A Box of Letters

A Family Archive, 1901–1926

A box of over 100 letters was found in storage in Vancouver.

Half in English cursive. Half in Yiddish — that no one left in the family could read.

They turned out to be Sam and Dora Diamondstein’s — great-grandparents of one of this site’s creators, writing to each other in the early 1900s.

AI translated and transcribed every one, then helped rebuild the story from family trees, research, and memory.

This web site is what resulted — a real experiment in using AI to do genealogical research honestly.

This site is a Human + AI Collaboration

This site is built from a specific period of family history, 1901–1926, from letters exchanged between Sam and Dora Diamondstein. You can browse and search through individual letters, read the recovered story that emerged from the correspondence, and find out more about the technology that we used to make this.

Choose how you'd like to explore.

A market square in Gargždai, Lithuania, c.1910–1912 — the kind of shtetl this family's story begins in

Read it as a story

Read the Story

The background of the Dimantshtein family's history, starting around 1700, followed by the story that emerged from the letters between Sam and Dora, 1900–1926 — a courtship, a war, and a life rebuilt across three countries, told as one continuous read with real photographs throughout, every underlined phrase linking straight to the letter or evidence behind it.

~30 min · Six chapters

CBC's On the Coast and Radio West interviewed Paul Levine about the discovery of the letters, the use of AI to transcribe and translate them, and the remarkable story they revealed about his great-grandparents, Sam and Dora Diamondstein.

The conversations also explore the opportunities—and the pitfalls—of using AI to unlock family archives.

CBC Vancouver — On the Coast