Before immigrating to the United States in 1947, Stanley Steyer sought to obtain a copy of his birth certificate.

When Stanley was born (1912), Poland was under Russian rule, and all official business was conducted in Russian. This changed in 1921, when a victorious Poland finally regained its independence. Now, in 1947, the local authorities in Stanley’s hometown, Będzin, copied the Russian birth certificate by hand, just as it had been written out thirty-five years before.

It is hard to imagine how Stanley felt when requesting and receiving the copy. His father, whose name was underlined on the birth certificate, and his mother, whose name was also mentioned, had both been killed in the Holocaust.