I Was Told My Grandfather Was an Orphan. A DNA Match Revealed a Different Story

This is a photo of the paternal grandfather I never knew.

Ladislaus Klohs, Debra’s grandfather

I grew up with his absence as a given, and never expected to know more about him. I was born in California in 1950, when my father was 50 and my mother was 37. By then, he was already gone, and we thought we knew everything there was to be known about his life.

The story I was raised with

I was raised believing my father’s family was German. All 5 children were said to have been born in Pennsylvania after their parents immigrated. My dad was the oldest, with 1 brother and 3 sisters, and none of them ever said anything different about their background.

The story was simple and sad. My grandfather had grown up in a workhouse, where he was beaten regularly, and ran away at age 12. From there, he somehow made his way into adulthood and eventually to America. That was the whole story — no parents, no siblings, no earlier history.

As a child, I didn’t question it. I just felt sorry for him. From a younger, slightly selfish point of view, I was also aware of the contrast between my parents. My mother had grandparents and great-grandparents going back many generations, with photos, stories, and even an old family Bible. My father had none of that. His family tree felt abruptly cut off.

Debra, aged 6, with her sister Karoly and their father Ladislaus Jr.

My dad did say they were “Bohemian,” and that the boys were raised Lutheran while the girls were raised Catholic. At the time, that didn’t mean much to me. I didn’t know where Bohemia was, and I certainly didn’t know what Silesia was.

Debra’s father, holding Debra’s brother Jared, with his father. Unfortunately, Jared passed away in 1999 without ever knowing the truth about his grandfather

The secret that surfaced after my father’s death

My father died in early 1972, when I was 20. After his funeral, his brother told my mother something they had all been sworn to keep from her.

My father hadn’t been born in Pennsylvania after all. He was actually born in what is now the Czech Republic, along with his first 2 sisters. After World War I, he wanted to join the U.S. Army officer training program, so he said his birth records had burned in a fire and made himself a year younger. From that point on, he claimed a Pennsylvania birth.

Until that moment, no one had done any research on my father’s family — including me. We believed the story because there was nothing to contradict it.

At the time, I remember thinking it was kind of fascinating to learn a family secret. I had no idea how much more there was still hidden.

Searching without answers

Not long after that, I became interested in genealogy and began gathering whatever I could from cousins in Pennsylvania. There wasn’t much. Years later, when personal computers became more common, I started organizing everything with genealogy software.

My maternal side came together easily. A cousin had already done extensive work, my mother had photos and documents, and that old family Bible filled in the gaps. My father’s side was completely different. I couldn’t get past his maternal grandparents, and on his father’s side I had only a name, a birthdate, and a place — Brenna, Silesia — which might as well have been imaginary to me.

When online genealogy forums and databases appeared in the late 1990s, I searched constantly, hoping for a breakthrough. Nothing ever came. That branch of the family remained a solid wall.

Years later, I decided to try DNA testing. For a long time, it didn’t change anything. No recognizable connections appeared on my father’s side, and no cousins emerged to point me in a new direction. My niece had also tested elsewhere and found nothing from that line, so I learned to keep my expectations low.

The email that changed everything

In December 2018, I received an email completely out of the blue from a MyHeritage DNA user in Poland. He wrote that our grandfathers were cousins.

My jaw dropped. I felt giddy — genuinely giddy — and immediately wanted to tell everyone. The feeling was intense and joyful in a way that surprised me.

That email came from Piotr Malata, who reached out to me in English and shared an entire pedigree for my grandfather, going back generations. In one stroke, he dismantled the story we had believed for more than 100 years. My grandfather had not been an orphan at all.

Within a day or two of receiving Piotr’s message, I attended a family funeral. The timing felt strange — sadness alongside an almost electric excitement. I remember telling relatives about the email, barely able to contain myself. For the first time, I finally understood where Brenna, Silesia was — not just on a map, but in my family.

Rethinking the workhouse story

We still don’t know whether there was ever any truth to the workhouse story. I now suspect my grandfather may have run away from home and created a narrative that explained both his departure and his silence — something almost like an Oliver Twist story.

For most of my life, I hadn’t thought deeply about it. I was simply sad that he seemed to have had such a hard childhood, and that my father appeared to come from nowhere. Learning the truth didn’t erase the sadness, but it gave me something I’d never had before: context.

A history preserved elsewhere

Piotr shared what his family had known all along:

“For me, this story was also one of the greatest genealogical discoveries I made with the help of MyHeritage and DNA research.

Our family retains the memory of our ancestors from the Kloss family, although my great-great-grandmother was the last to bear this surname.

This great-great-grandmother was named Ludwika Malata, née Kloss, and was the daughter of the shopkeeper Ignacy Kloss, who came to our region from Moravia in 1827.

A photo of Ludwik Malata, son of Ludwika and cousin of Debra’s grandfather, with his family

In the local church registers we found information that Ludwika also had a brother, Józef, who was 4 years older than her. However, his fate remained unknown for a long time.

It turned out that Józef served in the Austrian army and later, as a reservist, took a position as a forester in Brenna.

Józef Kloss had 4 children in Brenna, one of whom was Wladyslaw (Ladislaus) Kloss, Debra’s grandfather.

Thanks to these discoveries, we learned that we had additional relatives in America and clarified the fate of my great-grandfather’s cousin.”

Reading this, I realized something that still moves me: while our branch of the family believed the story was over, another branch had been quietly keeping it alive.

What remains

I haven’t stayed in touch with Piotr or other Polish relatives since those first weeks, but it’s enough to know they exist. My daughter and I hope to travel to the region later this year, and once our plans are set, I’ll try to reach out again.

Debra (right) with her sister Karoly this past Christmas

For now, it’s enough to know that my grandfather was not a ghost, not an orphan lost to history. He belonged to a family, a place, and a story that simply waited — patiently — for the right moment to find its way back to me.

Many thanks to Debra Dezarn for sharing her incredible story with us. If you have also made an amazing discovery with MyHeritage, we’d love to hear about it! Please send it to us via this form or email it to us at stories@myheritage.com.