Patinkin family history with Holocaust a teaching moment for Smithfield

Like most Jews, I lost family in the Holocaust, but since no one talked about it when I was growing up, I didn’t know the details.

Then, my first cousin, Mandy Patinkin, was featured on the PBS show “Finding Your Roots,” which unearthed a Yiddish memory book from our ancestral town of Bransk, Poland, written by a few survivors after the war.