Marina Zokolov z”l
This article is dedicated to my beloved wife, Marina, who died on February 4, 2010, at the age of 44.
| Ihave enjoyed many different hobbies in my life, but recently I discovered something absolutely new. I will tell you how I became a researcher of my own family history. This work was so exciting that I decided to write this article in order to share my discoveries, observations, and emotions. I hope some of you will find it interesting as well. |
My wife Marina, daughter Vicky, and I were the participants in the family club “Shabbaton” for several years at Congregation Beth Am in Los Altos Hills, California. One of the homework assignments was to create a family tree. Doing this project we were somewhat surprised when we discovered that we did not know the maiden names of our grandmothers and did not even have their pictures.
Finally, with the help of our parents, we finished the project, but we still had a feeling of incompleteness. Sometime later we were moved by the film and the book Everything Is Illuminated, by Jonathan Safran Foer. The story of searching for family roots by the main character cannot leave the reader unmoved. The decisive event that triggered our action was the book, A Tale of Love and the Darkness, by Israeli writer Amos Oz. Along with the autobiographical memories of his youth, the author tells a detailed story of his family going back several generations. After reading this book, my wife sadly said, “In our family, we don’t know much about our roots and ancestors.”
One evening, I found my wife, Marina, leaning over a sheet of cardboard. She was trying to combine multiple photographs into the form of a family tree. This was not a technically easy task, and Marina asked me, “Can’t you arrange it on the computer?” At that precise moment it all began! I heard the words computer, photos, relatives, ancestors, history and realized that the combination of these topics is of interest to me. That is how I started my endeavor into Jewish genealogy.
Why do I use the term “Jewish genealogy” instead of just “genealogy”? That may be explained by several factors. In researching Jewish ancestors, one needs to understand the cultural and religious traditions, the naming patterns, and many other specific details related to history and geography. That is why Jewish genealogy is specific and differs significantly from the genealogy of other ethnic groups. The name patterns are unique. Names were changed frequently according to locality, local habits, or simply to make a name appear more modern and, sometimes, less Jewish-sounding. People tried to adapt names to make them sound more American, more Israeli, or more Russian. For example, the same name Moishe could be found in many variations: Mosheh, Movsha, Mozes, Moiske, Moshko, or Moyshe. This makes research very confusing, because the same person can appear under very different names in the various documents.
Once we installed all the necessary computer tools, we began to enter the data for all known ancestors and their descendants: any information we could gather from parents and close relatives. Unfortunately, in several family branches, little is known beyond the names of our great-grandparents. Despite many hurdles, we continued the data collection, progressing forward from family to family and finding new relatives, those even our parents did not know existed. We telephoned, wrote letters, and e-mailed people. We used any means that could prove helpful, such as old telephone books, business directories from several countries, old photographs with inscriptions written in Yiddish,
| Marina Sokolov |
and even inscriptions on tombstones. Many family members have lived on different continents in many countries for many decades—and in many cases have completely lost contact with one another. We are pleased that we restored many connections. For us, it is an unforgettable moment when we hear the happy voice of a person who has just discovered an uncle or a cousin with whom connection was lost many decades ago.
We frequently hear the same question from relatives and friends: “Why do you do all that?” The question is not easy to answer. Apparently we have some sentimental feelings towards our ancestors and family history, or perhaps we realize that if we do not do it now, future generations will never know about their ancestors and will not be able to build their family tree.
We do not try to find celebrities or famous people, but always are elated to learn about the special talents or merits of relatives. Among them are several members of the Russian Academy of Sciences, world-class scientists, famous doctors, talented engineers, artists, and a composer.
Searching itself is an extremely interesting process. It is similar to assembling a puzzle, with one difference—the final result is unknown. The research is an extremely emotional experience. Imagine a conversation with a man describing how his father fled from the Riga ghetto only to end up in a German concentration camp. The search revived the memories of the dead, participants in World War II, memories full of bitterness and family tragedies; many family members were murdered by Nazis during the war or tragically affected by it, starved to death from lack of food during the blockade of Leningrad. Photographs and stories of relatives murdered at Babi Yar wrench the soul. But we must go through it all, because it is the story of a European Jewish family of the 20th century.
Special mention must be made of my numerous telephone conversations. Most of the people to whom I spoke I never knew before calling. The reaction of the person on the other end is unpredictable when you call an unknown
| Passport of Yosel Tabakin |
individual, tell him the story of his family, and try to gather biographical data. In some cases, the other party is greatly inspired and enthusiastic; others react with complete indifference. To find the right pace and tone for such a conversation is not easy. Often I was so excited and nervous that I forgot to ask important details. Listening to long stories about people’s lives, I tried to be delicate and very cautious. Suddenly people in my grandmother’s stories, which I had heard in childhood, began to come alive. I realized something. I needed to learn to listen to people and not just try to obtain their biographical information.
The modern fascination with Jewish genealogy began in America in the 1970s. To research family genealogy at the time of the Communist regime was not an easy task. Families’ personal archives disappeared during pogroms, relocations, the Bolshevik revolution, World War I, and World War II. Official archives were closed to the broad public in the Soviet Union. During the Stalin regime it was extremely dangerous to store photographs and documents. For the research that we are currently doing, we could have been easily prosecuted.
One more observation. Often, when discussing past family events, we forget that they happened in quite a different historical and cultural era. But a person’s behavior cannot be assessed in isolation from the influence of time. Many historical facts became more alive through the fates of our ancestors and relatives. Now I know how people felt when they were forcefully relocated from one place to another or how hard life was during World War II. Dates and events no longer are lines in a dry school history book. The moment when I first saw a picture of someone and learned about him and his fate, the events of that era took on a completely different color. Time was measured not in years, but in family generations. Something similar happened with geography, too. Previously, I had difficulty locating Kherson on a map or finding the border between Lithuania and Latvia. Gradually, maps acquired another dimension; these are the cities and areas in which my ancestors lived.
From the beginning, we wanted not only to collect information about people, but to collect their pictures as well. A family tree with images has a much stronger emotional effect than one with words alone; it is much more personal and enlightening. The picture search was no less fascinating than the search for relatives. To our surprise, some family members had many more old family photographs than there were in our immediate families’ archives. The problem was to obtain copies of them and to identify people in the photographs, since many had not been labeled. For example, I received a photograph of three young women; one of whom is said to be my great-grandmother—but which one? Alas, there is no one to ask.
We were always thinking that if our search had started 10 or 20 years earlier, the information would be much more accurate and complete. Many times I have heard people say, “Oh, if only you had called at least two or three years ago.” But certainly it is “better late than never.” On the other hand, today, looking for people and information about them is incomparably easier than it was even 10 years ago. Search engines, directories, and catalogs are available online and provide plenty of information.
Among the most useful websites was <www.jewish gen.org>. I was astonished to find a synagogue birth record of my grandmother’s sister in 1912 and a record of my great-great-grandfather’s sister’s wedding in 1889. I made many sad discoveries on the site of the Israeli memorial Yad Vashem, <www.yadvashem.org>, in its database of Jews who perished in the camps and under Nazi occupation. This database includes names, year of birth, and place of residence of the deceased. Another, less known, but no less tragic source of information is the site of the Russian society “Memorial,” <www.obd-memorial.ru>, which has collected data on all Russian military casualties during World War II. Several findings at this site helped to produce a more accurate picture of our family. An enormously beloved site among Russian speakers is <www.odnoklassniki.ru>, a popular Russian-language social network. Of course, I did not find my ancestors there, but through it I did get in touch with dozens of their descendants. In many cases, it was the only way to find them.
Our Family History
Currently, our personal genealogical database holds information on approximately 1,600 people, all of them ancestors or relatives of mine or my wife. Our roots are in Belarus, Courland (today, Latvia), Lithuania, and Ukraine. The family of my grandmother, Sheina Schneider (Tabakin side), lived in Birzai, Lithuania. It was a traditional place of residence of the Jews in the Russian Empire, part of the Pale of Settlement. It is hard now to envision the details of everyday life in these places, but much documentary evidence exists about life in those years. The family included 13 children and suffered all the cataclysms of the 19th and 20th centuries. One branch of the Tabakin family immigrated to America in 1890; the remainder gradually moved to Riga and Moscow in the early 20th century.
From my grandma’s stories, I know that her family was one of the first Jewish families in Moscow in 1914. Before that time, the Jewish population of Moscow was extremely sparse, because most Jews were restricted from living in Russia’s large cities. Upon arrival, they lived in that city’s Maryina Roscha neighborhood. I have always wondered what motivated the move from Lithuania to Moscow, and recently I found the answer. With the beginning of World War I, Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich, commander-in-chief of the Russian army, uncle of Czar Nicholas II, demanded that all Jews be evicted from the war zone, as he suspected them of spying for the Germans. Thus, thousands of citizens, unprepared for the deportation, without provisions, in overcrowded transports, were relocated to Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine. My great-grandfather, Moshe Tabakin, with his children and grandchildren, ended up in Moscow. As far as I understand it now, this was a huge change for the family members. None of them spoke Russian; my grandmother’s mother tongue was Yiddish. Obviously the style of life in a small Lithuanian town was very different from life in Moscow.
The branch of the family that went to Riga experienced many hardships. Some were deported to Siberia in 1940, after the Baltic republics were annexed by the Soviet Union. Witnesses to these events tell harrowing details of the deportation, the terrible conditions along the way, and building houses with bare hands in the cold of Siberia. But as agonizing as it sounds, they were more fortunate than the relatives who stayed behind in Riga, none of whom survived the Nazi occupation. All except one person were executed in the Riga ghetto. The fate of this one survivor is unique. His name is Max Mordchelewitz. Miraculously saved from being shot in the ghetto and after losing his parents, wife, daughter, and several brothers, he escaped, but soon was captured and transported to Birkenau. From there he was moved to Dachau and finally was liberated by U.S. troops in Buchenwald. After the war, Max lived in a United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) camp for displaced persons, and only in 1948, using other peoples’ documents, was he able to move to Israel. His daughter shared several unique photographs with me. In one of them, Max, among others recently released and
| Reunion of Max Mordchelewitz with his brother Zimon. They had not seen each other for 50 years. |
awaiting the move to Israel, still is in the camp. In another, taken many years later, he is at Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport hugging his brother. They had not seen each other for 50 years. History come alive? In one of my telephone conversations with Max’s daughter, she sadly noted that her father endured many disasters in his life, and, ironically, he died on Holocaust Memorial Day. This is the day when Israel solemnly remembers all those murdered by the Germans and their collaborators.
My grandfather, Leyb Polyak, is from Odessa, Ukraine. We know that his grandfather was a Hasid-tzadik (spiritual master), but his name, unfortunately, is unknown. The tzadik’s son, Herschel (my great-grandfather), broke with the Orthodox tradition, left his parents and moved to Odessa, where he started his own family and lost contact with his relatives. This is why today I do not know the name of my great-great-grandfather. This is a true example of the influence of the haskalah (enlightenment) movement on the younger generation of Jews at the end of the 19th century.
My wife’s grandfather, Abram Leybishkis, together with his brother and an uncle, went to Palestine on foot in the 1920s. After living there for several years, he returned to Russia, but his brother and uncle remained in Palestine. Many relatives remember him, as Abram was already elderly. Along with Yiddish songs, he loved to sing old Hebrew songs. My father-in-law found the family of Abrams’s brother in 1991 after moving to Israel. There was a family
reunion after 70 years.
The history of the Kurzon family, my wife’s other grandfather, also is interesting. We always thought that this family had roots in Ukraine, and we were completely surprised to learn that the family earlier had lived in Courland, the area of contemporary Latvia southwest of the Daugava River. Gradually, we learned that, by government decree, many Courland Jews were resettled in 1840–41 in the specially organized Jewish agricultural colonies in southeastern Ukraine, an area that had just recently become part of the Russian Empire. Perhaps these agricultural colonies were the first moshavim (cooperative communities) and kibbutzim (collective communities) founded by a Russian czar.
On the Internet, we found a copy of a handwritten map, dated 1877, that marked the house belonging to the Kurzon family in Lvova, a Jewish agricultural colony near Kherson, Ukraine, founded in 1841. I found the descendants of this family in many countries, but have not yet been able to determine the relationships among them.
We had many surprises. As we searched, we found several cousins right in our San Francisco Bay area neighbor-
Abram Leybishkis and Polina Goldenberg in Moscow in 1933 |
hood. We were already friendly with one family, a cousin of my wife, without even knowing about our family connection. I was very touched by a telephone conversation with the 103-year-old niece of my great-great-grandfather living in New Jersey. Yes, yes, I am not mistaken! This is an exact relationship! Her parents immigrated to America from Lithuania in the distant 1890s. I was able to meet with some of their descendants.
In an amazing, mystical coincidence, I found a second cousin of my mother-in-law, whose existence previously was unknown. Both are named Inna Kurzon; they were born four days apart in the same year and both named their daughters Marina. Once acquainted, they immediately found each other very close in spirit and character.
The brother of my wife’s great-grandfather, Benjamin Kurzon, was one of the founders of the Department of Pediatrics in Samara Medical University in Russia in the 1920s. When I called the university, I really did not expect to obtain any information, but another surprise was waiting for me. It turned out that the university had held an exposition, and a photograph of Benjamin Kurzon had been exhibited. More than that, the telephone was answered by a university teacher who had known Benjamin personally in the 1960s. She shared extraordinary memories of a conversation with Benjamin Kurzon about his ancestors in Courland.
Case Study
After this article was finished, one more event occurred demonstrating the unpredictability of genealogical research. In the list of the Tabakin family, compiled during the 1898 census, among 13 children of Moshe and Sheina Tabakin are two unfamiliar names, Yosel and Shmerel. None of the senior members of the family ever mentioned these names, and I decided that they must have died young or had no families. Using JewishGen, I checked lists of passports obtained by Birzai Jews in 1920. To my great surprise, there were Yosel and Shmerel Tabakin, their wives and children. Apparently, most of the family moved to Moscow and Riga in 1914 and lost contact with the two brothers who remained in Birzai. After learning that they had children, I began to think that there was a chance that there were living descendants bearing the name Tabakin. But how to find them?
Once again, I used the website <odnoklassniki.ru> and wrote a message to all Tabakins registered there, about 50 people. One of the first responses came from Sofija Tabakin-Segal: “Very pleased to hear that there are more Tabakins out there. My father and his ancestors were born and lived in a small town in Lithuania, Birzai. And how do you belong to this family?” Again a big miracle happened. Sofija is a granddaughter of Yosel, one of the “lost” brothers. We cross checked all the known facts many times. There is no mistake; we are relatives, and we held a family reunion after 95 years. Sofija Tabakin, who lives in Israel, learned about the big family to which she belongs and that she has many cousins living in many different countries. Until we found her, she had never heard about the rest of the family. The reasons for her lack of knowledge are sad. Her grandfather and almost his entire family were shot by the Germans in Birzai in August 1941. Sofija’s father, Michael, a 15-year-old boy at the time, literally fled from the firing pit, crossed the front line, and became a “son of the regiment” in the Soviet army. After the war, Michael returned to Birzai. His descendants continued to live there until their departure for Israel in 2005. After requesting a copy in the archives of the Lithuanian passports for Yosel and Shmerel, I received 30 pages of documents, but the main find was that among the documents were their photographs. Finally, Sofija knows what her grandfather, Yosel, looked like.
A year has passed since I wrote all of the above. During this time, the family archive grew with new interesting discoveries that I want to share. I will also mention several new Internet genealogy resources. Since starting the research, I have not kept a detailed diary, something I regret, because I have forgotten many details over time. I recommend everyone who is going to be or is already engaged in a genealogy quest, to prepare a thick notebook or computer file and to maintain a detailed description of every new discovery and conversation with relatives. I see this article as a sort of a diary, which describes the interesting events in the past year.
After the first “explosion” of family genealogical facts in my first two years of research, the rate of discoveries declined significantly. I started to think that everything possible to find had been already found. Fortunately, I was wrong. There was a moment when I decided to turn to professional researchers for help in searching for materials in regional archives.
The first discovery occurred in the Odessa archives. As I mentioned above, my great-grandfather grew up in a relig-
| Kurzon family circa 1890 |
ious Hasidic family, but broke with the religion in his youth and left the Orthodox family. As a result, nobody knew his father’s name. After examining the Odessa synagogue birth records, I managed to find the birth record of my grandfather, Leib Polyak, in 1903 and those of his brothers and sister. This record also contains the name of my great-grandfather, Moshka, and mentions the “class” of his son, Hershko: petty bourgeois of Skvyra.
The mention of Skvyra is new and interesting. Skvyra is a small town, a former Jewish shtetl, located in the Kiev region of Ukraine. Learning more about Skvyra, I discovered that this place is of great significance in the history of Judaism as the birthplace of one of the Hasidic dynasties, a branch of Hasidism called Skvyrsky Hasidism. It emerged in Skvyra in the 17th century under the spiritual leadership of Rabbi Menachem Tversky. Today, Skvyra Hasids live in Jerusalem and New York. In 1954, a group of New York Hasids founded the first community-shtetl in the United States, New Square in New York State. Thus, today in America there is a place on the map named after the Ukrainian shtetl Skvyra. Upon learning that my great-grandfather was petty bourgeois in Skvyra and comparing it with the information that his father was a Hasidic tzadik, I concluded that perhaps my great-great-grandfather, Moshko Polyak, belonged to the Skvyrsky Hasids and that his son had received the title there. This is only an assumption, based on the mention of Skvyra in the birth record of my grandfather and the family legend, but I think it quite plausible.
My paternal great-grandfather, Nohim Remez, was murdered by the Nazis at Babi Yar in Kiev. This fact and the only miraculously surviving photograph is everything that I know about him. More precisely, knew. When I decided to register his name in the Yad Vashem Pages of Testimony database, I discovered his name had already been entered by a person with a completely unfamiliar name. I managed to find the woman who recorded the information for Nohim Remez. She is a granddaughter of his second wife. Surprisingly, she even had childhood memories about him and about their lives in the same house. She also told me that Nohim was a rabbi, something I had not known before.
I continue to research my wife’s family, Kurzon. Recent discoveries in the archives of Latvia and Ukraine answered many questions that had remained unsolved for a long time. We were able to trace the history of the family from about the beginning of the 19th century. The census of 1834 in the town of Bauska, Courland, lists Chaim Benyamin Kursan (son of Ben Zion) and his wife, Rachel (daughter of Aaron). In 1840, the family moved to Lvova, the Jewish agricultural colony in the Kherson area. In 1858, their names appear in the family list census of Lvova. This way we learned a path and a chronology of the relocation of the family, and most importantly, we now know the name of my wife’s great-great-great-great grandfather, Ben Zion Kursan. Currently, his descendants live in Argentina, Croatia, Germany, Israel, Russia, Ukraine, and the United States.
For those who are actively seeking their distant relatives, I want to recommend the site <www.facebook.com>. Its enormous popularity virtually guarantees many discoveries. On another site, <www.footnote.com>, you can find many archival documents, including the U.S. Census for 1900 through 1930. Especially useful has been the website <www.legacy.com>, which offers information from U.S. newspaper obituaries over the past 50 years. Since obituaries almost always mention the family members of the deceased, this is a possible way to find relatives.
Igal Sokolov, born in Moscow, Russia, is a software engineer now living in northern California. He started his family genealogy research three years ago and was astounded by how much a layman can learn from relatives and publicly available sources of information. He wants to thank Barbara Frank for her thorough editing. Sokolov says that before her assistance, the article was written in “Russian” English. Her help with English grammar was indispensable.