Benjamin Gurman was about 6 years old when a young refugee girl named Sandra came to live with his family in University City. She arrived during World War II as a Holocaust survivor, part of the wave of Jewish children displaced by the war and placed with American families.
“He’s told us she was like a sister,” said his grandson, Noah Beadle. “He remembers going with her to school, spending summers together, and for the only time in his childhood, not feeling alone.”
Then she was gone.
Now 86, Gurman is still trying to find out what became of her.
He has shared his story publicly through videos as part of the search, allowing audiences to hear directly from him as the investigation unfolds.
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From memory to investigation
Sometimes family stories fade. This one didn’t.
“I had always heard stories about Sandra from my grandfather,” Beadle said. “But I only realized the weight she carried in his mind when he asked me a couple years ago if I might try and find her.”
Beadle told his grandfather, he would try.
He began searching on his own, trying to piece together what little the family knew before reaching out last August to the Ackman & Ziff Family Genealogy Institute at the Center for Jewish History in New York.
In the form he submitted, he laid out what little the family knew.
His grandfather, Benjamin Allen Gurman, born in 1939, grew up in University City. During the war years, his family took in a young refugee girl about kindergarten age named Sandra.
Her last name was unknown. Her birth year estimated around 1939, give or take several years.
Two possible addresses: 6033 Clemens Avenue and 6409 Cates Avenue.
No official records. No documents. No survivor testimony.
Just memory — and a request for help.
That was enough to begin.
“For someone to matter to him so much after more than 70 years,” Beadle said, “it was like a switch in my brain that I have to try and do this for him.”
Following the trail
Gurman’s search is now part of Histories & Mysteries, an initiative of the Center for Jewish History that pairs families with genealogists to investigate unanswered questions from the Holocaust era while allowing the public to follow the research as it unfolds. The project is funded by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, commonly known as the Claims Conference.
Genealogist Lana Adler began working from fragments: a name, a timeframe, a city.
“One very promising lead was a document we found in the German Jewish Children’s Aid archival collection, which gave us Sandra’s last name,” Adler said.
Researchers now believe that last name may have been Hershkowits, or a variation of it.
How certain that identification is remains part of the ongoing investigation.
“The primary obstacle we encountered is the lack of hard documentation beyond the one document we found with Sandra’s full name,” Adler said.
A St. Louis story
To understand what Sandra’s life in St. Louis might have looked like, researchers turned to local records.
Among them were archived editions of the St. Louis Jewish Light, which documented the community’s efforts to resettle Jewish refugee children during and after the war.
Those records show a network of agencies placing children with foster families, helping them adjust to American life and, in some cases, reconnect with surviving relatives.
Sandra would have been one of those children.
The family who took her in was part of that world.
A search unfolding in public
Unlike traditional genealogical work, this search is happening in the open.
Through the project, digital creator Daisy Teh is documenting the investigation, sharing interviews and updates so audiences can follow along as researchers piece together the story.
“What struck me most was how, when Benjamin spoke of Sandra, it felt like he’d lost her just yesterday,” said Miriam Malka Frankel, who coordinates the project’s social media.
The goal is not just to find answers, but to show how those answers are pursued — and to preserve stories that might otherwise disappear.
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Still searching
Even with new leads, the central question remains.
What happened to Sandra?
“It’s both sad and inspiring to see him not give up the idea that they might reunite,” Beadle said.
“It would be an overwhelming sense of closure, particularly for my grandfather,” he said. “We hope Sandra only knew peace and had a good life afterward.”
If Sandra or her family were to come across the story, Beadle said there is one thing he would want them to know.
“I would want them to understand just how much this story has meant to him,” he said. “He’s lived all over the world and experienced so much, and yet he’s still wondering about Sandra.”
Anyone who may have information about Sandra — or a refugee child who lived with the Gurman family in University City in the 1940s — is encouraged to come forward. Please send an email with your contact information to Jordan Palmer.
After eight decades, the search continues.
| Related: Tracing Jewish roots: How St. Louisans can explore their heritage through genealogy
