The oldest of three brothers from an Orthodox Jewish family, my grandfather Siegfried Bachenheimer was born in 1900 in the village of Rauisch-Holzhausen, Germany. His father died when he was 10, and he helped his mother raise his siblings, then loyally served "The Fatherland" as a tailor in the German Army during World War I.

Holding a needle and thread rather than a rifle seems appropriate, as Opa Siegfried was a gentle, jovial man who doted on his beloved wife Jenny and his only child Brunhilde, born in 1929. My mother's earliest memory is of taking rides through town on her father's pony, which usually was used on his rounds as a dry-goods salesman.

After Hitler's rise to power four years later, Siegfried's life began to disintegrate. The non-Jews of the area boycotted his wares, eventually forcing the family to give up their apartment and move in with his wife's parents. A group of young Nazis began pursuing him one Saturday afternoon; he hopped on a train and arrived, breathless, at the home of his cousin, who asked, "Why did you ride on Shabbos, the Sabbath?"

"This was my choice," replied Opa, "take the train, or die". Life in my grandmother's birthplace, Heinebach, was even more precarious. Her father headed the Jewish community, and the town's Nazi Youth members delighted in attacking the large home where the combined family now lived. On one occasion, he shielded my mother and grandmother from a barrage of stones aimed at their windows; on another, he was dragged away, beaten and jailed before a sympathetic local police officer arranged his release. That same day ended with the anti-Semitic hooligans hanging Siegfried in effigy on the lamppost outside their front door. Brunhilde saw the dummy swinging in the breeze, and did not know what it meant. But Siegfried understood it was time to go; he managed to bring his wife, daughter and in-laws out of Germany before the deadliest part of the Holocaust began.

Arriving penniless in New York, Opa found work as a dishwasher before resuming his career as a tailor. He cofounded the first congregation of German Jewish refugees in the United States in the 1930s, and rejoiced at the marriage of his daughter and the birth of a grandson. I was, as my grandmother often told me, the light of his life.

But not for long. When I was 2 ½, on a hot August afternoon, Opa died suddenly at age 55. It was a profound trauma for my young mother, and for my grandmother, who at age 53, lived for another 42 years as a widow. For me too, I think, as Oma Jenny told me that for months after his death, I would search in vain throughout their apartment for him.

More than a century after his birth, Siegfried's name turned up on the Internet. There it was, with thousands of others, on the Web site of the International Commission of Holocaust Era Insurance Claims. Some details didn't fit, but in the belief he might have taken out an insurance policy when his daughter was born, we filled out the paperwork with the necessary documentation two years ago, sent it in and forgot about it.

That is, until last month, when my mother got a letter from the commission, informing her that she would soon receive a check for $1,000, based on the investigation of her claim. She called me with the news, crying. 'Do you know what this week is?' she asked. 'It's the 50th anniversary of my father's death. This is his last gift to me.'