A Random DNA Test Solved a 75-Year-Old Family Mystery
A couple of months ago, my wife and I bought DNA ancestry tests just for fun because they were on discount. We’re both Moroccan, so we joked that we were basically paying money to confirm we were Moroccan 😂
A few weeks later, the results came back: my wife was apparently 100% Moroccan, while I was “only” 80%. We laughed about it and forgot the whole thing. We also found out that me and her have the highest Shared DNA percentage (1.3%) with each other since we are from the same small city/tribe which was interesting.
Then about a month later, I got an email from MyHeritage saying someone had sent me a message.
It was a guy from Austria .
He explained that he and his mother had recently taken DNA tests too, and they were shocked to discover that his mother was only 50% European… the other 50% was North African. Then he mentioned something that instantly gave me chills: his grandmother met his grandfather in Vienna in 1947 while he was serving with the French army in postwar Europe.
I later found out that France actually had thousands of soldiers stationed in Austria after WWII and jointly occupied part of Vienna at the time, so the timeline suddenly became very real.
Growing up, my mom and aunts always told us stories about my grandfather (1914-1984), a Moroccan soldier who fought with the French army during WWII and in the Indochina wars. They also told us that when he came back from Europe, he had a picture of himself with a white European woman that he kept hidden in his safe for years (even after he married my grandmother). On the back of the picture was a European address written in Germany.
For decades, my family believed we probably had relatives somewhere in Europe.
So after reading his message, I checked my DNA matches again.
His mother was listed as my “Half Aunt.”: Shared DNA (14.2%)
And he was listed as my “First Cousin.” Shared DNA (6.2%)
At that moment, it honestly felt like a movie.
The craziest part is that his mother grew up her entire life never knowing who her father was. She had never seen his face, never knew his name, nothing. He told me that his grandmother never spoke about the father of her only child.
Meanwhile, my family had spent decades wondering what happened to the woman in that old photograph my grandfather kept hidden in his safe. One of my aunts, who lives in France, even took the picture with her years ago and tried searching for the woman and any possible half-sisters or half-brothers, but she never succeeded.
When I told my family about the DNA match, everyone went crazy in our WhatsApp group. We were all shocked and excited. We started sending him pictures of my mom, my five aunts, my 14 cousins, and even some of their kids.
He later told me that he and his mother were crying after the discovery. After 74 years, she finally learned her father’s name, saw his picture for the first time, and discovered that she had sisters all along. Overnight, because of a random DNA test, their family suddenly grew by 400%.
Some people in my family were still skeptical, so we decided to test my aunt who lives in the Netherlands.
Today, the results came back, and I got another notification: “You have a new DNA match.” It was my aunt’s test result showing a 24.8% shared DNA match. From her point of view, I and the Austrian guy (my cousin now) appeared as her nephews, while his mother appeared as her half-sister.
That was the final confirmation.
After all these years, my aunts finally found their sister.
Honestly, this was huge for my family, but even bigger for his mother, who discovered an entire side of her family she never knew existed because of a random discounted DNA test.
And the wildest part? She looks IDENTICAL to one of my aunts. Side by side, you honestly wouldn’t even need a DNA test to believe they were sisters.
Now they are planning to visit Morocco for the first time to meet her sisters, nephews, nieces, and finally visit her father’s grave after spending an entire lifetime not even knowing his name.
It’s honestly hard to believe that all of this happened because of a discounted DNA test we originally bought as a joke.