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4 | MONDAY, AUGUST 5, 2019 THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITIONworld
Ancestry, the genealogy and DNA test-
ing company, has digitized millions of
records of people who were displaced or
persecuted in the Holocaust and made
them searchable online at no cost.
The announcement last week drove
numerous genealogists to the site to try
to fill in longstanding gaps in family
stories. It also spurred a debate about
whether enticing people to sign up for a
for-profit database with such sensitive
public records was appropriate.
Rachel Silverman, a private genealo-
gist specializing in Jewish family his-
tory, said she was enthusiastic about the
development, but added that it was too
early to know how useful the records
would be. “Every American Jew has
people they lost,” she said. “It’s just the
matter of the degree of separation.”
The release includes passenger lists
of millions of displaced people, including
Holocaust survivors and former concen-
tration camp inmates, who left ports and
airports in Germany and other parts of
Europe from 1946 to 1971. It also in-
cludes records of millions of people with
non-German citizenship who were in-
carcerated in camps or otherwise living
in Germany and German-occupied ter-
ritories from 1939 to 1947.
The records will not tell people who
they lost in the Holocaust if they don’t
already have an inkling. Instead, the
records could provide additional hints at
why a relative took one escape route in-
stead of another, Ms. Silverman said.
“In genealogy, the almighty why is the
hardest,” she said. “Why did my family
end up in Atlanta when they were from
the small town in Germany? When we
find out how travel was arranged, that
might open new doors.”
Allan Linderman of Newbury Park,
Calif., for example, had researched his
87-year-old cousin’s journey to the
United States before the documents’ re-
lease. Born in Poland in 1932, the cousin,
Irving Rock, and his family fled theirhome in the early 1930s. They then
spent more than a decade scrambling
for safety, moving from one place to the
next. Because he is still alive, Mr. Rock
offered some details from memory. But
in the trauma and chaos of relocation, he
could not recall when precisely he left
Germany for the United States.
Searching the new collection, using
the original spelling of his name — Icek
Rak — Mr. Linderman found his cousin.
The ship departed Bremerhaven, Ger-
many, for New York on Sept. 7, 1949.
Beyond curiosity, this information is
useful, Mr. Linderman said. The Ger-
man government and Dutch railway of-
fer some financial compensation to vic-
tims. But they require documentation.
“This is another step in trying to get
some reparations,” he said. “These are
people who cannot prove the things that
the German government requires be-
cause they spent all this time hiding.”
Both collections were drawn from the
Arolsen Archives, a longstanding col-
lection maintained by the International
Center on Nazi Persecution. A portion of
the archives was previously digitized.
Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Re-
membrance Center, also maintains dig-
ital archives.
Looking at the marketing materials,
however, one might think that Ancestry
was the first entity to digitize Holocaust
records, said Yonah Bex, an archivist in
Los Angeles.
“It’s not like Ancestry uncovered a
new data cache,” she said in an inter-
view. “They’re not Indiana Jones.”
And even though Ancestry is offering
these materials at no cost, Ms. Bex said
she was skeptical that the company was
motivated by altruism.
Ancestry representatives took issue
with this critique and pointed to por-
tions of a previously released statement.
“The release of this record collection
is part of Ancestry’s philanthropic initia-
tive to make culturally important
records available to everyone,” the
statement said.
And not only are the records free, the
statement noted, but the company has
also donated digitized copies to the
Arolsen Archives, Yad Vashem, the
United States Holocaust Memorial Mu-
seum and other entities to post on their
websites as well.
For Ms. Silverman, the genealogist,
motivation is irrelevant. Ancestry main-
tains one of the largest databases of
DNA profiles and family history data in
the world, making more than $1 billion in
revenue in 2017 alone, according to the
company site. Its financial model is built
on getting millions of people to sub-
scribe to its family history sites and pay
for its DNA tests.
“It would be silly to say it’s not a stra-
tegic business move,” she said. As an
“elder millennial,” though, she said she
appreciated that getting the material
into a searchable state required money.DNA site
releases
its data on
Holocaust
Free access to millions
of records, but some
debate Ancestry’s motivesBY HEATHER MURPHYSome say it’s a play for business;
others say that’s irrelevant.NATO has repeated its support for the
United States’ decision to abandon the
1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear
Forces agreement and said it would re-
spond in a “measured and responsible
way” to a deployment of missiles by
Moscow that violated the pact.
“Russia bears sole responsibility for
the demise of the treaty,” the alliance
said in a statement on Friday, repeating
accusations that Russia had long been
out of compliance by deploying medi-
um-range missiles with both conven-
tional and nuclear capability. Russia de-
nies breaching the pact.
“There are no new NATO missiles in
Europe, but there are many, many, many
new Russian missiles,” Jens
Stoltenberg, the alliance’s secretary
general, said at a news conference. “We
don’t want a new arms race, and we
have no intention to deploy new land-
based nuclear missiles in Europe.”
Washington has for six years accused
Russia of developing a new type of mis-
sile, the 9M729, also known as the SSC-8,
which it says violates the treaty. The
missile has a range estimated to be
about 900 miles, though Moscow says it
can travel only about 300 miles.
While blaming Russia, the United
States has cited a threat from China,which was not a signatory to the treaty,
as another reason for abandoning the
pact. A large percentage of Chinese mis-
siles are of intermediate range, and
Washington plans to start testing a new
class of intermediate-range missiles
this summer that are intended to
counter China.
But the abandonment of the pact
leaves Europe exposed to Russian land-
based missiles capable of hitting theirtargets within minutes — exactly the
vulnerability that led to the treaty in the
first place, after the United States
started deploying Pershing II missiles
in Europe in the early 1980s to counter
Soviet SS-20s. The American deploy-
ments caused huge public protests in
Western Europe and explain why
NATO’s 29 countries do not want to go
through the experience again.
“We must prepare for a world withoutthe I.N.F. Treaty, which will be less sta-
ble for all of us,” Mr. Stoltenberg said in
July.
With the loss of the treaty, “Europe
loses a central pillar of its security,”
Christian Mölling and Heinrich Brauss
of the German Council on Foreign Rela-
tions wrote in a recent paper. “Russia’s
threat potential rises due to its interme-
diate-range missiles,” which “could split
NATO into two zones of security and
lead Moscow to assume it holds escala-
tion dominance.”
Russia’s new missiles are land-based,
mobile, difficult to identify, rapidly em-
ployable and armed with conventional
or nuclear warheads, and can strike al-
most any target in most European coun-
tries with little to no warning time, Mr.
Mölling and Mr. Brauss wrote.
“This potential could therefore con-
siderably restrict NATO’s operational
freedom of action in a conflict,” they
wrote, and “as a result, NATO’s general
ability to defend itself could be seriously
compromised.”
How to deter Russia and balance its
missile deployments is a problem that
NATO has been discussing for months.
Part of the answer are existing mis-
siles based on ships or fired from air-
planes, which were never covered by
the I.N.F. treaty. The accord banned
land-based missiles that can travel 310
to 3,417 miles and said they were to be
destroyed.
At the end of June, Mr. Stoltenberg de-scribed “potential NATO measures,” in-
cluding further military exercises in-
volving intelligence surveillance and re-
connaissance and “closer examination”
of existing air and missile defenses and
conventional capabilities.
On Friday, the NATO statement said
blandly that the alliance had “agreed a
balanced, coordinated and defensive
package of measures to ensure NATO’s
deterrence and defense posture re-
mains credible and effective.”
The issue is expected to be central to
NATO’s next summit meeting, sched-
uled for London in early December. Re-
sponses are likely to include an en-
hancement of missile defenses against
ballistic and intermediate-range mis-
siles, though some NATO members, like
Germany, may be reluctant to have sys-
tems so directly aimed at countering
Russia, argues Katarzyna Kubiak, an
analyst with the European Leadership
Network.
“While NATO’s military-defensive re-
sponse to the new post-I.N.F. threat is le-
gitimate, it is only a superficial ‘patch
and mend’ to a major problem: a grow-
ing crisis in the Euro-Atlantic amidst
global geopolitical shifts,” she wrote in a
briefing paper.
“Military remedies will only put off
solving critical issues between NATO
and Russia, deferring to a later point,”
she added, “and most likely contributing
to a costly and potentially dangerous
arms buildup in the meantime.”Missile treaty’s demise leaves void in NATO defense
BRUSSELSBY STEVEN ERLANGERFor years, Washington has accused Russia of developing a new type of missile in vio-
lation of the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces agreement.PAVEL GOLOVKIN/ASSOCIATED PRESSseparate section is cordoned off for
women, behind sliding doors marked
“Ladies Only.”
“I loved my job, and I wanted to be
free to do it,” Ms. Masuda said of her un-
married status.
Last year, the number of couples get-
ting married hit the lowest level since
the end of World War II, according to
government estimates. It was the sixth
straight year of decline in the nation’s
marriage rate, which is falling at a much
faster clip than the drop in Japan’s popu-
lation over all. Not surprisingly, the
number of births in Japan — a country
where few people have children out of
wedlock — is also tumbling. Last year,
the number of babies born in the coun-
try fell to the lowest level since at least
1899, when record-keeping began.
Local governments, eager to encour-
age marriage and raise fertility, have
started campaigns to bring couples to-
gether. “We are working on fostering a
mind for marriage,” reads an ad for
matchmaking tours and seminars for
singles sponsored by the Tokyo Metro-
politan Government.
But for more and more Japanese
women — who have traditionally been
circumscribed by their relationships
with men, children and other family
members — singlehood represents a
form of liberation.
“When they marry, they have to give
up so many things,” said Mari Miura, a
professor of political science at Sophia
University in Tokyo, “so many freedoms
and so much independence.”
The shift is tied to the changing Japa-
nese work force. Close to 70 percent of
women aged 15 to 64 now have jobs — a
record. But their careers are often held
back by a relentless tide of domestic
burdens, like filling out the meticulous
daily logs required by their children’s
day-care centers, preparing the intri-
cate meals often expected of Japanese
women, supervising and signing off on
homework from school and after-school
tutoring sessions, or hanging rounds of
laundry — because few households
have electric dryers.
While some men say they want to
pitch in more and the government has
urged businesses to reform the crushing
work culture, employees are still ex-pected to devote most of their waking
hours to the company, making it difficult
for many husbands to participate much
on the home front.
“It’s so obvious for a lot of women who
have jobs that it’s very difficult to find a
man who is available to be a caretaker in
the family,” said Kumiko Nemoto, a pro-
fessor of sociology at Kyoto University
of Foreign Studies.
Japan’s consumption-oriented cul-
ture also means that single women with
careers and money have a wide range of
activities and emotional outlets that
their mothers or grandmothers did not,
Ms. Nemoto added. And, notably, Japa-
nese women no longer need husbands to
ensure their economic security.
“One reason to get married for a wom-
an is to have a stable financial life,” said
Miki Matsui, 49, a director at a Tokyo
publishing house. “I don’t have any wor-
ries about being alone with myself or
any financial worries. So I did not have
to chase myself into a corner and choose
marriage for financial reasons.”
For some single women, their mar-
ried friends with children serve as cau-
tionary tales.
Shigeko Shirota, 48, who works as an
administrator at a preschool and lives in
a condominium she bought herself, says
many of her married friends stay homewith their children and get little help
from their husbands. “It’s not fair for
women to have to be stuck in their
homes as housewives,” Ms. Shirota said.
“They are happy as long as they are
with their kids, but some of them just de-
scribe their husbands as a big baby.
They don’t really like having to take care
of their husbands.”
Singlehood has freed Ms. Shirota to
travel extensively and pursue her hob-
bies. She has enrolled in jewelry-making
classes and is an avid Irish dancer. Last
summer she competed as a dancer in
Ireland and then took her mother on a
trip to China. A couple of years ago, she
went on a luxury cruise on the Queen
Elizabeth line and booked a stateroom
for herself. “We don’t have to rely on
men anymore,” Ms. Shirota said.
On a recent evening, she joined five
other women at an Irish dancing lesson
in a studio tucked on an upper floor of a
department store in a Tokyo suburb.
After class, the women ordered tea
and sandwiches at a restaurant a few
floors down. Ms. Shirota pulled out her
phone to show pictures of her summer
trip to Ireland. One classmate, a married
mother of three teenagers, reminisced
about a family trip there years earlier,
lamenting how she had not returned be-
cause of the prohibitive cost of airline
tickets for a family of five.
Some men are reacting to Japan’s eco-
nomic realities by shying away from
marriage as well. Ever since Japan’s
speculative stock and property bubble
burst in the early 1990s, wages have flat-
lined. The long-held social compact be-
tween employers and workers — in
which few people were ever laid off and
employees were guaranteed lifelong
employment — has diminished. About
one-fifth of men are now consigned to ir-
regular contract jobs that offer little sta-
bility or potential for advancement.
With the social expectation that men
should be the primary breadwinners,
many men worry they will struggle tosupport a household financially. Just
over a third of men aged 35 to 39 have
never been married, up from less than a
quarter 20 years ago.
“Nowadays, men’s wages are not
growing, so they don’t make enough to
support their own families,” said
Kazuhisa Arakawa, a senior director at a
marketing firm who wrote “Super-Solo
Society” and “The Rise of the Solo Econ-
o m y.”
Mr. Arakawa, who came of age in the
late-bubble years and is single himself,
says that many of his male peers view
marriage as an encumbrance.
Of course, matters of the heart do not
strictly conform to economic conditions.
Remaining single is often less of a delib-
erate stance than a reflection that the ur-
gency to get married has diminished in
today’s society, experts say.
“The data suggests very few women
look at the lay of the land and say ‘I’m
not going to marry,’ ” said James Raymo,a professor of sociology at the Univer-
sity of Wisconsin-Madison who has writ-
ten extensively about marriage in Ja-
pan. Rather, he said, they “postpone and
postpone and wait for the right circum-
stances, and then those circumstances
never quite align and they drift into life-
long singlehood.”
Kaori Shibuya, 42, had a long-term re-
lationship in her 20s that didn’t work
out, and then met a marriage prospect
through a matchmaker in her 30s. But
there was no chemistry. She has dated
occasionally since then.
“I don’t think I have chosen a path,”
she said. “But I have had all these
chances along the way.”
Ms. Shibuya, who lives with her wid-
owed mother, said some women choose
marriage because they feel vulnerable
on their own. But she started her own
business two years ago — a cafe — and
is confident she can support herself.
As a child, Ms. Shibuya said, her par-ents’ relationship looked idyllic. “But
now as an adult, I look back and realize
maybe she had to bear many burdens,”
she said. “In the older generations, hus-
bands were the bosses of the family and
the wives were obedient and in a weaker
position.”
Women who are not interested in hav-
ing children often see little point in mar-
riage. Though single motherhood is on
the rise in Japan, it is largely due to di-
vorce rather than women choosing to
have children on their own.
“It’s not too much of an exaggeration
to say that people in Japan get married
because they want to have kids,” said
Mary C. Brinton, a professor of sociolo-
gy at Harvard University who focuses
on contemporary Japan. “If you’re not
going to have kids, there are fewer rea-
sons to get married in Japan.”
Being single comes with trade-offs,
too. Ms. Hanaoka, the woman who held
a solo wedding last year, shares a ram-
shackle house on the outskirts of Tokyo
with two roommates. When loneliness
creeps in, she pulls up the video of her
ceremony to remind her of the people
who support and love her.
Ms. Hanaoka also recalls that, when
she was growing up, her mother often
seemed unhappy. Then, after college,
she taught kindergarten, giving her a
firsthand look at how many mothers
seemed to be “trying too hard to take
care of their own children, but not taking
care of themselves.”
“If I become a mother,” Ms. Hanaoka
said, “I am afraid that I will be expected
to act in the mother role that is de-
manded by Japanese society, rather
than being myself.”
She has dated on and off, lives frugally
and, relishing her freedom, took a trip to
Mexico last fall.
“I would rather do what I want to do
right now,” she said.Rejecting marriage, and its burdens
JAPAN, FROM PAGE 1Sanae Hanaoka, 31, at the home she shares with two roommates. Last year she held a solo wedding for herself. “I want to rely on my own strength,” she said.PHOTOGRAPHS BY ANDREA DICENZO FOR THE NEW YORK TIMESKaori Shibuya, left, who is 42 and single, runs a cafe. “I don’t think I have chosen a
path,” she said. “But I have had all these chances along the way.”Hisako Ueno and Makiko Inoue contrib-
uted research.“I thought, ‘If I get married, I
will just have to do more
housework.’ I loved my job, and I
wanted to be free to do it.”РЕ
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