Blast From My Past, Ep. 6: Heirloom Hunters – MyHeritage May 18, 2022

I saw this today on MyHeritage – Blast From My Past, Ep. 6: Heirloom Hunters:https://blog.myheritage.com/2022/05/blast-from-my-past-ep-6-heirloom-hunters/. Longer article, includes audio recording.

By Esther May 18, 2022

We are excited to share the 6th episode of the Blast From My Past podcast. In this episode, we get a moving glimpse into the work of heirloom hunters: people who make it their life’s mission to locate old, lost photos, letters, and other personal items, and return them to the descendants of those who left them behind.

The podcast features two heirloom hunters: Chelsey Brown and Kate Kelley, also known as “The Photo Angel.”

Chelsey Brown is an interior decorator by trade who made a name for herself offering expert tips and advice on stylizing rented homes. As a budget decorator, she spent a lot of time looking for hidden treasures at flea markets. Alongside the quirky antiques and inexpensive room accents, she found herself drawn to a different kind of treasure: personal documents and photographs of unknown origin. She realized that these items would be of great value to the family members of the people these items belonged to, and began using the genealogy tools on MyHeritage to track down the descendants of the owners and return these items to them.

As an heirloom hunter, Chelsey has made national headlines with her intriguing finds and various dilemmas she’s faced while returning lost heirlooms. In this episode, we dive into one particular story of a letter she discovered among a pile of Holocaust-related documents in the home of a flea market vendor she knew. Though she does not speak German and neither she nor the vendor knew what the letter said, Chelsey felt drawn to it and decided to have it translated. It turned out that the letter was written by a woman named Ilse Loewenberg to her sister, Carla, who lived in England. Sent just after Ilse was liberated, it bears the terrible news that the sisters’ parents and two other sisters, as well as Ilse’s husband, had perished in the Holocaust. Ilse’s pain and shock just radiated off the pages, and Chelsey knew this document had to be returned to her family.

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