Over time, and early immigration practices, the history of surnames and even first names has been altered. When people immigrated to the United States, they were told that their names were too hard, and they would need to Americanize them. Sometimes, it was as simple as changing the name from Smythe to Smith, but other times, the names were changed so completely that their family identity was lost. If people went searching for their family history, they would hit a wall, because the grandparent had basically disappeared. Of course, the discovery of DNA helped years later, but only if the children and grandchildren of the lost ancestors chose to have their DNA tested. In time, I suppose the connection will be made. We shall see.
For those who had to go into witness protection, the problem was even bigger. Chances were that unless they had done it before, they were told or they just knew that for their own safety, they must never have their DNA tested. Not only that, but often their looks were altered to protect them. These people and their family history 
simply vanished, leaving their families behind out of necessity. To add to the confusion, families were often told that the loved one had died in an accident, so no one would go looking.
For Jewish children hidden during the Holocaust, the problem was harder. Documents were forged, and all memory of their prior lives had to be wiped out for their own safety. Older children might remember their prior lives, but the little ones would forget. Some of these were adopted by their host families, while others were taken to other countries and adopted by strangers. It was all done in an attempt to save their lives, but whether an act of kindness or simply survival, their lives were irreversibly altered. Those children had been taught to forget so that they and the people who helped them might survive. The situation was even worse for their parents. Those killed in the death camps, labor camps, and gas chambers, were listed only by their prisoner number…if they were listed at all. The Nazis were trying to hide their crimes as much as they could, 
and that meant that names were lost forever. The bodies were cremated or buried in mass graves…nameless faces in a sea of death. To make matters worse for the Jewish children, they had, out of necessity, been raised Catholic or Protestant, if they were reunited with some distant family member, they knew nothing of their prior beliefs. Some of them felt guilt for this change in belief and wondered if God still cared about them. Guilt was a heavy load among those who still remembered their prior life. Sadly, because of lost records, many never found their real families again, and history was forever altered.
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