Jennie Workman Milne
“Family is the image we so desperately seek”
A search for identity
Jennie Workman Milne was born in Greenwich, London, the second daughter of parents Derek Workman and Elizabeth Lis. After the death of her mother in January 2014, Jennie determined to uncover her mothers hidden background in a last effort to form a connection. A larger than life, powerful figure throughout Jennie’s childhood, Elizabeth confided later in life that she ‘just felt she didn’t belong anywhere’; her lack of identity and deep sense of rejection profoundly affecting her ability to form a bond with those closest to her.
At her funeral Jennie’s sister Bex Bellingham summed up the struggle. ‘It is also fair to say that for many, if not all her children, our lives to date have been defined by a constant battle to understand who she was in relation to us. In this, she was an enigma to her very last breath.’ The realization that she had never truly known her mother, and maybe more importantly, that her mother had no sense of her own identity, prompted her to search for the truth.
Beginning with handwritten notes Elizabeth recorded at the time she met her parents, Jennie has been able to piece together her mother’s family, torn apart by the Holocaust. She has worked with leading genealogists and historians, and the ‘ordinary people’ in her grandparent’s lives, such as her grandmother’s London neighbour, in conjunction with studying for a Master’s Degree in Photography.
Jennie has been married to Brian for 32 years and the couple have nine children and two grandchildren. She has recorded her search, travelling from her home in North East Scotland throughout the U.K, Poland and Israel, and had the great privaledge of documenting the stories of other’s in the process.
The recovery of a stolen identity has affected Jennie profoundly; enjoying friendships with her newly found family she ascertains ‘We all have more in us than we could ever imagine, connections we could not have dreamed of. We need each other to draw that out.’
Presentation of Jennie’s search given at the International Jewish Genealogy Conference in Warsaw 2018
In this presentation, Jennie Milne will describe her extraordinary journey to understand her mother’s mysterious background. Elizabeth Lis was abandoned in a babies home in 1943 in Devon, England. Her father was a highly decorated Polish Officer under British command. Her mother, at the time of her birth, had also been serving in the Polish army and was reputedly Jewish.
This talk will describe the extensive research through records, and Jewish connections through JRI Poland, JewishGen, DNA, Tracing the Tribe, FTDNA & Ancestry. Recorded at the IAJGS Conference, Warsaw 2018
