Fr. Herman Fields
vertelde op 2 december 2023 om 18:55 uur
I am trying to help a Canadian man whose father was a Canadian soldier. He believes that he has a half-brother in the Netherlands. The soldier fathered a boy with a Dutch woman. We think that the Canadian Army unit was stationed in Woensdrecht and/or Bergen op Zoom. All we have to go on is the name of the soldier, Peter Gardipy. Is there a database somewhere of children whose fathers were Allied soldiers? The boy would have been born in 1945 or maybe possibly 1946. I would be grateful for any suggestions you have about how to search for this person.
I just did a Google search as there are many interest groups regarding the WWII.
Unfortunately I found that one of them - 'Vereniging Bevrijdingskinderen' (Liberation Children Association), representing and supporting children of mainly Canadian and US soldiers, ceased to exist in 2006.
However, one of the search results was a newspaper article about a Dutch liberation child that got in touch with a family detective who helped him finding the relatives of his foreign soldier father in 2022 (!).
Hopefully other visitors of this forum have useful tips to find the Dutch relatives of the person you are helping with his search.
If not, it might be an option to get in touch with the family detective, if only for advice.
Her name is Els Leijs, and this is her website Unfortunately not in English): https://familiezoeken.nl
Unfortunately her service is not for free though and might be costly if a lot of work has to be done, like for example DNA testing.
It is also an option to submit DNA to one or more international genealogy sites with a DNA database and hope for a match.
Els Leijs has another website, in Dutch. Some information on this site also might be helpful with the use of a tool like Google translate. https://elsleijs.nl/
Norah
zei op 4 december 2023 om 20:11
Dear Mister Fields,
Maybe you can also put this particular question to www.westbrabantsarchief.nl
Woensdrecht and Bergen op Zoom both belong to this archive.
You don't have the mother's name by any chance?
Kind regards
Herman
zei op 5 december 2023 om 23:04
Thank you all for your suggestions, I am following these leads. I don't know the name of the mother at all. We're doing a DNA test, perhaps that will point us in the right direction.
