, I started and, and let me back up a second, another book that András found that a niece of my, my father’s cousin had saved throughout, this was a book called Our Family History, which was written by Sigmund Politzer who died in the 1920. And he had done the family research and was able to go back to the 1700s. So that’s how we got a lot of the stories that I cover in the book, starting with Isaac.

Linda Ambrus Broenniman (25m 12s):
And Isaac was the first, he, we don’t know exactly when he was born. He was born in the 1700s. We know he died in 1790. He was the first to be called a Politzer because in those days Jews didn’t have last names, and he was known as Isaac, son of Moses. And then in 1787, because of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and certain laws that were put in place, mostly because they wanted to make sure they tracked the Jews so they could tax them, they forced them to give last names. And he was given the last name Politzer from the town of Politz.

Linda Ambrus Broenniman (25m 57s):
And actually it’s, it’s interesting, it’s the same town that Joseph Pulitzer, the newspaper magnet is from, and they knew each other in some of the letters that we found. Adam Politzer, for example, called Joseph Pulitzer cousin, or signed, signed a letter to Joseph as your cousin. So we were never actually able to prove that. And András was very particular about making sure that everything that we found was the truth. So everything in in the book I, you know, was verified and is is true, which was a, a huge feat in and of itself because at the time the Austro-Hungarian Empire had multiple languages including, you know, German and Hungarian and Latin was the official language.

Linda Ambrus Broenniman (26m 46s):
So spellings and so on could be very varied. It was real challenge making sure we found the right person that was related to me.

Diana (26m 55s):
Oh yes, I have helped people who have had ancestors in that area and seen the records one year they’re written in, well you say in the book that Latin was the language they were written in for a long time, and then they change over to, you know, Hungarian and then they change the next year to a different language. So you just have to be so knowledgeable about so many different things to do the research. So it’s wonderful you found good help.

Linda Ambrus Broenniman (27m 21s):
Yes.

Diana (27m 21s):
So many things in this have that genealogy serendipity that I think we all love. Just so many things that come together to make it possible to learn about the past. So neat.

Linda Ambrus Broenniman (27m 34s):
Yes.

Nicole (27m 35s):
Linda, tell us some of your favorite things you discovered about your Jewish ancestors. What fascinating tidbits did you learn about their lives?

Linda Ambrus Broenniman (27m 44s):
Oh, there’s so many. It’s really hard to choose, but I’ll go back to, let’s go back again to the 1700s to Rachel. So Rachel, and she was born Rachel Kaiser. And the story that we learned was that she was born into a relatively, you know, modest Jewish family in a small town. And I, I, I can’t pronounce it, it’s a very long name, starts with a Z but it’s a small town in western Hungary. It had a well-to-do Jewish population. And her brother actually came to the US and supposedly made a big fortune.

Linda Ambrus Broenniman (28m 30s):
So he came back to Hungary and convinced his, his family to convert to Christianity and return to the US with them. But Rachel, and we don’t know how old she was, but I suspect she was, you know, a young teenager, maybe, you know, 12, 13 years old. She did not want to convert and she did not want to go to the US, so she ran away from home and went to a neighbor’s home and the family left without her. But back in those days, there was a law again, it was the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and there was a law that said if your father converted, converted, you automatically had to convert and she didn’t wanna convert.

Linda Ambrus Broenniman (29m 18s):
So the Jewish population sort of pulled behind her and, and it, it became a legal case that went up through the court system and it actually got to the attention of Emperor Francis II, which is remarkable because back in those days he was involved with all sorts of Jacobins conspiracies and sort of, you know, Napoleon, the, all the Napoleonic wars and so on. But here, this case of this, you know, young girl came before him and he decided that she was, could decide for herself. And so he set aside a date where Christians would line up on one side, Jews would line up on the other.

Linda Ambrus Broenniman (30m 2s):
She would have to walk down this long line between them, and at the end she could either choose Christianity or Judaism. So that happened. And think about this young girl, she had to be terrified. I, I would think, you know, and she chose Judaism and the Rabbi said to her that all of her descendants, they would all be blessed. So, you know, it sort of brought a tear to my eye, realizing that I was one of her descendants and I would be blessed. But of course his blessing did not exempt her from all these cataclysmic events that happened later on. But you know, Rachel just seemed like this incredibly strong young woman and she proved it later on in her life, ’cause she did not have an easy life.

Linda Ambrus Broenniman (30m 51s):
Her husband, she ended up marrying Moritz Politzer, who was a famous doctor at the time. And in the Napoleonic Wars, the French invaded Vienna. And when the triumphant French army was marching back to back home, they plundered all the local villages and they took over Mortitz and Rachel’s home and, you know, ate all their food, drank all their wine, and tortured Moritz to reveal where he had hid valuables. In the end, they ended up murdering him and Rachel became a widow with five children and really no means to support herself.

Linda Ambrus Broenniman (31m 33s):
So it was, it was very tragic. So, and I can go on and on, but…

Nicole (31m 39s):
Wow, that is tragic. And also I love the story of Rachel as a young teenager making that decision to stay with Judaism. What a neat story.

Linda Ambrus Broenniman (31m 52s):
Yeah, it’s incredible when you think about it, such a young girl with such, such courage and, and, and conviction.

Diana (32m 1s):
Hmm. I love that you give equal treatment to women in the book as well as men because you’ve got Rachel, you’ve got your mother, and you’ve got other women as well, and that’s so neat that you were able to find those stories as well.

Linda Ambrus Broenniman (32m 16s):
Yeah, I, you know, I, I think I came from a very strong line of women, you know, from Rachel all the way, my great-great grandmother, Joseph of Politzer, and, and I, I Joseph of Misner, and then Margie Misner Politzer. They were incredibly strong women and really held the family together. And you think about the trauma that they lived through and, and they just were so strong trying to hold the family together and do what was best, not only for the family, but they were truly generous and helped others no matter what their circumstance was. It was, it’s quite a legacy to live up to.

Diana (33m 1s):
Absolutely. Well, we’ve talked a little bit about, you know, this whole story being such a secret and your father was so adamant about keeping that Jewish identity hidden from, from everyone, including his children. So what do you think is the downside of keeping a secret like that even in, you know, into his later years?

Linda Ambrus Broenniman (33m 23s):
Yeah, that’s, that’s such a great question. You know, for me, growing up with secrets, it’s interesting because, you know, I had a great childhood, but yet I think I knew there were, there were secrets even if they, it was, you know, subconscious. And I think when you grow up with secrets, you think there’s something wrong with you. And it wasn’t until I really was able to uncover this, it, it sort of gave me this newfound freedom. But also I think it was also really traumatic for my father. When I think about it, you know, I, I don’t think he, I don’t know if he could actually change his true identity.

Linda Ambrus Broenniman (34m 7s):
And I, I think not facing up to the trauma that he experienced, I, I think he kept his secrets because he wanted to protect us, but it comes out in other damaging ways, you know, I, I think things could set him off and he had a, a hot temper and that was costly, I think. And I think it came out of not really dealing with his trauma and, and holding all these secrets in. It had to be, it had to take a lot of energy to do that.

Diana (34m 37s):
Well, and, and that is such a typical story of anyone who fought in World War II or survived, you know, traumatic experiences. They just wanted to put it in the past, not ever talk about it, because if you bury it, you don’t have to think about it, right? But I think now, you know, you recognize that of course he was having probably PTSD from that for his whole life and affecting him. And it probably just makes you wish that things were better back then in recognizing how to help people through trauma. You know, today we have more tools for that and would’ve made a difference, I would think. I, I believe, you know, telling the family story in a way that others can understand can be so healing.

Diana (35m 24s):
Have you found that it’s been healing for you to do all this research and discover?

Linda Ambrus Broenniman (35m 30s):
Absolutely. It has. You know, as I, as I said, I think it’s given me a certain freedom and, and more of an understanding of both my parents, but especially my father. You know, I, I, I think I was angry with him when I found out that, you know, I was Jewish and had had this incredible family that he’d hid hidden from us. But I now, you know, having done all the research and written about it, it was a way for me to understand and accept and forgive. And that has been, it, it’s made a big difference in my life. A huge difference in my life.

Linda Ambrus Broenniman (36m 13s):
Very positive difference.

Nicole (36m 14s):
I love that so much. What would you say to our listeners about the importance of learning where you came from?

Linda Ambrus Broenniman (36m 22s):
Oh, I think it’s so important. I’m not sure I even have the words to describe it. It it, as I said, it’s so freeing. And, and I would think even if there were a negative things that you, that you find, it’s to, to just bring them out in the light makes a huge difference. And you can then deal with the healing. You can start healing. So I think it makes a huge difference. And, and I would just recommend to all your listeners start early and, and try to find out, you know, talk to your parents, talk to your grandparents, talk to whoever is alive.

Linda Ambrus Broenniman (37m 4s):
Because I think if I had gotten these stories from them, it would’ve been so enriching. But at least I, I found what I found. But not everyone has relatives that wrote books, so it’s hard.

Nicole (37m 19s):
Agreed. It is so hard and I’m so happy that you were able to find the books and that they had been preserved even through the fire.

Linda Ambrus Broenniman (37m 28s):
Yes, yes, absolutely.

Diana (37m 28s):
This has been such a pleasure, Linda, to talk with you about your journey and your book. So for our listeners, where can people find out more about you and your book, the Politzer Saga, and all these amazing things we’ve been discussing in this podcast episode?

Linda Ambrus Broenniman (37m 46s):
Oh, thank you. Thank you. Yes, I have a website, it’s called, it’s just PolitzerSaga.com. There’s lots of information there. And then the book is available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. And, and if you’re, if you live in Buffalo, it’s at Talking Leaves the bookstore. And if you are in the Washington DC area, the Holocaust Museum is just now carrying the books, so…

Diana (38m 15s):
So neat, and it’s just a beautiful book. And I will just mention that your website actually has some fun videos. There’s one about the exhibit in Hungary in the place there that’s called the, am I saying this right? Is it the,

Linda Ambrus Broenniman (38m 33s):
The Rumbach Synagogue.

Diana (38m 37s):
The Rumbach Synagogue.

Linda Ambrus Broenniman (38m 37s):
Synagogue, yes. Yeah, we didn’t talk about the exhibit, but yes, there’s a permanent exhibit in the Rumbach Synagogue based on all of my family’s stories.

Diana (38m 47s):
That’s so neat. I mean, who gets to have an exhibit of your family? That’s so great. Well, and I think it’s obviously because you were able to trace those eight generations and it really tells the story of the Hungarian Jewish people and yes, so that’s neat. So neat. So I would encourage everyone to go take a look at the website. You can see a little bit about the story and the book and learn more about Linda. Just such a neat story and I’m so glad we got to discuss it today. It’s been a pleasure.

Linda Ambrus Broenniman (39m 22s):
Well, yes, thank you so much for having me. It really has been wonderful talking with you both. Thank you.

Nicole (39m 28s):
Well thanks Linda, and thanks to our listeners and we’ll talk to you all again next week.

Family Locket (39m 35s):
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