In an excerpt from a new National Geographic collection of essaysonancestral travel, journalist Nina Strochlic recounts her journey to Poland to retrace the steps of her Jewish ancestors that fled.
A few times a year throughout my childhood, my mother and I hauled a tan suitcase from the spare room. She would pop open the single working hinge and fish out stacks of sepia-toned photographs and frayed papers—curfew extensions, identity cards, immigration forms.
