Ancient Jewish tombstones hidden from Nazis during WWII rediscovered in Vienna

"It was 1943 when Vienna's Nazi overlords gave the order to destroy the city's oldest Jewish cemetery, demanding it be levelled and the tombstones attesting to centuries of Jewish existence there be destroyed.

Desperate to save their heritage, the city's shrinking Jewish community decided to act. Defying the possibility of prison, deportation or execution, they buried the gravestones and kept them from Nazi hands." [Source: Edmonton Journal]

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Daughter discovers a genealogy gold mine in father's letters

Oswald Holzer, a Jewish physician, deserted the Czechoslovakian Army in 1939 as Nazi Germany overtook the country and conscripted the army. He ended up in China where, eight days after they met, he married Ruth Alice Lequear on Sept. 20, 1940.

Nearly 60 years later, when Oswald and Ruth died within three days of each other, Schirm and her siblings discovered 534 documents dating back to 1885 and including 392 letters written to her father by 78 different people during World War II.

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