From Wikipedia to Family Roots: Yehudit Garin-Kol’s Journey

When Yehudit Garin-Kol enrolled in Wikimedia Israel’s retirees’ course, she was looking for a meaningful way to keep learning and contributing after retirement. What she did not expect was that editing Wikipedia would also lead her to uncover long-lost chapters of her own family history.

Yehudit joined the retirees’ program, a long-running initiative designed to empower seniors with strong academic and professional backgrounds to become active contributors to Wikipedia. However,  the course opened her more than a door into the world of free knowledge: it opened a path back to her family’s past.

Editing as discovery

Since completing the course, Yehudit has written three Wikipedia articles and uploaded dozens of photographs to Wikimedia Commons. One article in particular became deeply personal: the biography of Sarah Barkan Silverman, a Yiddish writer and political activist from the early 20th century.

Before writing the article, Yehudit knew very little about her grandmother—her father’s mother—or about a mysterious sister who had lived in the United States generations earlier. Researching Sarah Barkan Silverman changed that.

After the article was published, Yehudit was contacted by the National Library, as well as by Live Selkin, a descendant of Sarah’s granddaughter. Through this unexpected connection, a new piece of the family puzzle emerged: the existence of an older sister—previously unknown to the family.

This eldest sister had emigrated to the United States first, at the beginning of the 20th century. From her, it now appears, began the broader migration journey of the two younger sisters—Sarah Barkan Silverman and Nechama Barkan Garin-Kol (Yehudit’s grandmother)—together with their mother, who emigrated from Dvinsk in Latvia (today Daugavpils) to the United States.

Reconnecting lost pieces

What started as an encyclopedic biography turned into a bridge between generations. Through the article and the connections it sparked, Yehudit discovered a much wider family network than she had ever imagined. She received rare books, old family photographs, and historical documents—fragments of a story that had nearly disappeared.

“Thanks to Wikipedia,” Yehudit reflects, “I found relatives I never knew existed. Writing an article gives people recognition, brings them out of obscurity—and sometimes allows families to find each other again.”

Her story illustrates how Wikipedia can function not only as a repository of public knowledge, but also as a bridge between archives, institutions, and individuals—linking historical research with lived experience.

From retirees’ course to community impact

Yehudit’s story is one of many that emerge from Wikimedia Israel’s retirees’ course. What makes the program distinctive is not only the quality and quantity of content produced, but the way it enables participants to engage deeply—with history, culture, and often with their own identities.

By equipping retirees with the tools to research, write, and publish responsibly, the program turns lifelong experience into lasting public value. In Yehudit’s case, that value reached beyond Wikipedia pages and into the heart of her own family story.

Her journey is a powerful reminder of why community-based knowledge projects matter: they do not just document the past—they actively reconnect it.