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Searching for validation

Bellona324

Fictional character enjoyer
So basically, in my memories, I’ve been called ‘Reinhold Strandt’ by others but now that I’m trying to research my past life self and look for validation, there’s the possibility that that’s not his name at all. It’s complicated. For all I know, he may have been a Connor. Ok I’m exaggerating but you get my point. Also, it doesn’t help that his original surname was Dutch(according to my memories) but it got shortened and Germanised.

For now, I’ll look for pictures of relevant famous historical figures and see if he’s around them. Maybe check out events he was involved in too, such as the Babi Yar massacre. I will not contact the archives yet until I’m very sure of my pl self’s name.

Maybe a bit of suggestions would be appreciated.

Edit: So basically, he was a WWII German, joined the SS, SD and Gestapo(probably more) during WWII. Defected to the US a few days before WWII ended in Europe and worked for the Americans during the Cold War.

He had strawberry blond hair and blue eyes. In some seasons(esp summer), he would have freckles. He’s mixed, what’s confirmed is that he’s partly British, Dutch and Norwegian as well.
 
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While I got my name wrong, I did search up Heinz Reinefarth and he’s not me. I was born after WWI, left Europe post-WWII for good, have no memories of being in Poland for work reasons, etc. I spent a lot of time in the Soviet Union as well.

Looks like I’m back to square one not even knowing my name. It’s been months, there isn’t much I remember. It’s like I’m new to this again.
 
While I got my name wrong, I did search up Heinz Reinefarth and he’s not me. I was born after WWI, left Europe post-WWII for good, have no memories of being in Poland for work reasons, etc. I spent a lot of time in the Soviet Union as well.

Looks like I’m back to square one not even knowing my name. It’s been months, there isn’t much I remember. It’s like I’m new to this again.
don't feel bad abut not even knowing your name. names, locations etc is the hardest I think to remember. try to see if you can work around it in some way, someone else you remember, or something, little things. You can search for free in old newspapers (i can provide a link if you want to) and once you are ready to search on someone else to see the link between you you can take ancestry free for 2 weeks. I did not know my 2 past life names and had to search around it. One bad thing was actually that I had to search on each of an ex boyfriend's ex girlfriends to try to see if I had even been real and if I could fit the profile, so even if I had no desire wanting to know about the rest of his love life and what his other loves was like I had to try to do it this way... (he was an actor so that is why this was possible to do in the first place. Even if I did find her I went straight pass her because I did not recognize how the author told things about her and I did not recognize how the author explained their relationship. I remember her being heartbroken not thinking he loved her enough to wanting to be married to her, a very strong feeling for her, and her starting to do the worse she could do, which is a classic that I do too, I withdraw, I can't even talk about things, a weakness I have, I could not bare talking about it because I felt so inferior, so foolish, as if I already knew the truth so what was it worth trying anymore, meanwhile he was trying to patch things up and be easy going and nice to me even though he could tell he was loosing me or already had. At the time I could not jump out of my pain.
The other was a bit tricky as I had only somewhat a first name that sounded like sandy, shady or something (her Papa calling out this name looking for her). You don't want to know all the hours I spent looking through old newspapers looking for drowning victims by that name in the US. I could have easily passed her if it was not for seeing someone stand by her side in a poor photograph, her husband - the one I then referred to as "her man" not knowing if they were married or not. Then when i look closer to the article I noticed other things that might fit my profile. It is hard work but when you get the validations it is worth it. Best of luck to you :) Don't give up.

/Jaimie
 
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While I got my name wrong, I did search up Heinz Reinefarth and he’s not me. I was born after WWI, left Europe post-WWII for good, have no memories of being in Poland for work reasons, etc. I spent a lot of time in the Soviet Union as well.

Looks like I’m back to square one not even knowing my name. It’s been months, there isn’t much I remember. It’s like I’m new to this again.

That’s not exactly true. I showed you some photographs of Sylt, where Reinefarth lived after the war and you told me they were familiar to you. Btw, Reinefarth was elected to the parliament of Schleswig-Holstein in 1960. Still enough time to secretly spy for the Americans too...

How are you SURE you left Germany after the war if you recognised photographs from Sylt? I even told you they were from Sylt in Schleswig-Holstein when you told me that that photograph was familiar to you! THIS was the town hall in the island of Sylt :confused:

433AB4B2-87EA-4749-86F8-EA949F56E3DF.jpeg

I quote you from an email I sent you with the same photograph..
...The third place made the most impact because it was in one of my memories....

Eva x
 
don't feel bad abut not even knowing your name. names, locations etc is the hardest I think to remember. try to see if you can work around it in some way, someone else you remember, or something, little things. You can search for free in old newspapers (i can provide a link if you want to) and once you are ready to search on someone else to see the link between you you can take ancestry free for 2 weeks. I did not know my 2 past life names and had to search around it. One bad thing was actually that I had to search on each of an ex boyfriend's ex girlfriends to try to see if I had even been real and if I could fit the profile, so even if I had no desire wanting to know about the rest of his love life and what his other loves was like I had to try to do it this way... (he was an actor so that is why this was possible to do in the first place. Even if I did find her I went straight pass her because I did not recognize how the author told things about her and I did not recognize how the author explained their relationship. I remember her being heartbroken not thinking he loved her enough to wanting to be married to her, a very strong feeling for her, and her starting to do the worse she could do, which is a classic that I do too, I withdraw, I can't even talk about things, a weakness I have, I could not bare talking about it because I felt so inferior, so foolish, as if I already knew the truth so what was it worth trying anymore, meanwhile he was trying to patch things up and be easy going and nice to me even though he could tell he was loosing me or already had. At the time I could not jump out of my pain.
The other was a bit tricky as I had only somewhat a first name that sounded like sandy, shady or something (her Papa calling out this name looking for her). You don't want to know all the hours I spent looking through old newspapers looking for drowning victims by that name in the US. I could have easily passed her if it was not for seeing someone stand by her side in a poor photograph, her husband - the one I then referred to as "her man" not knowing if they were married or not. Then when i look closer to the article I noticed other things that might fit my profile. It is hard work but when you get the validations it is worth it. Best of luck to you :) Don't give up.

/Jaimie
Searching for exact locations, for some memories, isn’t the challenge. Some of my memories got validated via places. A good example is when I attended one of Hitler’s speeches and a lot matches up(aka dates, where I sat, etc). I saw the memory before the footage of the speech.

Dammit I cannot find the link to the footage. I wish that I saved it but I cannot find it now. It was around 1934-35. I was a teenager.

Thanks for giving me the idea to look for relatives as well.
 
I forgot to mention, until now, that I was also a member of the Hitlerjugend in my late tweens-mid teens. I would’ve been a baby during WWI, if I was even born at that time. I joined the SS around 1938-1939, in my very late teens-early 20s. I appeared to be around 16 when Hitler gave the 1934-35 speech.

I was most likely from Hesse as well, especially with my findings from locations such as the Frankenstein castle. My family’s from there. It was like being a tourist in your own city. The central part of Germany resonates with me the most.

The reason why I said it looks familiar is mainly because it looks similar to a place in my memories but there’s a chance it wasn’t the exact place. I have forgotten, it’s been months. When was this conversation from?

A good indication that I left Europe was beach memories with my family. There were coconuts which aren’t present in Europe. Not only that but the people I was mainly talking to were Americans(of different descents) after the war. My children spoke English as their main language. My wife and I did too after we left. Almost everything around us were in English(apart from some Spanish place and food names).

Correction: There are coconut trees in the warmer parts of Europe(such as the Mediterranean) but they do not fruit well. Most, if not all coconuts in Europe are imported. The ones I would normally have are fresh.
 
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Hi

just wanna provide with you a few links, perhaps unnecessary as you may very well know of them already, but hey, it can't hurt, right

https://www.wikitree.com/
Public one

then there is ancestry. com or my heritage
When you search there they are too linked with newspapers.

Also very important you can add to your search so for instance if you just have like one name, let's say Kurt, then you type in Kurt (as if we are now pretending Kurt is a relative or something), in the added search free criteria, could also be a place -- anything. They will then link the names and Kurt together and it then increases your chances to find something.

the free newspaper site link is this one https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/

if you got the names then what may happen to you is what happened to me when I was doing research that the last name was mispelled in 3 optional ways but they all were referring to the same person. they were not that serious it seems with how people spelled their last names. So in my case searching for Conlin, it was actually Conlen, but before it was Conlen it was Conlon ("my" man's father had a dispute with his family who spelled their last name Conlon so he decided from now on it was gonna be spelled Conlen, but newspapers would get it wrong and spell it Conlin. I can give you another example of this. When "my" man from the 1920's died his wife was the one reporting in the relative page on the death certificate back in those days (1931). What happened was that she spelled his last name Conlen when it concerned him but she spelled her own last name Conlin. They were husband and wife, yet they apparently chose to spell their last name differently.

What they seemed to have been very particular with is where people lived. I mean the exact address where people lived. We don't have that today, do we. So for reason unknown to me the one I suspected could be my past life self Sadie's address was given in the article concerning her death. So when I searched on the address alone in newspapers and also further in my search I could be certain I was dealing with the right family.

Also it was rather difficult to search on Sadie alone because in the culture, I presumed, a woman did not really stand on her own in the newspapers, she was in the background of her husband or her father's name in the papers. So I would see "Mrs" and her husbands names, not hers. this may not be an issue with you as your past life self was a man but if you are trying to search for the females in the family it may still have been somewhat the case as it was in the 1920's (?)

I do particularly remember another past life of mine when I was married and everyone would call me "Mrs" and my husband's last name over when he worked in a big building. From the start. From the entrance I would meet someone "Mrs" it was and so it continued. Nobody called me by my first name, nobody, no matter if we were acquainted for years with each other, they knew me, I knew them. Still Mrs. For them it was clearly a way to show respect, respect for my husband and respect for me. I never felt it was a way to minimize me although this would perhaps have been my reaction today if I had suddenly jumped back in time, I don't know, but sometimes I fear when we look at it with our eyes today we may completely misunderstand the purpose of some things back in it's day.

/Jaimie
 
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I actually do not know the sites provided before so thank you for putting them here. I think it may be easier to search for my relatives first, especially when I have a rough idea of my children’s names. Maybe the spelling may complicate it a bit but I’ll try them.

Anyway, I may/may not have found a photo of me when I was in my early teens(the hair and face shape look eerily similar to my pl self’s) but if I see a photo of my adult pl self, I’ll put them here, especially if the quality is as clear as possible for that time. I saved that photo this time! My heart did beat very fast when I saw that early teens photo.
 
I actually do not know the sites provided before so thank you for putting them here. I think it may be easier to search for my relatives first, especially when I have a rough idea of my children’s names. Maybe the spelling may complicate it a bit but I’ll try them.

Anyway, I may/may not have found a photo of me when I was in my early teens(the hair and face shape look eerily similar to my pl self’s) but if I see a photo of my adult pl self, I’ll put them here, especially if the quality is as clear as possible for that time. I saved that photo this time! My heart did beat very fast when I saw that early teens photo.
Glad I could help :) ( hopefully in the future, that is... )
Yes, that would be wonderful to see (the photos)
/Jaimie
 
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