A local teenager unlocked a decades-long family mystery during a recent trip to Auschwitz, getting “closure” with a missing piece of a painful family puzzle that stretched more than 80 years.
While touring an exhibit of children’s artwork at the notorious death camp,17-year-old Bronx native, Yuval, made a shocking discovery amid the drawings of guards with guns and trains.
Alongside the artwork, he noticed the name of his grandfather’s brother, 13-year-old Freddy Popper, whose fate was lost to his family – and history.
“Until now, Freddy’s fate was just rumors,” Yuval told The Post. “This trip gave my family proof and closure we never imagined possible.”
For his entire life, Grandpa Michael Popper never knew what happened to his older brother, Freddy, once the war broke out and the brothers were split up from their Slovakian home.
Michael, who was 10 at the time, was sent away to the mountains to hide in a Christian family’s barn, while 13-year-old Freddy was sent to an aunt and uncle in Budapest.
But the couple, who were pharmacists, poisoned themselves before the Nazis invaded, thinking Freddy would survive if found.
While Michael survived the war, his older brother’s unknown fate haunted the younger brother his entire life, until he passed away in 2020.
“It’s the epitome of OMG moments. It’s unfathomable – you can’t wrap your head around it,” said Yuval, ahead of the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, marked as International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Monday.
“I thought of thousands of scenarios about what would happen on the trip,” he said of the group trip, a youth delegation known as Friends of Israel Scouts group, or Tzofim North America. “And I couldn’t have imagined it would be [solving] this family mystery.”
Yuval’s mother, Michal Poran, the New York chapter leader who accompanied the group, told The Post that she was hoping to glean bits and pieces of family history, but this shocking discovery left her stunned.
“I saw the name and my heart stopped. I couldn’t catch my breath. It healed something that’s been broken for generations,” said the 46-year-old mother of three.
An emotional Poran, who cried “no happy, not sad” tears, immediately sent the photo of her uncle’s name to her mom. “It was like a clue, a hand wave from the past. It was amazing.”
The transformative journey during the summer of 2024 came just months after the October 7 massacre in Israel, making it deeply resonant for the delegation of nearly 100 teens.
“Past and present tragedies intertwined, amplifying the importance of connecting our youth to their heritage,” said Yaniv Biran, CEO of Tzofim North America.
But for the 17-year-old high school senior, the powerful moment of finding Freddy in Poland was channeled into his college essay — in which he described standing at the cemetery with a feeling that all of his relatives were standing behind and pushing him.
“I felt as if my entire family – generations and generations of my family – were standing with me, behind me, holding onto me,” the teen said of the life-changing moment.
“I really wish my saba [grandpa] could have seen this and we could have talked about it,” lamented Yuval, who meditated on what it meant for his great-uncle not much younger than him to have perished in the death camp, where most children were killed in crematoriums.
“It would have been sad, but I think he would have been proud of me for going on this trip and finding this piece of family history.”
