The letter that revealed three brothers and a Holocaust survivor father

For most of my life, I knew only fragments.

I was born in 1965 and adopted at just six weeks old. I grew up in Hertfordshire with my adoptive parents: an Austrian Jewish mother and an English father. My adoptive mother had arrived in England aged 18 in 1938 as a Jewish refugee, escaping Nazi persecution while leaving behind her own mother and grandmother, both of whom later perished in Theresienstadt.

Despite my heritage, religion played no role in our family life. My mother had not been brought up in a religious household, so although she was Jewish, it was rarely discussed and we did not observe Jewish traditions growing up.

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It was only after my adoptive mother died, when I was 25, that I began searching for my biological family.

Eventually, I traced my birth mother, an Italian woman living in London. She revealed only a few details about my birth father. He was, she told me, a red-haired Jewish man living in North London in the 1960s who owned a clothing factory.

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Most importantly, she gave me his name. Or so I thought.

For more than three decades, every attempt to find him led nowhere. I searched records and archives for a man I believed was called Moshe Notman, but no such person appeared to exist.

Then, in May 2022, I received the first significant clue.

After taking a DNA test through Ancestry, the results suggested my biological father was likely of Polish heritage. More significantly, I was matched with a possible second cousin. Although the relative could not shed further light on the family connection, the DNA evidence offered the first real lead I had found in decades.

The breakthrough finally came in May 2024 when I became friends with a woman in my choir who had experience tracing family members and offered to help. Armed with only the limited information I had gathered over the years, she uncovered the truth within 24 hours.

The surname had been wrong all along.

My father was not Moshe Notman. He was Moshe Nurtman.

Suddenly, everything fell into place.

Further research revealed that Moshe Nurtman was one of the Windermere Boys — young Holocaust survivors brought to Britain after the Second World War to rebuild their shattered lives. Having survived the horrors of Buchenwald and Theresienstadt, he arrived in Britain alone, an orphan who had lost his entire family. Despite unimaginable trauma, he went on to build a successful life in London and establish himself in the textile trade.

Searching online, I found recorded interviews he had given to the Shoah Foundation, recounting his childhood and wartime experiences.

It was incredibly emotional. After all those years of not knowing, I could finally hear his voice and learn about the extraordinary life he had lived. We even shared the same blue eyes.

But the discovery brought heartbreak too.

My father had died in December 2020, just one day before his 97th birthday. After spending 33 years searching for him, I had missed the chance to meet him by less than four years.

Then came another revelation — one I never expected.

My father had married shortly after I was adopted and had become a devoted father. I had three brothers.

Howie, Saul and Mickey had grown up entirely unaware of my existence. Remarkably, two of them lived only a few miles away.

With more than a little trepidation, I wrote to them in August 2024.

Soon afterwards, we met for the first time in a café in Mill Hill.

The moment changed my life.

I looked at them and could see myself. For the first time, I felt a deep sense of belonging and connection. After decades of unanswered questions, I finally understood where I came from.

For my brothers, the discovery was emotional too. Mickey later told me that when he opened my letter and saw my photograph, he immediately recognised our father in my face.

DNA testing later confirmed what we already knew.

Since that first meeting, we have built a close and enduring bond. What began as a search for my father became something much bigger. It opened the door to a family I never knew existed and to a culture and identity from which I had always felt disconnected.

Although I still mourn the fact that I never got the chance to meet my father, learning about the life he built after surviving the Holocaust has transformed my understanding of myself.

Moshe Nurtman was clearly an extraordinary man. He survived the unimaginable, rebuilt his life from nothing and created a loving family.

After 33 years of searching, I not only found answers about my origins and uncovered my Jewish roots. I was welcomed into the families of my three brothers and their children with warmth, kindness and love.

What began as a search for one man ended with the discovery of an entire family.