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In 2024, feeling heartbroken at the political turn of events and realization of the deeply polarized people of the US, I found myself drawn toward reaching out to the spirit of my great-grandmother.
Anna was born in and survived political turmoil in southeastern Ukraine before being dehumanized and imprisoned by Nazis in one of Germany’s concentration camps. She would be liberated from that camp and–along with the rest of the living members of the family–fled to the USA as “Polish” immigrants to seek safety from further death and dehumanization that awaited many Slavic peoples post-WWII.
How did she survive? How did she move on from all of that? What ancestral lessons were learned that I could draw on now to protect my son and other loved ones as authoritarianism (with an undeniable fascist flair) takes power in the US and threatens the Constitution that I swore an oath to defend and uphold?
Gravestone of Anna Derewianko, the matriarch of one of my family branches.
In September 2025, I sat down with the fabulous Jordan Harcourt-Hughes for her podcast, Sacred Stories of the Spirit. Our discussion about storytelling and authenticity reignited that pull toward my great-grandmother and those stories that didn’t get passed down. While working on a meditation for the UUFN Samhain service, I spent much of October 2025 going down the rabbit hole, chasing after the stories of spirit that wanted to be found.
I started by meeting with my uncle, who was still young when Anna had passed. Despite admitting not having a lot of details to share, he filled gaps I’d had my whole life, hearing of this beloved matriarch without any explanation as to why. He confirmed the scant things I knew and validated information a psychic medium friend had once asked me about. My uncle confirmed that Anna had a number tattooed on her arm, the evidence of her time in a Nazi concentration camp that not even a Holocaust-denier can refute. More than that, he helped piece together the puzzle from my older brother’s genealogical research, helping to narrow down general places and names, offering insights into the reality versus hype we could expect in family recollections.
After that sit-down, I’d intended to file away these new details and perspectives for later, when I could reach out to more family members who would have known Anna and other members of the family. But the ancestral pull proved stronger than my easily-distracted attention-span, demanding my time, energy, and focus as I dug into records and the research my brother had previously shared with me. The rabbit hole–it turns out–is both long and steep!
First came my father’s side of the family. As I built a tree using free online tools, several generations of the family auto-filled from the work already done by unknown distant relatives. I could see the Irish side of the family that fit neatly into the narratives passed down about coming to the US at the turn of the 20th century. But I also got to see the branches with deep roots in the early immigrations to “The New World” long before the US was dreamed of. My love for the state of Delaware is in my blood and bones.
Building my mother’s side of the family proved about as difficult as I thought it would. I was so excited to learn that the records we were mistakenly led to believe were destroyed by the Nazis and others weren’t so destroyed after all. Church records in Ukraine could help with birth details needed to determine who was where and when. However, these same records are hand-written in Cyrillic.
Having been slowly learning Ukrainian for a few months, I could recognize and vaguely understand some of what I was looking at. The work of transcribers who’ve translated the Cyrillic into English also helped. Yet, I was struggling to find the names as we learned them.
Many of the immigration records showed multiple spellings of the same surnames. My great-great-grandmother’s headstone reads differently than how she put her first name on US documents. Those relatives she traveled to the US with would go on to spell the same surname the way the itinerary did, while she and Anna would spell it notably differently.
Getting into my great-grandfather’s surname was even more daunting as there was no consistency at all. Even on his social security applications he listed his father’s surname differently than his own despite both likely having been the same when written in Cyrillic. Digging through the prisoner records of Nazi Germany concentration camps, the “Ost-” prefix often posed a challenge for the scribes who had to try Romanticizing the Cyrillic names into German. They would often write the name, cross out the prefix and try to rewrite it, then cross the whole thing out and rewrite an entirely different spelling above it.
The records may exist. But having our ancestors ripped away from their language and renamed according to how their captors saw fit prevents us from ever finding them.
As I continued my search of the concentration camp records, I switched to my great-grandmother’s surname and looked for the various spellings I had accumulated. I’d found a couple prisoner cards that could be related. But it was finding the surnames in the Buchenwald records that made my heart jump.
Flooded with a deep sense of familiarity, I felt tears well up and spill down my face. I smiled, I laughed, and I cried. At the time of this writing, I still have no way of knowing which–if any–of these men are family. But as I scrolled through their records, I could feel their stories saying, “You found me!” It was devastating to see marks across pages suggesting deaths/murders of these men. Intermingled throughout were the additional pages for the Nazi guards who tried to flee because they couldn’t endorse the catastrophic inhumanity of what was happening and found themselves counted among the prisoners, subjected to the same horrific fate.
For all of these prisoners–my relatives or not–their records stand as testament to what happened to real, everyday people. Many were imprisoned for no reason other than being Ukrainian, Polish, or with ancestry of other Slavic cultures. [Contextual Note: The Nazi invasion of Ukraine marked a shift in the concentration camp system, accelerating the transition from “work camps” to outright death camps. Ukrainian Jews were typically murdered and buried in mass graves they were forced to dig first rather than captured.] Others, because they refused to go along with the grotesque atrocities that even the most vengeful of Gods would be revolted by.
The search for my family’s untold stories is far from over, but this moment made the work up to now worth it. These relatives are real. They existed. They lived. And they are not forgotten.
One of the most amazing take-aways from this genealogy work was finding that the three other branches of the family (both sides of my father and the paternal side of my mother) included many relatives who fought against fascism during WWII, with some being part of deployments that may be what led to the liberation of the Ukrainian branch of the family. I am here today because of those who were committed to doing the right thing, no matter the cost, and those who chose to survive and help others thrive, no matter the loss.
A page from the January 1945 Mauthausen Death Books listing a possible Derewianko family member of Anna's: Iwan Derevianko born 1921, prisoner #89342. (NAID: 84283289)
As I took these experiences with me into the spiritual work of Samhain season, I felt the undeniable call of the ancestors to understand that every single person along the way–for better or worse–crafted parts of the stories that lead to us and that it’s then up to us to carry this tapestry forward to craft our own stories. The generations that come after will continue our work from there.
Whether we inherit trauma or sweet nurturance, we all have work to do that will become a part of someone else’s story.
What records have you inherited? There will always be parts of our family stories that we can’t prove. So we can look, instead, to intuitive knowledge, reflecting on behavioral patterns and the emotional echoes that have been passed down generation after generation.
No matter how much or how little you know of your ancestors, what wisdom do you feel calling out to you? What ancestral stories, traumas, or strengths whisper to you from your own past? How can you honor these echoes without being bound by them?
This journey taught me that spiritual clarity often comes from acknowledging the whispers of the past, not just the proven facts. It's a powerful form of self-reflection that can illuminate our present path.
I invite you to explore your own journey of following the whispers down the rabbit hole. Set aside some time over the next couple weeks to reflect and record:
Ask: What is one family story, pattern, or "echo" you feel you've inherited, even without concrete proof?
Feel: What emotions arise when you consider this? (Grief, strength, curiosity, fear?)
Reclaim: What one quality—resilience, caution, creativity—did this lineage need to survive? How can you consciously embody that quality in your life today in an empowering way?
This journey has solidified my passion for helping others listen to their own inner whispers. While I explore the best way to bring this work into a guided format, you can continue exploring with me by signing up for my newsletter, The Starlight Circle, where I share insights on reflection, intuition, and personal history.
In Light & Love, Evylyn
Here’s a small list of genealogy resources to help you with unlocking the missing stories in your family:
FamilySearch - A completely free resource with access to a large collection of documents and databases. Their Family Tree tool lets you create your own, private family tree and add in family members with documents already attached from the collective work of others. You can create privately shared trees to collaborate with others.
23andMe - If you have DNA analysis done through this company, their “DNA Relatives” feature is helpful in working out surname mysteries on all sides of the family. (Limitations: Only includes current customers who’ve had DNA analysis done and opted into the feature. Dependent on relatives providing relevant details.)
NARA Catalog - Publicly available and scanned documents at the US National Archives. In particular, the Collection of Foreign Records Seized 1675-1958 includes all surviving Nazi records available to the US. [Note: Due to the current government shut down, the facilities are closed, preventing more in-depth research opportunities. Once reopened, scanning will continue and we can make record requests again.]
Find a Grave - Fantastic resource for locating cemeteries and burial-related information. Cemeteries and volunteers participate by uploading gravestones and markers for all their occupants. When available, obituary text is included. Allows users to leave messages and virtual flowers.
Ellis Island Passenger Search - A good starting place for immigration-related research, the search feature contains “65 million records of passengers arriving to the Port of New York from 1820 to 1957”. Helps dramatically with narrowing point-of-entry possibilities as well as locating relevant travel details.
Evylyn Rose is an intuitive tarot reader and spiritual guide based in Newark, DE. She specializes in providing embodied tarot readings for individuals and groups, helping her clients find clarity and connection through the cards. Explore all her services and read her full story on the About Page.
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