Genealogy

Fate of the Lejbzon Family of Biala Podlaska - New Information

2011-12-25T10:36:00.000-08:00

I received a copy of this record from a cousin (not a blood relation) still living in Biala Podlaska, Poland. This is one of those important records that you know is shocking to read but you have to read it anyway. See my translation to English below the image. Out of respect for the privacy of the men who made these statements I am not listing their full names in the translation.

We the undersigned residents of the city of Bialej Podlaskiej Województwa Lubelkiego
1. Julian A., son of Mariana, living in Biala Podlaski at Garncaskiej Street No. 10
2. Antoni O., son of Karola, living in Biala Podlaski
aware of the criminal liability for providing false data affirm as follows:
The persons listed below, known to us and having lived next to us, were murdered by the Nazis in 1942. We do not remember the exact date. Near the end of 1940 they were expelled from their house on Garncaskiej Street to the Ghetto and in 1942 were taken by the Gestapo officers under strong guard of armed thugs and uniformed Nazi Gestapo to pits previously prepared by Jewish men at New Market Square. At the pits they were murdered with machine guns and by hand weapons in front of hundreds of city residents.
1. Haja Lejbzon, daughter of Moszek, born in 1892
2. Aron Lejbzon, son of Haja, born in 1912
3. Idel Lejbzon, son of Haja, born in 1923
4. Welwel Lejbzon, son of Haja, born in 1933
We note again that the above-mentioned were murdered and buried in a common grave. We were witness to the murder and backfilling.

Report No. 1638, Sixteenth day of March, 1957.
(followed by certification by notary)

Discussion and Questions:

See the 1939 census card for this family (click link). Haja, known as Hulke to the family, is listed as Chwalysz on the census card. She is the sister of my great-grandmother. Aron is not living at home anymore (see his census card) but Idel, aka Jehuda, and Welwel, aka Wolf, are listed. (sons Lejb and Jakow had escaped to Russia and emigrated to Israel after the war). There is a discrepancy in Welwel's date of birth. Husband/Father Szaja Wigdor is not listed above. I wonder if he was one of the Jewish men who dug the pits mentioned above. According to the census card, the family lived at Garncarska Street No. 8 from 20 April 1932 thru 20 August 1940. The move from Garncarska Street to Prosta Street is the move to the Ghetto mentioned above.
See the Biala Podlaska Ghetto page on the Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team (H.E.A.R.T.) website, the paragraphs near the map of Biala Podlaska. The notarized statements may refer to the 26 September 1942 Aktion. The Jews were gathered at the Rynek, New Market Square, for removal to Miedzyrzec. On the way, many were murdered in the Woronica Forest. If this was the case though, how could the murders have taken place "in front of hundreds of city residents" as stated above? There were smaller aktions before this date so I still don't know for sure if this is when they were killed. Having possession of this report now makes me wonder about that post-war exhumation photo on the H.E.A.R.T. website...are my family members in that pile of bodies?
What organization/agency was gathering these statements? Were the statements coerced in any way? How reliable are they?
Where are the original statements stored? Has JewishGen or JRI-Poland gotten access to them?

Other resources:
IAJGS Cemetery Project: http://www.iajgsjewishcemeteryproject.org/poland/biala-podlaska-bialskopodlaskie.html

Ordering Copies of SS-5 Forms Under the SSA FOIA

2011-11-25T12:44:00.000-08:00

Apparently the Social Security Administration put a new law in place in July 2011 to provide a level of protection against identity theft. See https://secure.ssa.gov/poms.nsf/lnx/0203350005 , paragraph I. Under this new law, a complete copy of an SS-5 form will only be provided if the deceased person was born more than 100 years ago and you can provide proof of death or was born more than 120 years ago if you cannot provide proof of death. The goal here is to protect the privacy of the deceased's parents. The SSA appears to have put this law into place without even allowing for a public comment period.

I didn't know this 3 months ago when I requested a copy of the SS-5 for a grand-aunt who passed away earlier this year. I was just curious about where she was born. They did send me a copy of her SS-5 but her place of birth and parents' names were blocked out. The copy was accompanied by a letter telling me that it is not in the public interest to release this information but that they would release it if I could provide proof that her parents are deceased. I submitted an appeal 2 weeks ago but I assume now that it will be denied because my aunt was born in 1918. In my appeal I stated that I couldn't provide proof of death for her parents because I didn't know their names and, also, they would both be 110+ years old if they were still alive (not a reality for many people, especially not Eastern European immigrants born before 1900). The SSA did keep my $27 of course.

I just sent an e-mail to Ancestry.com asking that they place a clear warning in their SSDI FAQ so other researcher don't throw their money away. The information that is being blocked out on the SS-5 form is the only information on the form worth $27.

Update: the SSA denied my appeal, 1/19/2012

What Happened to Fanya Rok?

2011-10-10T11:32:00.000-07:00

This is a photo of Fanya Rok nee Belinki/Belinka. Her father is Isaac Belinki, brother of my great-grandmother. A cousin I connected with thanks to the JGFF had this among several other photos of the family that were taken in Eastern Europe and we're still trying to figure out what happened to a couple of these families.

Isaac Belinki, son of Avrum, was likely born in Lysyanka, Ukraine in the late 1880s or early 1890s. His siblings are as follows:
Lea/Lena born c. 1889 (my great-grandmother)
Leib born c. 1889
Rivka, birth date unknown
Tsepa, birth date unknown
Sara, born c. 1892
Shlomo, born 1895

Lea, Leib, and Shlomo all came to America, changing the surname to Belinsky. Using the ship manifests we know that the Belinki family that was still in Ukraine was living in Lysyanka in 1907 when Leib made the journey and by the time Shlomo came to America in 1913, the family was living in Talne, Ukraine. Sara married into the Avrutzki family of Talne, later moving to Odessa and later evacuated east ahead of the Nazis. She died of hunger in Uzbekistan in 1942 leaving a young daughter who survived, married, had a family and emigrated to Israel as part of the mid-1990s exodus from the fomer Soviet Union. Tsepa died in a factory fire but we don't know the details and Rivka married and lived in Shpola. The fate of her family is also unconfirmed.

Since Isaac was born circa 1890 I figure that Fanya may have been born in the 1910s-1920s so she could have married before WWII. Rok does not seem to be a common surname. We don't know her husband's given name. Nor do we know the name of her mother (wife of Isaac) or if she had any siblings.

This is the back of the photo. The English notes are my cousin's translation of the Russian here and maybe info from the mailing envelope. As you can see from the information here, the photo was mailed by Isaac from Kremenchug (now Kremenchuk), Ukraine. That's a bit of a distance from Lysyanka and Talne so we're not sure how they ended up in Kremenchug. The surname Rok is listed in A Dictionary of Jewish Surnames From the Russian Empire as being seen in Elizavetgrad (now Kirovohrad) so we're in the same region.

We also do not know when the photo was taken. I'm not good at guessing ages, especially for black and white photos. There does appear to be a fountain or sculpture in the background but I don't think it's clear enough for anyone to identify the location. It could also just be a backdrop. Fanya's clothing style is interesting.

If anyone has any information on Fanya, her father, and their families I'd appeciate hearing from you. Also if you have any comments about the photo or the translation I'd welcome those too. One small clue could help us find out what happened to them. If Isaac had survived the war it seems unlikely that he would not have contacted the family in America. Fanya may have been old enough to know the names of the American uncles and cousins so if she had survived the war I would hope she would have contacted them. Maybe not, things happen.

Finally, A Face To Go With The Story

2011-09-03T10:56:00.000-07:00

Esther Hochfeld, age 21, died on March 25, 1911 in the Triangle Factory Fire in New York City.

Esther's mother Elke Belinki Hochfeld (originally Gauchfeld or Gokhfeld) is the sister of my great-great-grandfather Abram Belinki. While researching the Hochfeld (sometimes spelled Hochfield) family in the hopes of finding clues about my Belinki bloodline I've gotten in touch with several Hochfeld cousins. I learned the names and dates, found census records and ship manifests, photographed headstones, and picked up a few tidbits of stories along the way. I first heard about Esther about 4 years ago. Both Esther and her brother Max worked at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. Thanks to the Cornell University online exhibit at http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/trianglefire/ commemorating the fire I confirmed that Esther was a victim of the fire (I also have her death certificate). Max's recorded testimony of the event is part of the exhibit. According to Max, he ran down the stairs at the end of the workday not even knowing anything was wrong until he got down to the street. Esther had waited for the elevator on the 9th floor where the fire claimed most of its victims. The only reason Max & Esther were working on the 9th floor that day was because they didn't get to work as early as usual...they were up late the night before celebrating Esther's engagement.

None of us could imagine Esther's suffering. I'd stare at the photos of Triangle Factory workers posted online and wonder if she was in any of them. With the 100th anniversary of the fire this past March I was searching online for any new information. I was in touch with one of the organizers of the anniversary memorials and knew that he was trying to get a photo of Esther from Max's daughter, the keeper of the family photos. All of my searching yielded nothing. Today I googled the name "George Hochfield", Max's son, and found this: http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/25/triangle-fire-clinging-to-scraps-of-memories/ . I'm not sure why this didn't come up in my searches earlier this year or, if it did, why I didn't notice it. George is quoted in the post, alongside a photo of Esther. Finally, a face to go with the story! The family records I've found are important but this photo means so much more. It's not that I was close to my Hochfeld cousins, I didn't even know they existed until a few years ago, but Esther stood out because of her story. It's so nice to see her beautiful face, sad too though because now I can picture her in the factory that day.

Lejbzon from Biala-Podlaska to Israel

2011-08-06T11:09:00.000-07:00

I'm trying to locate the family of my great-grandmother's sister, Chwalysz/Hulke Lejbzon, daughter of Moshe-Hirsch Tokar and Szprinca Last. Hulke, born in Brest-Litovsk, Poland (now Brest, Belarus) c. 1891, was married to Szaya-Wigdor Lejbzon, born in Biala Podlaska, Poland on Mar 20 1892. They had a religious marriage circa 1910-1911 but were not "legally" married until the civil registration in 1932. According to the 1939 Biala-Podlask census which I found on http://www.jri-poland.com/, they had 5 sons: Aron (Jul 17 1912), Lejb (May 25 1915), Jakow/Jankiel (Mar 14 1920), Jehuda (Jan 31 1923), and Wolf (Jun 3 1927). The 1932 marriage record does indicate that all 5 boys were born from their union which is how I know that Hulke is not a second wife.

The 1939 census records provide additional details about their whereabouts/fate during WWII. According to the census record, it was reported that Lejb and Jankiel had left Biala-Podlaska, presumably escaping into Russia, by January 1940. All evidence on the census records indicates that Szaja-Wigdor, Hulke, and the 3 other boys were still in Biala-Podlaska when Jews were evacuated to nearby Miedzyrzecz on Sept 26 1942. From there they would have been transported to Treblinka and murdered.

I know that Lejb and Jankiel survived the war. A cousin who has lived in America for many years remembers knowing their families when she was growing up in Tel Aviv. Unfortunately the families lost touch over time. Lejb took the name Leon. According to another researcher interested in the Lejbzon name in Biala-Podlaska, Leon married Maria(?) and they had 2 children, Shmuel and Sheieh. Jankiel also married (don't know his wife's name) and had 3 children, Adam, Leon, and Lena.

I don't know which spelling version of Lejbzon they adopted in Israel and unless they have a web presence in English I won't be able to find them using Google. One spelling variation is Leibson. If anyone has any knowledge of this family I would appreciate you letting me know or pointing then in my direction.

Looking Forward to Release of 1940 US Census

2011-06-15T13:31:00.000-07:00

The 1940 US Federal Census schedules will be available to the general public (through subscription websites, no doubt) on April 2, 2012, the end of the 72 year waiting period. When the privacy laws were passed, the average lifespan was 72 years. Hence the 72 year waiting period. At present, people can only request extracts from the 1940 census showing their personal information. I'm really looking forward to the release of this census because it's the first time I'll see my dad in the census.

According to the website http://www.1940census.net/ (which appears to be related to Ancestry.com) these are the questions that were asked on the 1940 census. To me, it looks obvious that the government was very interested in the status of the labor force and also movement of large numbers of people. The population distribution was changed forever by the troubled financial times of the Great Depression. What they didn't know was that many more changes would begin in a just a few short months when the Germans began their invasion of western Europe and the US war machine cranked back to life.

The header of each Population Schedule reads "Department of Commerce — Bureau of the Census, Sixteenth Census of the United States: 1940" and includes fields for State, County, Incorporated place, Township or other division or county, Ward of city, Block Nos., Unincorporated place, Institution, Supervisor District Number (S.D. No.), Enumeration District Number (E.D. No.), date of actual enumeration, name of enumerator, and sheet number.

LOCATION: Street, avenue, road, etc.
LOCATION: House number (in cities and towns)
HOUSEHOLD DATA: Number of household in order of visitation
HOUSEHOLD DATA: Home owned (O) or rented (R)
HOUSEHOLD DATA: Value of home, if owned, or monthly rental, if rented
HOUSEHOLD DATA: Does this household live on a farm? (Yes or No)
NAME: Name of each person whose usual place of residence on April 1, 1940, was in this household.
RELATION: Relationship of this person to the head of the household, as wife, daughter, father, mother-in-law, grandson, lodger, lodger's wife, servant, hired hand, etc.
PERSONAL DESCRIPTION: Sex — Male (M), Female (F)
PERSONAL DESCRIPTION: Color or race
PERSONAL DESCRIPTION: Age at last birthday
PERSONAL DESCRIPTION: Marital status — Single (S), Married (M), Widowed (Wd), Divorced (D)
EDUCATION: Attended school or college any time since March 1, 1940 (Yes or No)
EDUCATION: Highest grade of school completed
PLACE OF BIRTH: If born in the United States, give State, Territory, or possession. If foreign born, give country in which birthplace was situated on January 1, 1937. Distinguish Canada-French from Canada-English and Irish Free State (Eire) from Northern Ireland.
CITIZENSHIP: Citizenship of the foreign born
RESIDENCE APRIL 1, 1935: City, town, or village having 2,500 or more inhabitants. Enter "R" for all other places
RESIDENCE APRIL 1, 1935: County
RESIDENCE APRIL 1, 1935: State (or Territory or foreign country
RESIDENCE APRIL 1, 1935: On a farm? (Yes or No)
PERSONS 14 YEARS OLD AND OVER — EMPLOYMENT STATUS: Was this person AT WORK for pay or profit in private or nonemergency Govt. work during week of March 24-30? (Yes or No)
PERSONS 14 YEARS OLD AND OVER — EMPLOYMENT STATUS: If not, was he at work on, or assigned to, public EMERGENCY WORK (WPA, NYA, CCC, etc.) during week of March 24-30? (Yes or No)
PERSONS 14 YEARS OLD AND OVER — EMPLOYMENT STATUS: Was this person SEEKING WORK? (Yes or No)
PERSONS 14 YEARS OLD AND OVER — EMPLOYMENT STATUS: If not seeking work, did he HAVE A JOB, business, etc.? (Yes or No)
PERSONS 14 YEARS OLD AND OVER — EMPLOYMENT STATUS: Indicate whether engaged in home housework (H) in school (S), unable to work (U), or other (O)
PERSONS 14 YEARS OLD AND OVER — EMPLOYMENT STATUS: Number of hours worked during week of March 24-30, 1940
PERSONS 14 YEARS OLD AND OVER — EMPLOYMENT STATUS: Duration of unemployment up to March 30, 1940 - in weeks
PERSONS 14 YEARS OLD AND OVER — EMPLOYMENT STATUS: Occupation: Trade, profession, or particular kind of work
PERSONS 14 YEARS OLD AND OVER — EMPLOYMENT STATUS: Industry: Industry of business
PERSONS 14 YEARS OLD AND OVER — EMPLOYMENT STATUS: Class of worker
PERSONS 14 YEARS OLD AND OVER — EMPLOYMENT STATUS: Number of weeks worked in 1939 (Equivalent full-time weeks)
PERSONS 14 YEARS OLD AND OVER — EMPLOYMENT STATUS: INCOME IN 1939: Amount of money wages or salary received (including commissions)
PERSONS 14 YEARS OLD AND OVER — EMPLOYMENT STATUS: INCOME IN 1939: Did this person receive income of $50 or more from sources other than money wages or salary? (Yes or No)
Number of Farm Schedule

Each 1940 Population Schedule has 40 numbered lines (numbered along both the left and right edges of the form). There is a list of SUPPLEMENTARY QUESTIONS, which would be asked of those individuals recorded usually on Lines 14 and 29 (although other lines were also designated for such use and was presumably to ensure a random sampling).
The Supplementary Questions were as follows:

NAME
PLACE OF BIRTH OF FATHER AND MOTHER: FATHER
PLACE OF BIRTH OF FATHER AND MOTHER: MOTHER
MOTHER TONGUE (OR NATIVE LANGUAGE): Language spoken in home in earliest childhood
VETERANS: Is this person a veteran of the United States military forces; or the wife, widow, or under-18-year-old child of a veteran? If so, enter "Yes"
VETERANS: If child, is veteran-father dead (Yes or No)
VETERANS: War or military service
SOCIAL SECURITY: Does this person have a Federal Social Security Number? (Yes or No)
SOCIAL SECURITY: Were deductions for Federal Old-Age Insurance or Railroad Retirement made from this person's wages or salary in 1939? (Yes or No)
SOCIAL SECURITY: If so, were deductions made from (1) all, (2) one-half or more, (3) part, but less than half, of wages or salary?
USUAL OCCUPATION
USUAL INDUSTRY
USUAL CLASS OF WORKER
FOR ALL WOMEN WHO ARE OR HAVE BEEN MARRIED: Has this woman been married more than once? (Yes or No)
FOR ALL WOMEN WHO ARE OR HAVE BEEN MARRIED: Age at first marriage?
FOR ALL WOMEN WHO ARE OR HAVE BEEN MARRIED: Number of children ever born (Do not include stillbirths)

Zalesie? No, Zalesie

2011-05-27T12:47:00.000-07:00

Or maybe Zalesie?

I could go on like this for a while. There are no less than 78 towns/villages in Poland named Zalesie, which means "place beyond the woods". I don't know why this sounds so odd...here in the US we have approximately 30 states with a city/town named Greenville. The difference here is that it initially created some confusion in my research and now I have the problem that the village of Zalesie where my ancestors lived was so small I can't find any information about it. This is the first time in my research that I've had to deal with this situation.

Zalesie is located in the Lukow District of the Siedlce Province prior to WWI (Lublin Province after that) and is approx.3 miles WNW of Lukow. The village is too small for a listing in The Encyclopedia of Jewish Life but it is listed in Where Once We Walked as having a Jewish population of 36. The source of this figure is the "Black Book" or its successor the "Grey Book" which used various government censuses taken during the 1920s and 1930s. That's all of the information provided, the location of the village and its Jewish population.

Zalesie was too small to have its own town officials so registration of births, marriages, deaths, and other government business had to be done in the nearest town that did have officials, in this case Lukow. Thanks to JRI-Poland I now have family records.

I have the 1837 birth record for my 3rd great-grandfather Szymon Wolf LAST, son of Jankiel and Liba Malka LAST (maiden name not known at this time). I also have the birth records for his brothers Leybus (1848) and Boruch Josef (1851). All of these births were recorded in Lukow and the records show that the family living in Zalesie with Jankiel's occupation listed as shoemaker on two records and day-laborer on the third. In 1858, Szymon Wolf LAST, still residing in Zalesie, married Sura GRYNBERG, daughter of Ajzyk Lejb GRYNBERG and Leja AJZENBERG and a resident of Miedzyrzec Podlaski (see map...this town is located 18 ENE of Lukow). The marriage took place, and was registered, in Lukow. By the time two of their daughters were born, Mirjem Szprynca (1863, my 2nd great-grandmother) and Nojma (1867), the family was living in Miedzyrzec. I'm working on records for the GRYNBERG family in Miedzyrzec and whatever LAST records I can find. Lots more to order from the Family History Library and Polish State Archives.

This entry in the 1929 Polish Business Directory (Polish & French) shows that Zalesie had a total population of 501. The town had a gorzelnia (distillery) and mlyny (mills). There is a listing for an I. LAST, a szewcy (shoemaker). We are likely related but I'm still working on 19th century records so I don't know who he is yet or what happened to his family.

That's it...the extent of my knowledge of the village of Zalesie.

It's interesting looking back at the map above. The family seemed to be following a general eastward migration along that road #2. Marjem Szprynca (known only as Szprynca) LAST married Moshe-Hersz TOKAR sometime in the early 1880s and their first child Szymon, named for Szprynca's father which means the elder Szymon was deceased, was born in 1885. The family was either living in Terespol or Brest-Litovsk (now Brest, Belarus) by that time (see east side of map). I don't have Szyprynca and Moshe-Hersz's marriage record yet but I'm feeling more hopeful that the TOKAR family lived in Poland vs Belarus (makes a huge difference in my ability to learn about the family). Szprynca died in the early 1920s and was buried in the Jewish Cemetery in Brest (now covered by a sports stadium). Moshe-Hersz and most of their children and their families were murdered in the Holocaust (five out of nine...one child died much earlier, two emigrated to America and Israel before the war, and that last child's name has been lost to time).

The hunt continues. I taught myself to extract data from the 19th century Polish records so I don't have to pay a translator anymore. By the late 19th century, records in this part of Poland were written in Russian and I need to see if I can learn to extract data from those too. As I come forward in time I may find family members who emigrated from Poland and whose descendants may be located....maybe. The LAST name is difficult to research because search results include "no last name" records and the GRYNBERG name is very common. The hunt is part of the thrill...good thing I don't need a gun for this type of hunting :-D

Money Well Spent?

2011-05-10T14:34:00.000-07:00

I've been wondering the past few days whether the money I've spent on various DNA tests was worth it. There's no way to know in advance if the tests will result in a match with someone who has traced their family tree back as far as needed to identify that common ancestor especially considering the fact that there are different categories of researchers:

serious researchers who have well documented most branches of their family trees
serious researchers who have several long and well documented branches with a couple of branches stuck at brick walls as soon as we cross back over the Atlantic or shorty after that. I fall into this category.
researchers who haven't been able to trace their family back very far for any number of reasons (serious researcher but quickly hit brick walls, lack of funds to research "old country" records, or casual researchers using DNA as a shortcut).

The people in the first two categories are a pleasure to deal with. It can be a lot of fun comparing information even if we can't identify that common ancestor. Just comparing notes can give me a clue as to where to look for my next great discovery and maybe my information helps them too. The people in the third category can be the nicest people in the world but can be frustrating to deal with.

The first test I purchased for myself was in late 2005, a mtDNA test, which to date has yielded no matches...yes, NO MATCHES! I don't know what that means!! My maternal bloodline happens to be one I trace back several generations in Lithuania and with any match I might be able to identify a common ancestor.

Next I purchased the Y-DNA test and mtDNA tests for my father. We have an exact 37-marker match but were unable to identify the common ancestor. KLEIN and LANDE both mean "small" but I have a brick wall with my ggf in Kovno/Kaunas Lithuania (as a last residence, not even a birth, marriage, or death) and the LANDE family had been traced a little further back in Ukraine. On the mtDNA test, we have 353 HVR1 and 136 HVR2 matches and the numbers seem to grow every week. According to my cousin, a biologist, the mtDNA test is more accurate than the Y-DNA test but with the mtDNA we're not able to get that clue of the likelihood of how far back the common ancestor lived (those percentages from FTDNA on the Y-DNA test) so it's tough to decide which matches to contact.

Next I purchased a Y-DNA test for a SCHNEIDER first cousin. We have two 25-marker exact matches but no higher level exact matches. The common ancestor here lived too long ago for me to capture in my research.

Next was a Y-DNA test for a BERGER/BERGZON cousin. We have five exact 25- marker matches but again, no higher level exact matches.

After a break, I purchased a Y-DNA test for a newly discovered (thanks to Google and this blog) LUTSKY cousin. We have 35 exact 25-marker matches but no exact matches at higher levels. The two closest 37-marker matches (genetic distance 1) have the same contact person but neither responded to my e-mails. This was actually an interesting branch because one of those 37-marker matches was conceived via artificial insemination in the UK in the 1950s.

Last year, a TOKAR cousin purchased a Y-DNA test for himself. No close matches unfortunately. This family was pretty much wiped out during the Holocaust but some cousins did come to America before the war so identifying a common ancestor here would be really meaningful.

What I hoped would be the icing on the cake was the Family Finder test I purchased for myself this year. I've had a lot of matches but in dealing with the various categories of researchers I haven't been able to find any documented matches. A couple are probably very close, just beyond the reach of surviving records. Many matches appear to be in that third category of researcher so luck would be the only way of identifying common ancestors with them. What I was really hoping for was to use Family Finder in combination with the existing Y-DNA results across the family tree. Unfortunately I found out from FTDNA last week that the fact that my Family Finder match list might include people who also matched my dad and cousins on their Y-DNA tests is most likely a fluke. Unless the Y-DNA match is a high level exact match I can't rely on these overlapping results. This really disappointed me.

I'm not giving up and it was really impossible for me to have not spent the money on DNA testing. I'd be surprised if most serious researchers haven't purchased at least one test just to see if they'd get lucky. Not sure how many have purchased seven though (actually my TOKAR cousin was good enough to pay for his). I'm still hopeful that one day one of those common ancestors will be identified. I don't regret spending the money but some more encouraging results would be nice.

Holocaust Remembrance Day 2011

2011-05-02T15:29:00.000-07:00

A Two Dollar Gamble

2011-04-08T11:58:00.000-07:00

Not the lottery but a successful result may feel like I'm holding a winning lottery ticket. In this case the $2 is the cost of ordering a copy of a record from the Family History Library (FHL) microfiche collection. That's all it costs to roll the dice in the hopes that the record referenced in one of the JRI-Poland databases is the one I'm looking for. The fee is small because there's no searching involved...I know the microfiche and record number.

About a year and a half ago I found out the name of one of my maternal gg-grandmothers. I knew her married name was Tokar and her daughter's (my g-grandmother's) death certificate showed her given name as Sydell. The name Sydell does not appear in my Hebrew/Yiddish name book but I knew that was a clue that my 2 cousins named Sydell were named for her. Then, finally , an informative response from my cousin Madeline...the Hebrew name of both Sydells is Szprinca and that her sister had a photo of Szprinca's grave and headstone in the Brest-Litovsk, Poland (now Brest, Belarus) cemetery. The photo is important because the land the cemetery occupies is now covered by a sports stadium. Once I knew Szprinca's name I was able to confirm that some of the Holocaust records I had were in fact family members, her husband, children and grandchildren.

Shortly after this I was able to contact a couple of other closely related cousins who I had never heard of before. One of them confirmed that Szprinca's maiden name was Last and her parents were Szymon and Sura. This cousin also mentioned the names of some descendents of Sprinca's sister Zelda Rynkiewicz. Zelda and her husband died in the Brest Ghetto. Through this new cousin, David, I found out that all 4 of Zelda's children were able to get out of Poland in the 1930s. David and I exchanged information. I was excited to be receiving a copy of his family tree but found out quickly that it most mostly "unknown" names and "about" dates. It did still provide information I didn't already have. I began searching for the Last surname and found some results but nothing definitive.

Last month I decided to take a chance and spend the $2 per copy for several Last records listed on JRI-Poland for the towns of Lukow and Miedzyrzec Podlaski which are located not far to the west of Brest. I'm waiting on full extracts from my translator but I can make out the names well enough to know that I can be 99.9% sure I have the right people. One record is for the 1863 Miedzyrzec Podlaski birth of Mirjem Szprynca Last. This date makes sense for my gg-grandmother Szprynca because her first child was born in 1885. Her parents names were not listed in the database but in the nearby town of Lukow I found a 1858 marriage record for Szymon Wolf Last and Sura Grynberg so I ordered it. Of course after I received both records I learned that Mirjem Szprynca is the daughter of Szymon Wolf and Sura. In searching for the Grynberg names in the same region of Poland, I discovered that the name Sprynca is being carried down from that side of the family.

I can order up to 8 records at a time at $2 each. I found 7 that that I felt pretty sure were related including Szymon Wolf's 1837 birth record, birth records for 2 of Szymon Wolf's brothers, their father's death certificate, and a birth certificate for a child that appeared to be another child of Szymon Wolf and Sura. My gamble paid off and I'm on my way to opening up this branch of the family tree.

As soon as I receive the extracts from these records I can analyze and absorb the data into my family tree. Next is probably another order from the FHL. $2 a copy is an inexpensive way to get a good start on analyzing a new branch of the family tree. It's not the first time I've don't this. When I have all of the FHL copies I need, next will be ordering from the Polish State Archives. Again, these records are in the JRI-Poland database so I can place an order for specific records, no search fees. They actually charge less than $2 per copy but I have to pay a $45+/- international wire fee and I have to add another 20 zlotys to the wire (about $5) to cover the bank fees charged by the receiving bank.

Szprynca means "hope" and the name was carried down to many of her grandchildren and great-grandchildren. My gg-grandmother Szprynca died in the early 1920s so she never knew that some of her namesakes were murdered in the Holocaust. Some, however, were born in America and Israel and she'd be happy about that. By bringing more of her family information to light I hope all of the Sprynca's who had tough lives (and deaths) are smiling somewhere...all for the bargain price of $2.

Sorting Through Family Finder results

2011-03-13T09:13:00.000-07:00

About 3 weeks ago, FamilyTreeDNA (FTDNA) began posting my Family Finder (FF) matches and I've been slowly making my way through the list. A couple of people contacted me and I've sent out e-mails to people with the closest matches. No common ancestors have been identified yet but I'm still hopeful.

I understand that all of these researchers are at different stages in their research. Over the past 13 years I've been lucky enough to learn the names of all of my 16 great-great-grandparents and the names of most of the towns where they were born and/or lived in the old country. There are still a couple of question marks but I'm pretty secure in my knowledge of that generation. In a couple of instances I can trace the family tree back to 6th and 7th great-grandparents (with actual records). Some researchers have had more success, some less. It can be frustrating for me though when FF tells me I have a match with a potential 4th cousin and that researcher isn't even able to name all 8 great-grandparents. I found out a couple of days ago that one potential 3rd cousin is getting her family names from another family member and the names of the towns where they came from are coming from US records vs records from the actual towns. One researcher didn't recognize any of the surnames and town names I sent him so he refused to share any family details. I told him that because I can trace a couple of the branches further back in time I know the names of brothers and sisters of my direct ancestors so if he would give me his surnames I might see them in those side branches. Nothing. I can see protecting details about living people until we confirm a match but not the names of people who were born 150 years ago.

One e-mail exchange has been interesting because that researcher is wondering some of the same things I am...how is it possible that we have so many matches in common? I still haven't figured it out. I'm the first to confess that I have not caught on to the DNA lingo yet and don't fully understand the results. I contacted FTDNA about these common matches to see if putting them into a database would show some kind of meaningful pattern or if it's all just a coincidence. I haven't heard back yet.

It is always worth the time to compare family details on all matches. You never know when you'll run across an obvious match. Even if we don't find an obvious match, comparing family details can give me more ideas about where an ancestor may have lived, possibly a town/region I hadn't considered. I hope the details I share may help another researcher. If you go far enough back in time we're all related. It would just be nice to be able to pinpoint the ancestors we share.

1939 Biala-Podlaska Census, card 1551

2011-03-07T12:58:00.000-08:00

Translation: Sura Lejbzon, daughter of Jankiel Elencwajg and Rejzla (no maiden name listed), born 1868 in Miedzyrzecz. Hebrew, no marital status listed. Children: daughter Estera born January 29 1899. Sura is listed as deceased. Based on the dates, addresses, and remarks on side 2, she may have died in 1939. Estera moved to the nearby town of Lomazy on February 3 1936. She is reported as deceased and was crossed out from the register on September 15 1941.

Additonal information:

-See census card for son Szaja-Widgor at http://sharon-genealogy.blogspot.com/2011/03/1939-biala-podlaska-census-card-1446.html

-See census card for daughter Pinia-Rejzla at http://sharon-genealogy.blogspot.com/2011/03/1939-biala-podlaska-census-card-1448.html

1939 Biala-Podlaska Census, card 1448

2011-03-07T12:47:00.000-08:00

Translation: Echiel, son of Melemed-Ele Lejbzon and Sura-Rywka Izakson, and Pinia-Rejzla, daughter of Aron Lejbzon and Sura-Marja Elencwejg. Echiel, a handlarz/furman (carter), was born in Biala-Podlaska on November 1 1895 and Pinia-Rejzla was born in Biala-Podlaska on July 20 1890. Both Hebrew, they married in Biala-Podlaska in 1919. Chidrens' names and dates of birth (all born in Biala-Podlaska): Jankiel February 25 1920, Szepsel May 6 1923, Moszko April 23 1925, Rubin September 4 1926, and Chaim-Jehuda September 14 1929. According to the dates, addresses, and remarks on side 2, Echiel and Jankiel escaped to Russia in 1941 where both survived the war. They both returned to Biala-Podlaska in 1945/1946 and both appear to have had trouble with the law upon their return (no details listed). It appears that Pinia-Rejzla and the 4 younger sons remained in Biala-Podlaska until September 26 1942 when all remaining Jews were displaced to the nearby town of Miedzyrzecz. They were moved from the town register in December 1942 by an order the mayor gave in October 1942.

Additional information:

-According to a fellow resercher, Echiel died in Biala-Podlaska in 1952. Son Jankiel, now Jan, tried to emigrate to Israel after the war but with his legal troubles (horse thieves??) was unable to get approval. He married a Catholic woman and raised his family in Biala-Podlaska where he died in 1995, the last Jew in the town.

-Any Jews who survived the transportation to, and time in, Miedzyrzecz were transferred to the Treblinka death camp late in 1942. For more information, see http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/ghettos/bialapodlaska.html

-See census card 1451 for Pinia-Rejzla's mother Sura and sister Estera at http://sharon-genealogy.blogspot.com/2011/03/1939-biala-podlaska-census-card-1551.html

1939 Biala-Podlaska Census, card 1446

2011-03-07T12:29:00.000-08:00

Translation: Szaja-Wigdor Lejbzon, son of Aron and Sura-Marjem (nee Elencwaig) and Chwalysz Tokar, daughter of Moszko-Hersz and Sprinca (nee Last). Szaja Wigdor, a tokar (turner) was born in Biala-Podlaska on March 20 1892 and Chwalysz was born in Brezesc-on-the-Bug (Brest-Litovsk) in 1891. Both Hebrew, married in Biala-Podlaska in 1932. Children and dates of birth (all born in Biala-Podlaska): Lejb May 25 1915, Jakow March 14 1920, Jehuda January 31 1923, and Wolf June 3 1927. According to the dates, address, and remarks on side 2, Jakow (Jankiel) and Lejb (Lejbko) left the town in 1940, possibly going to Brzesc. It appears that Szaja-Widgor, Chwalysz, Jehuda, and Wolf stayed in town, possibly until September 26 1942 when they were displaced to the nearby town of Miedzyrzecz. In December 1942 the entire family was removed from the register in a decision made by the mayor in October 1942.

Additional information:

-According to a fellow researcher who is familiar with this family, Szaja-Wigdor had gotten on the train with sons Jankiel and Lejbko but at the last minute decided he was too old for the journey east, got off the train, and returned home.

-Jankiel and Lejbko (Leon) survived the war but I do not know the details of their activities during the war. They emigrated to Israel where they both married and had children. My cousin Penina remembers them from when she was young but did not stay in touch with the families.

-Chwalysz, aka Hulke, is the sister of my great-grandmother Jennie Schneider (Sheine Tokar Sznajder)

-The reference that Szaja-Wigdor and Chwalysz married in 1932, after the children were born could mean one of two things: one, they had a religious marriage earlier but did not have a civil (legal) ceremony until 1932 or, two, this is a second marriage for Szaja-Wigdor and the children were all by his first wife.

-According to my cousin Penina, Chwalysz/Hulke's parents did not want her to marry into this family because of their run-ins with the law (horse thieves per a fellow researcher). Suuposedly Hulke was bringing Szaja-Wigdor meals in jail. No confirmation on this but it does add a little spice to the family history.

-Another son Aron was tracked on a separate census card: see http://sharon-genealogy.blogspot.com/2011/03/1939-biala-podlaska-census-card-1445.html
-See census card 1451 for Szaja-Wigdor's mother Sura and sister Estera at http://sharon-genealogy.blogspot.com/2011/03/1939-biala-podlaska-census-card-1551.html

Also see eye witness statement to murders at http://sharon-genealogy.blogspot.com/2011/12/fate-of-lejbzon-family-of-biala.html

1939 Biala-Podlaska Census, card 1445

2011-03-07T12:01:00.000-08:00

Translation: Aron Lejbzon, son of Szaja-Wigdor Lejbzon and Chwalysza Tokarska, born July 17 1912 in Biala-Podlaska, a barber, Hebrew. According the dates and addresses on side 2 it looks like Aron lived in Biala-Podlaska until 1937 when he moved to Warsaw. He might have moved back to Biala-Podlasa in the middle of 1939 but it's not clear what happened to him after those 1939 dates listed.

See census card 1446 at http://sharon-genealogy.blogspot.com/2011/03/1939-biala-podlaska-census-card-1446.html for information on his parents and brothers

Also see eye witness statement to murder at http://sharon-genealogy.blogspot.com/2011/12/fate-of-lejbzon-family-of-biala.html

Dealing with Researchers and Translators

2011-03-04T11:11:00.000-08:00

My blog has been quiet for a few months mainly because I've been waiting for hired researchers and translators in Europe, in this case Poland and Belarus, to finish their work. The delays I've encountered make me glad I negotiated flat rates in advance versus waiting for the surprise of an hourly total at the end of the projects. I'm just glad we're finally finished so I can begin moving forward again.

I won't mention the name of the translator in Poland because I think he did a good job on the translations (except for his unfamiliarity with Jewish names). He was just slow. I sent him 25 Polish & Russian birth, marriage, and death records 6 months ago, as well as 4 census cards from the 1939 Biala-Podlaska (Poland) 1939 Census. We agreed that he would just do extracts of the pertinent data for the BMD records. I normally prefer full translations so nothing is missed but I've been sitting on these records for a while and just wanted them translated already. So on those 25 BMD records, all he had to do was decifer some bad handwriting to pull names and dates. The 1939 census cards were more modern with handwritten data on pre-printed forms. 6 months is just ridiculous!

I'm a tax consultant. When one of my clients needs me to work on something for them and that work is going to generate income for me, of course I do the work as promptly as possible. They want the results and I want the income. It seemed to me that this translator was only working on my stuff when I would ask for a status. After 4 months we even set a deadline for him to complete the translations within the next few weeks. He stepped up made a lot of progress at the 11th hour but still had 6 translations that were not completed until 3-4 weeks after the deadline.

As for the researcher in Belarus, I don't know exactly what happened. This is a knowledgeable researcher. Part of the problem was a nationwide internet outage which obviously was not his fault. For one set of records I don't know why he gave me the default answer that the records were destroyed in the war. The problem actually came down to records being transferred from local to state archive locations and from one state archive to another. The records still aren't available for research which means we still don't really know what is there. Belarus, being one of the last dictatorships in the world and having an anti-semitic government, is tough to deal with in general.

Unfortunately we sometimes have to hire someone to help us. Not all are bad...I've had good translators in the past but lost them to projects bigger than my piddly translations. I can usually make out the names on the old Polish records but that's about it. Forget the Russian/Cyrillic records. Even my Russian cousins can't read them. For records, I'm happy to contribute money to record indexing projects for the towns I'm researching so I can have a nice database to search online (or an Excel file) and then I can just order copies of records. Luckily this has been the case for much of my research, even when it comes to records from the Old Country. I'm just glad to be past this bump in the road and I can dig into the new details I've received.

New York City Area Jewish Cemeteries Online

2010-11-05T11:55:00.000-07:00

Two more Jewish cemeteries in the New York City are in the process of coming online with searchable databases so I thought I would post a list of links for all of the ones I know about.

First, a few search tips. Enter as little information as possible in the search fields. This will give you more search results to look through but will also catch spelling variations. For the first five cemeteries listed you have the ability to search by section and society. Once you locate an ancestor, you can then search for that section or society to see who else is buried there. You never know who you'll discover!

Mount Carmel Cemetery, Ridgewood (Queens), NY
http://www.mountcarmelcemetery.com/search.asp

Mount Hebron Cemetery, Flushing (Queens), NY
http://www.mounthebroncemetery.com/search.asp

Mount Judah Cemetery, Ridgewood (Queens), NY
http://www.mountjudah.com/search.asp?type=interment

Mount Lebanon Cemetery, Glendale (Queens), NY
http://www.mountlebanoncemetery.com/search.asp

Mount Zion Cemetery, Maspeth (Queens), NY
http://www.mountzioncemetery.com/search.asp

Riverside Cemetery, Saddle Brook, NJ
http://www.riversidecemetery.org/cemeterymap.html

And the two new ones...as of this posting date these are still a work in progress so if you don't see someone you're looking for, try again later. Right now there isn't the possibility of searching by section or society. I hope they add it later.

(Old) Montefiore Cemetery, Springfield (Queens), NY
http://www.montefiores.com/Montefiore/jewish-cemeteries-new-york/locator/visitorhome.php

New Montefiore Cemetery, West Babylon (Suffolk), NY
http://www.montefiores.com/newMontefiore/jewish-cemeteries-new-york/locator/visitorhome.php

HAPPY HUNTING!! :-D

Endearing Family Stories...Fun Even if They're Not True

2010-08-09T10:29:00.000-07:00

We've all heard them. Those stories about hard times during childhood or romantic stories about our parents or grandparents. We all took them at face value with no reason to doubt the facts. For better or worse, genealogy researchers tend to kill off a few of these stories as we progress through our research and wonder how some of them got started. Here are a few of mine:

Grandma Bessie's Age
The story: my maternal grandmother Bessie Schneider (born Peshe Bergzon in Lazdijai, Lithuania) had to lie about her age when she arrived at Ellis Island. She said that she was 14 when she arrived in America but lied to the officials saying she was 16 so she could work instead of going to school. This was her own story...makes sense...times were tough in the early 20th century.

The facts: Bessie/Peshe arrived in New York in 1929 at the age of 19. I have the ship manifest. I also have a copy of her Lithuanian Internal Passport (ID papers issued by the govt between the wars) showing her date of birth as April 13, 1910 and a list of 1915 evacuees from the Suwalki Province showing her at age 5. These 3 sources confirm that she was indeed 19 when she arrived in America.

Conclusion: I think the age change story is just one of those stories told to younger generations to exaggerate how difficult life can be (along the lines of those "I walked 5 miles in the snow to the one room schoolhouse" stories). I don't really know how difficult life was when the Bergzon family first arrived in America. I'm pretty sure that they were financially comfortable back in Lithuania because Bessie and her brother David were still in school at the ages of 16-17, possibly graduating, and they had time for drama club and Zionist sports activities (photo Koakh Sports Club, Lazdijai, April 29, 1929).

Grandpa Aaron/Harry/Harvey
The story: my paternal grandfather Harvey Klein, born in NYC in 1907, was actually born Aaron but when his mother first took him to school, she said his name with such a heavy Yiddish accent, the person at the school heard Harry instead of Aaron and that's how Aaron became Harry.

The facts: his 1907 birth certificate does show his name as Aaron so we know that's true. However, the 1910 census shows him at age 2 with the name Harry. So much for the school story. Where does the name Harvey fit in? My grandma Irene, back when they were dating I think, decided that Harry was an old fashioned name so she called him Harvey :-D As the oldest grandchild I didn't know any of this until Irene died in 1985 when I was 20. I was there when her will was read and the will had to mention all of the names that each party to the will was known by. FYI...Irene was born Ida but thought that name was also old fashioned so she went by Irene.

Conclusion: I can't even guess at how this story got started but I do know the name changes created confusion for my grandfather throughout his life. When he applied for a social security number in 1936, he wrote his name as Aaron but signed Harry so they made him cross out Harry and sign Aaron. My dad and his siblings like to tell how Irene would always yell at him "pick a name already!". My uncle told me that he finally made a legal name change to "Harry A" because that was the name on the title to the house they owned in Brooklyn. His headstone reads Harry but the Hebrew name is wrong. To me Harry sounds funny and he will always be Grandpa Harvey.

Irene Needed a New Coat
The story: when Harvey and Irene were courting (they married June 1931 so 1929-1930) Irene didn't have a good winter coat because her grandparents Solomon & Rebecca Lutsky (she was raised by her grandparents) couldn't afford it...they had to provide for their own girls. Apparently Harvey asked his mother for the money and she said "no".

The facts: by 1929-1930 the "girls", Irene's aunts Bertha Berland, Yetta Rotheim, and Olga Haykin, were already out of the house and married with children of their own.

Conclusion: this is a cute romantic story with Harvey wanting the woman he loved to have a good coat. I don't know if or why Irene didn't have a good coat to begin with and if she didn't why her grandparents might have denied her to provide for married daughters. I have no idea if the second part, Harvey asking his mother for the money, is correct. It is possible he asked his mother for the money and it would be likely that she would say "no" because Irene wasn't family yet. (photo Irene & Harvey c. 1930, probably taken at Coney Island)

and the best for last...

Sarah and Her Sisters Were Whores
The story: my father's paternal grandmother Sarah Klein and her sisters were whores. They didn't stand on a street corner but the men knew where to go.

The facts: I always found this one odd because I'm named for Sarah. If she was so terrible, why name a baby after her. Sarah, born Sora Mariam Zejburska in 1884 in Lomza, Poland, did have 2 younger sisters but she was approx a full generation older than both of them (they were born 1900 & 1903) so I don't know how close they would have been. Sarah divorced my ggf Abraham in 1931. Sometime after that she was living out of wedlock with Harry Mindel, a widower, who was a family friend and interestingly enough a witness in the divorce records.

Conclusion: this past April I found out the source of this story from my aunt, at least as far as Sarah is concerned. She told me that her father (Aaron/Harry/Harvey) always resented his mother Sarah for living with a man out of wedlock. Hence the "whore" label. I don't know anything about her sisters yet to know how they fit into this story. Personally, I don't look down on Sarah. At the time of the 1931 divorce most of her children were out of the house and she had to survive. I do know that she barely knew her grandchildren...not sure if that's the family intentionally pushing her away or if she chose not to be close to the family.

If it is wasn't for my research these stories would live on. Sometimes I think it's more fun to laugh at the stories being wrong or exaggerated. I wonder what my grandparents would say if I were able to challenge them on the facts.

Questions About Brest and the Brest Ghetto

2010-07-05T07:01:00.000-07:00

Over the past year I've learned a lot about my ancestors who lived and died in Brest. As for many of us, there are still many questions that may never be answered. I have a couple of questions I'd like to throw out there, questions I need to ask even though I think I already know the answers. The questions revolve around the fact that I'm missing information about some of the men in the family...husbands, sons, brothers about whom we know nothing.

My gg-grandparents were Moshe-Hirsh TOKAR and Szprinca LAST TOKAR. Szprinca died in the early 1920s in Brest. Moshe-Hirsch died in the Brest Ghetto. They had 9 children: Szymon, Sheine, Hulke/Chwalysz, Frejda, Icko, Doba, Reyzl, Meyer and one whose name no one remembers.

Szymon TOKAR - married Frejda ENGIEL. They had 11 children who lived to adulthood: 6 sons, 3 daughters, and 2 whose names no one remembers. Szymon and Frejda, along with the 2 youngest daughters died in the Brest Ghetto. The other daughter Gitla was married. Her married name was MESAZNIK. She died in the Brest Ghetto with her 2 small children but I have no information about her husband. Of the 6 sons, we know that Lejzor was captured by the Germans and after serving time in the Stalag camps was transported back to Poland where he died or was killed at Lublin 7 or Majdanek. His wife Chana and young daughter died in the Brest Ghetto. Another son, Sidor, was also captured by the Germans and served time in the Stalag camps but he was transported to France (vs Poland) where he escaped. Sidor survived the war and emigrated to Argentina after discovering that there was no family left in Brest (I'm in touch with his son). Sidor submitted a Page of Testimony for his brother Saul but all he reported that was that Saul died in Brest. Saul was not in the Brest Ghetto. Neither were the other sons Meir, Leibel, and Ruben. So in this family group, we don't know what happened to Gitla's husband ?? MESAZNIK, as well as TOKAR brothers Saul, Meir, Leibel, and Ruben.

Sheine TOKAR - married Moshe SZNAJDER. These are my great-grandparents. They emigrated to America with all of their children in the 1920s.

Hulke/Chwalysz TOKAR - married Szaja-Wigdor LEJBZON. I found them on the Biala Podlaska (Poland) 1939 Census with their 5 sons. I know that the 2 sons who escaped to Russia in 1940 survived the war and emigrated to Israel. We can only guess at the fate of the rest of the family. The story is that Szaja-Wigdor boarded the train to Russia with his 2 sons but then decided that he was too old for the journey and got off the train.

Frejda TOKAR - married Icko CHAZAN. Died in the Brest Ghetto with her 4 children. Icko was not in the Ghetto.

Icko/Itsko TOKAR - married to Bejla. Icko, Bejla, and 3 children died in the Brest Ghetto.

Doba TOKAR - married to Berko MILNER. Died in the Brest Ghetto with 1 son. Berko was not in the Ghetto.

Reyzl TOKAR - married Chaim KRINSKY. They emigrated to Israel with their infant son in 1933.

Meyer TOKAR - died as a teenager long before WWII.

It would be wonderful if I could figure out what happened to the men who were likely still living in Brest at the start of the war but never made it to the Ghetto. I regularly check the Polish War Victims website at http://straty.pl/ in the hopes of seeing posts for these missing men. The website hasn't been active long and new information is still being added. It is very possible that most of the younger men enlisted in, or were drafted into, the Polish army.

My questions:

1) In the book "Bashert", the author mentions a couple of times that there were 500 Jews who escaped the Brest Ghetto but were later captured and murdered in a town named Motikali. I can't find any information about this town or even when this event occurred. I'm wondering if the escape took place before the Ghetto IDs were issued. Does anyone have more information about this? Was a list of the escapees every created?

2) In 1941, a few weeks after the Germans took control of Brest again, 5000 men were taken from their homes and killed. I've seen a note that the main targets of this Aktion were educated professionals. I don't know that any of my ancestors would fall into this category but who knows. Does anyone know if there is a list of these victims? Since there was a target group, the Germans must have had a list or maybe the Brest residents attempted to create one.

3) Is there any record of the 1939 Polish army conscriptions or list of volunteers? This would at least let me know if any of the missing men in my family were in the army.

Brest Ghetto Passport Photos in Yad Vashem Photo Archive

2010-06-17T05:23:00.000-07:00

I just discovered something today and thought I'd post here in case there are others who didn't know about it.

I contacted Yad Vashem for a Ghetto ID that I couldn't find in their online database. I received the copy this morning along with instructions for getting the photo from their online Photo Archive at:

http://www6.yadvashem.org/wps/portal/photo?homepage=true&lang=en

The Ghetto ID had a big black rectangle for the photo so I was really disappointed when I first looked at it. When I went to the online Photo Archive, I found a good quality scan of the original photo. I immediately started searching for others and was amazed at the significantly better quality of these pictures over the ones on the scans of the Ghetto IDs. They look more like real people now, not bad copies of a newspaper photo...it was very moving (keep a tissue handy).

There is a trick to searching this archive, at least for the Ghetto ID photos. Yad Vashem has a technical difficulty that prevents us from searching on the person's name. Luckily, we know the parent's given names from the IDs and we can search on that. Search tips...

-use the Advanced Search

-in the first box, General Text Search, enter the mother or father's given name. You'll have to play with the exact and soundex search options and different spellings...the soundex is ok but not great. Do not try searching with a surname...the parent's surnames do not appear on the IDs so they are not in the descriptions in the Photo Archive

-in the Place box, enter Brest for an exact search

-click on a search result to get a slightly larger photo to save (use right mouse click to save)

-there is no "back" button after you view an individual photo so you'll have to do the search again (make note of where you left off reviewing the search results) Correction: while there is no back button, there is an "up" button in between the next and previous buttons...this takes you back to the search results.

The difference...my great-great-grandfather Mojsze Gersh Tokar. The photo on the left is the image on the scan of his Ghetto ID. The photo on the right is from the Yad Vashem Photo Archive.

Sara Leah

2010-05-09T08:42:00.000-07:00

That's my Hebrew name, Sharon Lynn in English. Sara and Leah were my father's grandmothers. Sara was still alive when he was born but Leah died when his mother was a baby. According to Ashkenazic Jewish tradition, children are given the Hebrew names of close relatives who are deceased. I was the first granddaughter (first grandchild) so I was named for two of my great-grandmothers.

Sara Mariam Zejburski was born in the town of Lomza, Poland in 1884. I found her in the 1897 Russian Census with her parents and 4 brothers (see link) under the name Zymburski/Zymburska. She also had another brother Lejba who was born and died in 1887 and 3 younger sisters, one of whom was born and died in 1898. The Zejburski family lived in Lomza for many years and I have quite a few original records that still need to be translated. Sara, her parents, and her 6 brothers and sisters came to America between 1904 and 1907, settling in Manhattan. In March 1905, Sara married Abraham Klein, a butcher. They had 6 children from 1906 to 1915. Sara divorced Abraham in 1931 for adultery.

Whenever I mention Sara Klein to my father's sister Linda, she says "Sara and her sisters were whores." She couldn't have been that bad...I was named for her. Apparently after the divorce, Sara was living with a Mr. Mendel out of wedlock. My uncle remembers visiting her once but apparently she didn't keep in touch with her children and their families...or so I thought. Her son Aaron/Harry, my grandfather, wasn't very good at keeping in touch with family. I think I finally found out where Sara's nasty reputation came from...a few weeks ago I was talking to my Aunt Linda and she told me that her father never forgave his mother Sara for living with a man out of wedlock. Some of that anger has lived on in her. There's no way to know now if Sara tried to maintain contact with her children and grandchildren and was shunned or if it was her choice not to keep in touch. I don't hold anything against her. She divorced her husband at the time when all of her sons were already out on their own and her daughter was close to getting married. She had to survive. Mr. Mendel had been a family friend for years. He was a witness in the divorce proceedings. I don't know anything about Sara's sisters yet so I don't know how they got pulled into that angry comment. For now, I'd just be happy to find out where Sara is buried. No one remembers. She died in the late 1950s and could be buried in any of the Queens or Long Island cemeteries. Unfortunately every cemetery has at least one Sara(h) Klein who died during those years. I'll find her eventually.

Leah Belinki was born in the town of Lysyanka, Ukraine, circa 1889. She traveled to America in 1906 with Kosunski cousins, coming to see her aunt and uncle Elka and Benjamin Hochfeld. She used the name Lena Belinsky in America. Her parents never came to America, nor did her 3 sisters and 1 of her brothers. Lena was joined in New York by her brother Leib/Louis in 1908 and brother Shlome/Solomon came in 1913 but she was already dead. Lena married Louis Lutsky, also from Lysyanka, sometime in 1909 (can't find their marriage record)and they had 2 children, Israel/Irving born 1910 and Ida/Irene, my grandmother, born 1911. A few days after Ida's first birthday, Lena walked to the roof of the 3-story building in which she lived and worked and jumped from the roof (see link). The story is that she was carrying baby Ida and a neighbor, thinking Lena was going to the roof to take in the laundry, offered to hold the baby. There is also a story that when Ida was 6 months old, Lena tried to jump out the window with the baby. Because of the way women in those days popped out babies, I had always suspected that her depression was tied to hormones. A few years ago I came into contact with the daughter of Lena's brother Solomon and she told me that Lena did kill herself after finding out that she was pregnant again.

Lena is buried in Mount Zion Cemetery in Queens. I like that the family buried her in the main section of the cemetery. Suicide goes against Jewish law and many times suicides are buried in the back of the cemetery. I think the family viewed Lena's emotional problems as an illness which is why she is buried in the main section. Also, if she was viewed as crazy I probably wouldn't have been named for her.

Both of these women had hard lives. Sara survived as best she could. Lena was overwhelmed by her situation and chose to end her life at a very young age. I'm proud to be named for both of them.

Visiting Cemeteries

2010-04-11T15:25:00.000-07:00

I know my blog has been quiet lately. I'm waiting on information requests from several sources.

When I was in New York last week for Passover I visited several cemeteries in the NYC area, four in Queens and three out on Long Island. I showed up with my lists and my camera, family members in tow because they also wanted to visit ancestors or, in the case of my niece, just a nice day outdoors to help me in case we had any overgrown foliage (aside from a little ivy, no problems). It had been several years since I visited any cemeteries.

Two of the cemeteries, Mount Carmel and Mount Lebanon, I visited have searchable online databases so I knew exactly where I need to go...just needed directions. The staff at the front office was very friendly and helpful. For the other five cemeteries, Old Montefiore, Beth David, New Montefiore, Beth Moses, and Wellwood, I had my Excel spreadsheet with lists of names and dates of death if I had them. The staff at these five cemeteries made me feel very unwelcome and they seemed just flat out annoyed at seeing someone with a list of graves to visit. It's not just New York rudeness...I was born and raised in New York and I was never that rude unless I had to give what I got. At Beth Moses, they actually locked the door behind me even though the cemetery was still open for another half hour.

Across the seven cemeteries I took more than 90 photos. I didn't realize how many photos I had taken until I got home. It would have been more...I ran out of time before I could find visit some graves. I missed a few graves because those nasty office ladies sent me to the wrong sections. Within each burial society, I'd photograph all headstones with the same surnames as those on my list just in case they were related. Most of the headstones provided information I already knew. A few however provided clues to new branches of the family tree and need to be investigated. One was disappointing...my gg-grandmother Peshe/Bessie Zebofsky's headstone had a picture (enamelized porcelain plate) on it at but it had broken away long ago. Darn it!!

One big thing on my list was the grave of my great-grandmother Sarah Klein. I was named for her but no one seems to remember exactly when she died or where she's buried. The best guess I have as to the when is 1956-1957. Even though I do know here parents' names, Sarah Klein is still too common a name to request a search from the NYC Dept of Health. There are usually one or two in that timeframe at each cemetery. I checked them all with no luck. I know she is not in a joint grave because she and my great grandfather divorced in 1931 and I know where he is buried. Maybe if those office ladies weren't so nasty I would have had better luck.

Most of the photos are now loaded into the family tree on Geni.com and also posted to FindAGrave.com. The Hebrew names appear to be accurate and generally consistent which is important for determining who is the son or daughter of who in a family where names are repeated every other generation and sometimes in diverging branches of the family tree at the same time. FindAGrave lets me get the names out on the web for future discovery by more cousins.

Overall it was a successful excursion (spread over three days). I look forward to more cemeteries coming online in the hopes I can find Sarah. Who knows what other secrets are lurking out there...only the wild dogs and rabbits know for sure :-D

Icko Milner special pass - Brest Ghetto

2010-02-04T10:22:00.000-08:00

I found this on the Yad Vashem website. It is a Special Pass (Sonderausweis) issued to Icko Milner (my 1st cousin, twice removed) on Dec. 22 1941. This pass allowed him to cross the railroad tracks to get from the Jewish Quarter (Judenviertel), aka the Brest Ghetto, to his employer Gotto & Szydtowski. His name and the employer's name are in Polish (probably the clerk's signature too). The rest is in German.

This doesn't provide any new information to help my research but it is still interesting. Icko was only 18 years old when the Ghetto was liquidated in Oct. 1942 (if he survived until then).

Modern Day Lazdijai/Lozdzieje, Lithuania

2010-01-31T16:28:00.000-08:00

I came across a blog post about the following website: http://www.lithuania-photo.com/lazdijai/

This is the direct link to the Lazdijai images and you can click on the "How its made" link for information about the remote controlled plane used to take these photos and "All cities" for other Lithuanian cities/towns. My maternal grandmother Bessie Schneider (nee Peshe Bergzon) was born in Lazdijai in 1910. While many things about the town have changed since she came to America in 1929 the landscape may be similar to what it was then.

New York Times 1942 Article - Brest Jews

2010-01-13T15:16:00.000-08:00

I found this article in The New York Times online archive. It was published on November 24, 1942, about 5 weeks after the liquidation of the Brest Ghetto. I always find it interesting to read stories about an event shortly after it occurred, before the event has been over-analyzed. Sometimes, however, there are facts missing or incorrectly stated simply because better information was not available at the time. According to this article, stories were circulating that thousands of Brest-Litovsk Jews were thrown into the Bug River and drowned. Of course we now know that these thousands, including members of the Tokar/Toker family, were either killed in the Ghetto (murdered or died of "natural causes") or were transported to the death pits at Bronnaya gora (Bronna Gora in Polish) where they were shot and buried.

Details of Nathan Lutzky's Trip January-June 1921

2010-01-02T10:01:00.000-08:00

Following are the details of Nathan's trip to Europe in 1921 (click to enlarge). He went to Europe in response to a plea to help family members in need of assistance after WWI. There are page numbers before each entry in case you want to see which page the related stamp is on. Pages 2-4 are the original green passport and pages 1a & 1b are the additional inserted pages. The link for the scans is: Nathan Lutzky US Passport

There are several gaps in the dates with no activity on the passport:>Feb 12-Mar 1 - he probably arrived in Romania on or about Feb 12 and spent this time with the family. According to his passport application, the family was in Kishinef, Romania (now Chisinau, Moldova) which was in eastern Romania. A lot of WWI refugees ended up in Kishinef.
>Mar 6-15 - looks like he was back in Romania
>Mar 18-Apr 3 - still in Romania?
>May 7-21 - still in Romania?
>May 25-Jun 18 - in France, waiting for passage home or meeting with his revolutionary buddies? (there is a story that he was a gun smuggler)

Lejzor Tokar, Prisoner of War

2009-12-19T10:51:00.000-08:00

Over the past few months I've learned a lot about the fate of my Tokar cousins of Brest-Litovsk, Poland (now Brest, Belarus). With the help of cousins, I've been able to identify 12 victims who died in the Brest Ghetto. I have photo IDs for 10...the other 2 were children too young to be issued their own ID papers. As I add these new names to my family tree I also go back to the JewishGen databases (http://www.jewishgen.org/) for another sweep of the results of a "sounds like" Tokar search to see if there is any information that didn't match up to my family on prior searches but that now fits. This is how I found Lejzor Tokar, my first cousin twice removed.

I found a listing for Lejzor Tokar of Brzesc, son of Szymon, in the Polish Jewish Prisoners of War Registration Card database. I immediately sent an e-mail to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum for a copy of the record and they sent me 4 images, 3 cards, 1 of which has 2 sides. With the help of fellow researchers I have the translations of the information on these cards and thanks to the internet, I've been able to learn more about the places mentioned and I also mapped out Lejzor's journey. Here is his story (sorry it doesn't look nicer but inserting images messes with the spacing):

Card 1: Stalag VIII-A and Stalag XIII-C

More details after research:
Stalag VIII-A, located east of Gorlitz, Germany (now Zgorzelec, Poland) was established in Oct. 1939 to hold prisoners taken during the Sept. 1939 invasion of Poland. By Jun. 1940 most of the Polish prisoners have been moved to other prison camps.

Card 2, side 1: Lejzor Tokar, born May 2, 1913 Brzesc, Jewish, father Szymon, mother's maiden name Engiel. Polish Army, rank soldier, 22nd Infantry Division Regiment. Civil profession: butcher. Captured Sept 17 [1939] in Ilow. In good health, height 157, hair dark blond, no physical marks. Person in homeland is his wife Hancze Tokar, Brzesc, Kobrynskastrase 133.

More details after research:
Ilow=Deutsch-Eylau, Prussia, now Ilawa, Poland. This is about 100 miles from Warsaw, Poland and a region of heavy fighting in September 1939 when the Polish Army was trying to block the invasion by the Germany Army.

Hancze Tokar=Chana Tokar. I have a Brest Ghetto ID for a Chana Tokar, also born 1913, and daughter Gita born 1939. This is likely Lejzor's wife and daughter.

Butcher - Lejzor's father Szymon was a butcher as was his grandfather Mojsze (my gg-grandfather).

Card 2, side 2:

Jan. 6 1940-Workers Commando no. 260
Feb. 10 1940-Klausaurach, Germany
Feb. 10 1940-Workers Commando no. 261
Oct. 15 1940-moved to internment camp at Hammelburg, the Stalag XIII camps
Nov. 26 1940-moved to Spreefurt, Germany and then Rothenburg, Germany

More details after research:
Workers Commandos - these were labor squads sent out from prison camps to work in the surrounding communities. I don't know the location of no. 260 but no. 261 appears to be in or near Klausaurach.

Hammelburg-the Stalag XIII camps were located near this town. The cards show that Lejzor was in XIII-C and at some point transferred to XIII-A. XIII-A was formed in Aug. 1940 after XIII-D split into smaller, more manageable pieces.

Spreefurt, Germany - this town was known by this name only during the war. Before and after the war the name was/is Uhyst.

Rothenburg, Germany - there are several towns in Germany that begin with this word but based on the timeline of this story, I think Rothenburg/Oberlausitz is the correct town.

Card 3: the only new information on this card is the handwritten notation at the bottom dated Dec. 19 1940...

Versengen uber Gesn which means burned on gases.

As you will see on the map below which traces Lejzor's journey, this means that he was taken back east to Poland to the concentration camps. I don't know if Dec. 19 is the date he actually died or the date he was left to his final fate (see update below map).

Point A - Deutsch-Eylau, Prussia (now Ilawa, Poland) - Lejzor taken prisoner, Sept 17 1939
Point B - Gorlitz, Germany (now Zgorzelec, Poland) - Stalag VIII-A
Point C - Klausaurach, Germany, Feb 10 1940
Point D - Hammelburg, Germany - Stalag XIII camps, Oct. 15 1940
Point E - Uhyst, Germany - Nov. 1940, transfer back east
Point F - Rothenburg/Oberlausitz, Germany - Nov. 1940, near Polish border
Point G - Lublin, Poland - Lipowa 7 camp; Majdanek was a few miles away

View Larger Map

Update 12/20/2009:
After my original post above, a fellow researcher sent me more information about these POW cards and the fate of prisoners. It is unlikely that Lejzor died on Dec. 19 1940 as that ominous note on card 3 implied. In Dec. 1940, Lejzor arrived at the labor camp on Lipowa Street in Lublin, Poland called Lipowa 7. This camp was still managed by the Judenrat at this time but within a couple of months, the S.S. took over. Prisoners were employed in repair shops and building activities in the region. There is no way to know Lejzor's actual date of death. Many prisoners were killed for any number of minute reasons on a daily basis. In Aug. 1942, the Germans began deportations to the Majdanek death camp. By Nov. 3 1943 the last of the prisoners in Lipowa 7 had been murdered at Majdanek. It's ironic that after all Lejzor endured, he ended up dying within 100 miles of his hometown of Brest-Litovsk.

Klein is just Klein

2009-12-16T12:50:00.000-08:00

I grew up on Long Island in the New York City area. The KLEIN name was common enough, several pages in the phone book with this spelling alone, that I don't remember anyone ever questioning me about the spelling. I've been living outside of the New York City area for almost 19 years and it seems that few people know that KLEIN is the "right" way to spell KLEIN.

I say the "right" way because I think it is the more common spelling and it is also the historical spelling. The word klein comes from German for small. I've also seen it in Flemish subtitles...Flemish is based in Dutch with has similar origins to German. KLEIN is the spelling used by my great-grandfather Abram when he departed from Hamburg. He wasn't German...his last residence was listed as Kovno, Russia which is Kaunas, Lithuania but I have no evidence to prove whether he lived in the "big city" or a nearby town. Yiddish has a basis in the old High German and many of the Jews of Eastern Europe have ancestral roots (several hundred years further back than I'll ever be able to trace) in the region that is now Germany. This is why so many Jews have German sounding surnames. KLEIN is not only a Jewish name...it's a name that anyone with ancestral routes in this region could have without regard to religion. In Eastern European records I need to look out for the spelling KLEJN.

So where did the spellings KLINE and CLINE come from? Well, I can't speak for all of the spelling changes but my understanding that these names were originally spelled KLEIN in America but were changed during the world wars when people were trying to hide their German heritage. These are the types of name changes that make me giggle. The name sounds the same for all three of these spellings...was anybody really fooled by this. Maybe, who knows.

I find that many people now assume that when I say KLEIN I mean KLINE or CLINE. It's fun sometimes when I walk into CVS to pick up a prescription and the clerk asks for my name, I say KLEIN, and they go to the C bin without asking me the spelling. I like see how much time they will waste before they ask. Then they will ask, I'll say K-L-E-I-N, and they start looking for KLINE...all they heard was K instead of the C they were looking for and didn't bother listening to the rest of it. And then there are the instances when people see KLEIN and say CLEAN. My dad actually received a letter once addressed to "Mr. Clean."

When I travel outside the US I don't seem to have this problem...it's isolated to the US. I'm looking forward to my trip to Israel next month when I won't have to spell my name for anyone.

Nathan Lutzky US Passport, page 1 front page

2009-11-27T12:54:00.001-08:00

We have Nathan's passport application. He applied for the passport after receiving word that there were 9 relatives in Europe in desparate need of help after living through WWI. The original Yiddish letter asking for help supposedly contained a list of these relatives but the letter did not make into the final application file and the list of relatives (names and ages) did not make it into the partial English translation of the letter (darn it!).

Nathan's grandson Barry gave me this original passport yesterday and it's the first time I've seen this type of document. The other pages have all of the foreign travel stamps & visas. They are also being posted on the blog so I can get help with the translations. This page is in English and I have typed the text below.

THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

PASSPORT

DEPARTMENT OF STATE

To all to whom these presents shall come, Greeting:

The undersigned Secretary of State of the United States of

America hereby request all whom it may concern to permit

Nathan Lutzky

a citizen of the United States safely and freely to pass and in case

of need to give him all lawful Aid and Protection.

This passport is valid for use only in the following countries

and for objects specified unless amended:

(left side)

Roumania

France, Switzerland, Italy

Kingdom of Serbs Croates and Slovenes

(right side)

To assist relatives

-------en route-------

The bearer is accompanied by---------------------

Given under my hand and the seal of the Department of State at the

City of Washington the 16th day of December

in the year 1920 and of the Independence of the United States the

one hundred and forty fifth.

Signed Bainbridge Colby

PERSONAL DESCRIPTION

Age 36 years Mouth medium

Height 5ft 7in Chin round

Forehead medium Hair brown

Eyes blue Complexion fair

Nose straight Face oval

Distinguishing marks-----------------

Place of birth Russia

Date of birth December 15th, 1884

Occupation furrier

Signed Nathan Lutzky

See http://sharon-genealogy.blogspot.com/search/label/Nathan%20Lutzky%20US%20Passport for all pages and translations.

Nathan Lutzky US Passport, page 2

2009-11-27T12:52:00.000-08:00

See http://sharon-genealogy.blogspot.com/search/label/Nathan%20Lutzky%20US%20Passport for all pages and translations.

Nathan Lutzky US Passport, page 3

2009-11-27T12:51:00.001-08:00

See http://sharon-genealogy.blogspot.com/search/label/Nathan%20Lutzky%20US%20Passport for all pages and translations.

Nathan Lutzky US Passport, page 4

2009-11-27T12:49:00.000-08:00

See http://sharon-genealogy.blogspot.com/search/label/Nathan%20Lutzky%20US%20Passport for all pages and translations.

Nathan Lutzky US Passport, insert page 1

2009-11-27T12:48:00.001-08:00

See http://sharon-genealogy.blogspot.com/search/label/Nathan%20Lutzky%20US%20Passport for all pages and translations.

Nathan Lutzky US Passport, insert page 2

2009-11-27T12:46:00.000-08:00

See http://sharon-genealogy.blogspot.com/search/label/Nathan%20Lutzky%20US%20Passport for all pages and translations.

A Strange Coincidence...Krinski surname

2009-11-14T11:10:00.000-08:00

I'm used to doing a double take on a regular basis when I see a name that bears a resemblance to an unrelated part of the family tree. The overlap I just discovered is doubly odd because both discoveries are new.

Back in August, cousin Madeline told me that my g-grandmother Jennie Schneider (born Sheine Tokar in Brest-Litovsk, Poland) had a sister. This sister was Reizl Tokar. I know that Reizl was born in 1904 in Brest because I have her birth record. That makes her about 16 years younger than Jennie. Reizl was still living in Brest in 1928 because Jennie listed that as her last residence when she traveled to the US with her children. Reizl's name was listed as her maiden name. Madeline also told me that Reizl's married name was Karinsky, that she immigrated to Israel before WWII, and that some of her family is still living in Israel. I've discovered that Karinsky is more likely Krinsky or Krinski and I've hired a researcher in Israel to find them before my upcoming trip to Israel. I don't know yet if Reizl married in Poland or Israel.

Today I was looking through one of my research binders and saw a note I made on the 1931 ship manifest of my g-grandmother Dobrusza Bergson (born Dobrusza Jablon in Lazdijai/Lozdzieje, Lithuania; married name in US was Dora Berger). The note was that Dora had listed as her last residence the town of Seirijai, Lithuania, which is 12 miles from Lazdijai, with her sister Elke Kerenski. I decided to jump on http://www.jewishgen.org/ and search for Kerenski in Seirijai to see if anything came up. I did a "sounds like" search on the surname and gasped when I saw some of the results...Krinski! How weird is that?

Reizl is the sister of the mother of my maternal grandfather.
Elke is the sister of the mother of my maternal grandmother.

Reizl married in either Poland or Israel.
Elke married in Lithuania, either in Lazdijai or Seirijai.

For now I think this is just a coincidence. If they came from the same or neighboring towns it would definitely be possible for these to be the same Krinski families but these towns are nowhere near each other. The Krinski name was scattered throughout Belarus, Poland, Lithuania and Ukraine so it is unlikely these are the same families. If they are, you will probably hear a much louder gasp.

An additional note...Elke Krinski may have still been in Lithuania when WWII began. I've located an Apr. 21, 1939 death record for her husband Solemas/Solomos. I also know that they had a daughter Zlate born Oct. 1, 1922. A blacksmith name Krinsky is on the list of Seirijai Holocaust victims but without a given name I can't determine if this is a son of Elke or someone else related to Solomos. No other details right now.

UPDATE: I know less than 2 hours have passed but I have an update on the Krinski family of Seirijai. I found several Pages of Testimony in the Yad Vashem database. The person who submitted these is reporting that Elke, son Moshe, and daughter Zlate were killed in Seirijai in 1941, as were 2 children of Sore Krinski, first wife of Solomos (Sholem). These Pages were submitted in 1992 and it looks like the submitter is still living at the same address. I plan to write a letter.

A Cousin is A Cousin is A Cousin

2009-11-04T12:40:00.000-08:00

A few months ago a cousin who was previously unknown to me came across this blog while she was Googling the name of her grandfather (an artist) and she contacted me. We exchanged a few e-mails and I was finally able to make clear to her what the relationship was. She is my third cousin once removed. Her great-grandmother Elka is the sister of my great-great-grandfather Abram. Not close cousins but not too distant either. While I was asking her questions about her family she asked why I was researching the family of her great-grandfather Benjamin, Elka's husband.

To people who are not obsessed with their family histories this may seem strange...why research people who are not blood relatives? To people who are obsessed with their family histories, the answer is obvious...a cousin is a cousin is a cousin. All information I can find out about any member of my family tree extends the branches of the tree and there is also the potential for that information to come back full circle to my blood line. It was not uncommon to see cousins marrying cousins. Or maybe two brothers could marry two sisters and suddenly you've just discovered a sibling you didn't know about.

Another reason researching all parts of the family tree is so I can have information on hand in instances like this when someone contacts me. It's a way to break the ice but can also be used to subtly barter for information they might have such as old photos of people they can't identify (they might be your family members at that wedding reception table). This process can get some people drawn in to the research while others just fade away.

Mostly it's probably just the thrill of the hunt, being satisfied with myself that I solved a mystery or made someone happy to be holding their great-grandfather's ship manifest. It's just fun and I'll keep going even if they don't understand it.

Lutsky Family in Canada

2009-09-26T09:08:00.000-07:00

I knew that the Lutsky family had cousins in Canada from Linda's story about her 1950s trip to Canada with Uncle Israel. She didn't remember the names or the location so I just kept my eyes open to possible clues. Silly me...I was sitting on a clue for several years and it didn't click until yesterday.

There are several Lutsky burials in the Baron de Hirsch-De la Savane Cemetery in Montreal. One of the burials is Lazar Lutsky (1898-1973) whose name also shows up on the Canadian naturalisation index that recently came online. A researcher in Montreal who had contacted me about ancestors from the town of Zwenigorodka mentioned that her parents knew a Lutsky family in Montreal and that one Lutsky was pharmacist in the 1930s.

Yesterday I was browsing through some Lutsky records looking for something about some cousins with a different surname and...holy shit!...I saw the clue that was sitting there all along. I have the US naturalization papers for both Joseph and Rifka Lutsky. These are the parents of the famous Dr. Saul Lutsky. Joseph is the brother of Zaide Solomon. On Rifka's papers, her oldest child listed was Lazar Lutsky, born 1898, living in Canada. It finally clicked...this is the same Lazar I'm seeing in Montreal. Being a pharmacist makes sense...Joseph's second oldest son was a pharmacist and youngest son Saul was a doctor. Lazar's Hebrew name is Eliezer, the same as Louis Lutsky's Hebrew name. I know Lazar and his wife Sima had a son Leo (1921-1988) but that's all I know right now. It appears that Lazar and Leo were both pharmacists.

That researcher in Montreal has helped me by ordering a copy of Lazar's Canadian naturalization papers (only Canadian residents can order them). I hope to have that copy soon. I just contacted the Jewish Genealogy Society of Montreal about 19 Lutsky/Lutzky birth, marriage, and death records in Quebec and also about making contact with living descendents of these cousins.

Yesterday I found 1940s issues of The Canadian Jewish Review online and printed off several articles from the social pages about these cousins. These simple announcements have let me confirm that they are indeed my cousins. One thing I don't know yet is if Leo & Lily had any children. I appears that Leo is the only child of Lazar so if Leo did not have any children there are no cousins to find. I guess I'll know soon enough.

Thanks For The Memories

2009-09-22T14:16:00.000-07:00

It's tough to know where to start...

Some of my family members are truly interested in the stories I write and the discoveries I've made about the family. Others politely smile and nod and tell me what a great job I did. A few just pretend to listen. That's ok. My genealogy blog provided me with a way to not only share information with family and friends but it mainly served as an outlet for me to organize thoughts, facts and theories. I could ramble on past the point where most humans seem to lose interest and if I made a mistake, I could go back and fix it. I tend to have more of a visual memory so the organized format helped me remember where things were.

This blog has also served as a tool to connect with other bloggers and family members. Choosing Google to host my blog proved to be a good move...two cousins found me while searching on Google for our one famous cousin. The blog allowed me to keep important key words within reach of the search engines and The Carnival of Genealogy has given me great ideas for new posts.

I wish I could say that there could never be another blog like my genealogy blog but I can't...I'm hooked...I have to start another one. Just know that I wouldn't have gotten this far without the first blog.

for anyone reading this who did not find it through the Carnival of Genealogy, my blog isn't going anywhere...this was just a proposed topic for the Carnival...a blog obituary :-)

Belinsky Theory

2009-08-27T11:50:00.000-07:00

I started working on this a few weeks ago but then got caught up in a whirlwind on a branch of my mom's family so I set it aside. I'm not 100% convinced yet but there are a lot of coincidences.

First, what I do know:
After making contact with the family of Joseph Hochfeld (son of Benjamin and Elka...Elka is the sister of my gg-grandfather) I was working on the Hochfeld name and came across something interesting on Elka Hochfeld's (nee Belinki) 1946 death certificate. Benjamin reported her as being born in Poland. Considering the entire family listed Zwenigorodka, Russia (Ukraine) as their last residence when coming to the US and Benjamin and Elka are buried in a Zwenigorodker Society section, this reference to Poland stands out. Elka's parents are listed as Gershon Belinki and Chaia and based on her age on passengers lists and census records her date of birth was circa 1865. My g-grandmother Lea Belinki and her brother Leib Belinki listed Lysyanka, Ukraine as their last residence and place of birth on their ship manifests. By 1913 when their brother Shlomo Belinki came to the US, the remaining family was living in Talne, Ukraine. My Ukraine researcher couldn't find any history of the Belinki name in Lysyianka or Zwenigorodka.

Second, my theory:
I went to the JRI-Poland website and searched for "sounds like" Belinki surname. There were very few hits on names that closely resembled Belinki so I tried searching combinations of given names. I tried a "sounds like" given name Elka + "sounds like" given name Gershon. In the town of Suwalki, I found records for Berlinski/Berlinska including Elka born 1865 to parents Abram Hirsz and Chaja Fejga. Because of the "R", Berlinski is a different soundex than Belinki. Gershon and Hirsz are not exactly the same but since people with 2 given names tended to use them interchangeably it is a possible match. Here are the Suwalki records I found:

>Abram Hirsz b. 1832 (son of Lejzor and Chaja (daughter of Ablowna)). In 1850, he married Chaja Fejga Filipowska b. 1833 (daughter of Eliasz/Elka and Chana/Chaja).
>>Sora Estera b 1853, daughter of Abram Hirsz and Chaja. She married Abram Turtulski in 1878.
>>Lejzor b. 1856, son of Abram Hirsz and Chaja.
>>Idzko b. 1859, son of Abram Hirsz and Chaja.
>>Brajna b. 1865 (twin), daughter of Abram Hirsz and Chaja. She married Litman Gersztinger in 1881.
>>Elka b. 1865 (twin), daughter of Abram Hirsz and Chaja...future wife of Benjamin Hochfeld??

I don't see any more birth records after Elka. My gg-grandfather Abram Belinki may have been younger than Elka. Her oldest child was born in 1885 and I think my g-grandmother Lea, who I believe is Abram's oldest, was born c. 1889. Either there's a gap in the records (doesn't look like it though), the birth wasn't registered in Suwalki for some reason, or if this is my family, maybe they were already moving to the towns in Ukraine that I've been seeing and Abram was born there and not registered (or records didn't survive or just aren't indexed). A man named Abram Hirsz would not name a son Abram unless the son was being named for someone else or the father could have died while mom was pregnant so this may be one point against my theory.

Two Turtulski children (Rochel and Elli), likely children of Sora Estera based on their ages, arrived in the US in 1904 to see uncle L. Berlinski in Washington DC, likely Lejzor. By 1940, Elli Turtulski applied for citizenship in Miami, FL. under that name with an "also known as" name Aleck Stein.

When I go to NY for Passover next year I want to photograph the Hochfeld headstones at Mount Carmel Cemetery. It would be amazing if Elka's father is listed as Abram Hirsz. A birth record for my gg-grandfather Abram would have really made my day. I'm familiar with the Suwalki gubernia records through research on my mom's side of the family tree. Poland is always easier to research than Ukraine so that would be nice.

The names Belinki and Bilinki do not appear in A Dictionary of Jewish Surnames from the Kingdom of Poland. The name Berlinski does appear here. The names Belinkij and Belinskij (the family used Belinsky in the US) are listed in A Dictionary of Jewish Surnames from the Russian Empire. The name Berlinskij is also listed here. The names have different meanings...Berlinski means from the village of Berlintsy (Mogilev-Podinskiyy, Ukraine). Belinki means white or blonde.

Update: I discovered that Brajna and Elka are not twins, their births were just registered at the same time. Elka was born in 1864 and Brajna is a little older. Still a possibility but no connection proven or disproven yet.

Holocaust Victims Identified - Tokar Family

2009-08-18T14:23:00.000-07:00

This topic is one that I’ve been driven to research and now that we’ve actually identified Holocaust victims, the reality of it is hitting me. I’ve been thinking about writing this all day…I have my tissues handy in case the emotions get to me. Thank you so much cousin Madeline for the information you’ve provided over the past couple of weeks. It led me to new records and helped me connect records that have been sitting in my binders for several years to actual family members.

My great-grandmother is Jennie Schneider. Until 2 weeks ago, all I knew about her was that her given name was Sheyna Tokarzh, she was born in either Terespol or Brest-Litovsk, Poland circa 1888, she came to the US in 1928 and died in Brooklyn in 1956. From her 1908 Brest marriage record, the groom was my great grandfather Moshko Shnayder, and her father’s name was Moshko-Gershko Tokarzh. This was the only information I knew for certain.

Thanks to cousin Madeline, I learned that Jennie had a sister named Raizel Toker Karinsky (Krinsky) and that she and Jennie were 2 of possibly 8 siblings and the only 2 members of the immediate family to escape Europe before WWII. Raizel emigrated to Eretz Israel. I had always heard that some of my grandpa Saul’s cousins died in the Holocaust but their names always seemed beyond my reach. Madeline provided a very important clue last night…her sister Sydell’s Hebrew name is Szprinca. I was waiting on this answer, staring at several records I pulled from my binders. I can now say with 99.9% certainty that I have identified 9 Holocaust victims from the Tokar family.

Before I list their names, some background on these records. The Jewish population in Brest at the start of WWII was approximately 24,000. That represented about 40% of the population of the city but the Jews owned 90% of the businesses so Brest was very much a Jewish town. The Germans arrived in June 1941. Late in the month of June, the Germans took 5,000 Jewish men from the homes and executed them in a local brickyard. In November & December 1941, the ghetto was formed and all of the Jews in the city had to move into the designated areas. The Germans, being anal when it came to paperwork, created ledgers listing all of the ghetto residents and issued photo IDs, called passports, to every resident 14 years of age or older. Children 13 and under were listed on their mother’s passport, or if she was deceased or not in the ghetto, the father’s passport. Passports were issued to 12,258 individuals. On October 15, 1942 when the ghetto was liquidated the passports were collected and, amazingly, all survived in the local archives. The passports were microfilmed by Yad Vashem and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. They have also been translated and indexed into a searchable database hosted by JewishGen. About 3 years ago, I contacted Yad Vashem for copies of all passports for people with surnames sounding like Tokar and Sznajder. I have 39 passports with names that sound like Tokar and 10 with names that sound like Sznajder. I’ve been through them several times but until now could not make any connection. Here is the link for the database on the JewishGen website: http://www.jewishgen.org/databases/Belarus/brest.htm. It shows a picture of the monument at Bronnaya Gora.

These are our family members (BGP means I have the passport):

>Mojsze Tokar, born 1852, son of Meir and Itka, BGP, a butcher per the 1937 taxpayers list
>>Szymon Tokar, born 1885, son of Mojsz and Szprynca, BGP, a butcher per the 1937 taxpayers list
>>>Szprynca Tokier, born 1926, daughter of Szymon and Frejda , BGP
>>>Rosa Tokar, born 1930, list on father’s BGP
>>>Saul Toker, born 1910, son of Shimon and Frida – Page of Testimony by Sidor Toker, Buenos Aires
>>Icko Tokar, born 1897, son of Mojse and Szprinca - BGP and original Brest birth record
>>>Abram Tokar, born 1920, son of Icko and Bela - BGP
>>>Malka Tokar, born 1924, daugher ot Icko and Bela - BGP
>>>Szprinca Tokar, born 1928, daughter of Icko and Bejla - BGP
>>Sheine Tokar, born c. 1888, daughter of Moshko-Gershko and Seidel (Szprinca) - various Polish & US records, emigrated to US 1928
>>Reyzl Toker, born 1904, daughter of Movsha and Shprintse - original Brest birth record, emigrated to Eretz Israel sometime after 1928

That’s 7 ghetto passports plus one minor child listed on her father’s passport for a total of 8 who were in the ghetto. Saul Toker is identified from a Page of Testimony submitted by his brother Sidor Toker in Buenos Aires. The parents’ names match so it is likely that Saul and Sidor are Szymon’s sons, Jennie’s nephews. I added Jennie and Reyzl to the list so we can see them all together. Reyzl was still living (under her maiden name) in Brest in 1928 when Jennie and the children left Poland. These records account for 4 of a possible 8 children for Mojsze and Szprynca. The 1937 Brest taxpayers list shows 3 other Toker/Tokar men who were butchers, Rubin, Zawel, and Mejer. These may be sons of Mojsze. They did not live in the ghetto so they either escaped the region while they could or they were killed before the ghetto was formed. If they were killed, I hope they went out with a fight.

The children of Mojsze were born over a long period of time, 1885 to 1904. It was not uncommon for the youngest child to be a full generation younger than their oldest sibling. Mojsze was already in his mid-30s when he became a father. Maybe Szprynca was much younger. Madeline said that her sister Sydell has a photo of Szprynca’s gravesite. She would have died before 1926 when the first of the 2 granddaughters (listed above) named for her was born. It’s amazing to have the gravesite photo because there is a sports stadium on top of the old Jewish cemetery in Brest (the Soviets saw cemeteries as a waste of land…I’m sure the fact that it was Jewish cemetery made the decision easier). See http://charter97.org/en/news/2009/4/15/17323/.

On the morning of October 15, 1942, all 16,934 registered residents of the ghetto (and several thousand shipped in from other towns that were not in the ledgers) were herded onto trains and taken to Bronnaya Gora where the death pits had already been dug and the killing had already begun. We don’t know if our ancestors died on this day or if they succumbed to starvation or disease (called “natural causes” by the Germans) before that. In 1944, when the Russians liberated Brest, there were 9 Jews in the city. They had been hidden by non-Jewish friends. There are 20 known survivors from the thousands of Brest residents. If anyone wants more details, I have a copy of a 1998-9 written by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research and American Jewish Committee. 1 person is known you have actually escaped the pits.

Maybe when we light our yizkor candles next month we can remember these ancestors by name. It’s probably been a long time since anyone has done that. I need to look into submitting Pages of Testimony for the 8 that I know died in the ghetto. Maybe instead of mailing them I will deliver them in person to Yad Vashem when I’m there in January. For now, I will add them to our family tree and scan in these passports. Note that the passports are in Polish. Polish is based on the Latin alphabet so while we can’t read the entire document, we still make out the names. There are online translators available for the typewritten text….I know one that can handle the special Polish letters.

Summary of Schneider Family Research

2009-08-12T14:45:00.000-07:00

When I first started my research about 10 years ago, I knew that my mother’s paternal grandparents were Morris and Jennie Schneider (nee Tucker) and I had one photo of them, taken at their son Max’s wedding. I remembered all of their children, including my grandpa Saul, as having accents so I figured I had correctly been told that they were from Poland but I did not know now which city or town. I started from there, as most researchers do, digging up US records. I even got lucky with some records from the old country. Here is what I now know:

>I have a 1903 Hamburg, Germany departure record showing a single man, Moische Schneider, age 20, sailing for London. I can’t find a UK arrival record or a US ship manifest for this voyage so I don’t know (yet) how far he travelled.
>Morris and Jennie married in Brest-Litovsk Poland in 1908. I have a copy of the original marriage record. According to this record, Moshko Shnayder of Opalin, son of Gdal-Khuna was marrying Sheyne Tokarzh of Terespol, daughter of Moshko-Gershko. Opalin, Poland (now Ukraine) is a very small town about 50 miles from Brest. Terespol, Poland, is about 6 miles from Brest and is referred to as being in the Brest region by researchers.
>Morris came to the US in August 1911, age 26. His occupation on the manifest is covered by a black blob of something. According to the ship manifest, he was last living with father Gidale in Brest, a reference to Brest-Litovsk, Poland (now Brest, Belarus). By this time, sons Meyer and Saul/Shlomo had already been born and Jennie would have been about 4 months pregnant with daughter Ray/Rivka. The manifest also shows that he was coming to NYC to see cousin Schulle Tucker, obviously a cousin of Jennie’s. He had $25 with him. I have copies of Saul’s 1910 birth record and Ray’s 1912 birth record.
>Morris went back to Poland by late 1913 because twins Lilly/Leya and Sarah/Rokhl were born in August 1914. He would have stayed in Poland with the family during WWI because there was no place to go. If you look at the US ship manifests database, there is little or no activity during WWI. Twin Sarah “didn’t survive”…I’m not sure how old she was when she died but I have a photo of 3 of the children probably taken circa 1920 and she is not in it. I have a copy of the twins’ 1914 birth record.
>Morris returned to the US in 1922, about 6 months after youngest son Max was born. I don’t know if the war was the reason for the gap in children (1914>>>1922). Maybe it was the war, maybe Max was a pleasant surprise, or maybe there were other pregnancies and/or babies who did not survive. Morris is listed as a 40 year-old baker from Pinsk, last residing with wife Sznya Sznajder in Brest-Lit. The Pinsk reference is incorrect…I think the clerk typing up the manifest just liked the word Pinsk because everyone on the page is listed as being from Pinsk. The manifest indicates that he lived in Brooklyn from 1911-1913 and that he was coming to see brother S. Sznider in Paterson, NJ. This is the first time I saw a reference to brother Samuel. I think later on someone mentioned brother Samuel which, at the time, helped me confirm this detail.
> Per the 1930 census, Morris, Jennie and the five children are living in Paterson, NJ. The census shows Jennie and the children arriving in the US in 1928 but I still have not been able to find the ship manifest. Morris became a US citizen in March 1928. All of the children were under 21 at the time so they would have automatically become US citizens when they were already in the US or the moment they stepped off the boat. Jennie was not automatically naturalized and would have had to apply herself. I have no evidence that she ever did this. According to Morris’s naturalization papers he was born in Brest-Litovsk. I’m not sure about this…it was common to reference a larger town or city located near a small town. I think he was born in Opalin.
>Morris moved the family from Paterson to Brooklyn in the early 1930s. I know they were there in January1934 when Saul married his first wife Pauline Propper. Pauline died in October 1935 from rheumatic heart disease, not in childbirth as I had always heard. Luckily, Saul married again in 1937 to Bessie Berger (Peshe Bergzon), my grandmother.
>Morris died in 1951, Jennie in 1956, both in Brooklyn. My Uncle Harold told me that the 1946 photo of them taken at son Max’s wedding (married Bernice Shluker of the Shlukers Bakery family) is probably the last photo of Morris before he lost parts of his legs to side effects of his diabetes.

Not long ago, I started a discussion on Geni about my grandpa Saul’s cousin Gershon Schneider to see if I could get some more details about him. I had heard that he escaped from a Russian labor camp and met his wife Leda while traveling across Europe. There was an interesting story here. Growing up I had heard that about a dozen or so of Saul’s cousins had died in the Holocaust but to this day I still don’t know who, when, or where. Until recently, my best guess was they died in the Brest-Litovsk ghetto because I know Morris and Jennie were living there before coming to the US and that 1911 ship manifest listed Gdal as living in Brest-Litovsk. A couple of weeks ago, cousin Madeline Zacharaowicz (daughter of Morris’s daughter Lilly) posted that Gershon was born in Lodz, Poland, and that he met Leda at the Tashkent refugee camp. The Tashkent (Uzbekistan) registration card database is online but I don’t see him there…that doesn’t mean he wasn’t there. The Lodz reference was very interesting though.

When I requested a copy of Morris’s naturalization papers, I also requested a copy of naturalization papers for a Samuel Schneider of Paterson, NJ who I thought was Morris’s brother. My gut told me I had a match but I could never prove it…until now. According to Samuel’s naturalization papers he was born in Lodz! His papers also show the name he arrived in the US under, Shie David Schneider. This explained why I never found his ship manifest…until now! I have it! Shie David Schneider arrived in September 1912, last resided with wife Chana (Anna in the US) in Lodz, and was coming to see brother Moische Schneider of Perth Amboy, NJ. Samuel’s manifest also lists his place of birth as Opalin (or a word that looks like Opalin). I already had the 1920 & 1930 census pages for the family of Samuel Schneider in Paterson, NJ so I knew his children’s names. A few days ago on Ancestry.com, I found the 1995 obituary for Samuel’s oldest son Isadore which listed all of the names of the surviving family members. I found one of Isadore's daughters thanks to Google and sent an e-mail and I found another daughter on Facebook and sent a message. Both responded very quickly and confirmed that we had a match.

Late in the 1800s and early in the 1900s, and even before this, there was a significant movement of people from small towns to larger towns and cities either to find a better standard of living or ultimately to emigrate. What must have happened is that Gdal and son Morris and maybe other family members moved from the tiny town of Opalin to Brest-Litovsk while Morris’s brothers Samuel and Gershon’s father (name not known as of yet) went to Lodz. Lodz was further away but a much larger city. Gershon must have either evacuated east as the Nazi’s approached Lodz or the “Russian labor camp” he escaped from was the Lodz ghetto. I have copies of all of the Brest ghetto photo IDs (called passports) for the Schneider and Tokar (and variations) surnames but no can’t link any of them to our Schneiders. I know nothing about Jennie’s family except her father’s name. I need to look for Schneider’s in Lodz ghetto records.

The hunt continues...

"Where am I from in Eastern Europe?"

2009-08-01T04:08:00.000-07:00

I posted the following in a new discussion on Geni.com and thought it was appropriate to copy here...

My first cousin Melanie Klein asked me this today. I thought others might be interested in a summary so I told her I'd post the answer here. For Melanie and me, the answer is the same for the branch tracing back from our fathers (they are brothers). For some of you, the information below may only cover part of your ancestry. If I have reasonable confirmation of the location of a birth, marriage, death I will enter the information in that person’s Geni profile.

First, our paternal grandparents Irene and Harvey were both born in the US.

Irene's family…Ukraine, maybe Poland:
Father Louis Lutsky, born Eliezer Lutzkiy in Lysyanka, Ukraine (south of Kiev). His older brother Nathan also listed Lysyanka as his place of birth. Their father Solomon (Zaide) lists Kiev as his place of birth. Kiev is a city and gubernia (province) so when someone says they are from Kiev, that's like me saying I live near Atlanta or, to a foreigner, I might say I live in Georgia. I hired a researcher in Ukraine and she is not finding a birth record for Solomon (borm late 1860s) in either the city of Kiev or the town of Lysyanka. She did find 2 other Lutskiy birth records in Lysyanka from the 1850s that I'm waiting for copies. There are some references to the Lutskys being from the town of Zwenigorodka, Ukraine but again, no birth, marriage, death records in the mid-1800s to prove a history there. I'm on the trail of Lutski cousins in Canada and also in the UK (spelled Ludski/Ludzki there). Louis’s mother is Rebecca/Rivka Kantorovich. I’m at a dead end researching this name in the same regions. Rebecca’s mother was Rachel. Rachel’s maiden name was Lutsky…yes, Solomon and Rebecca were first cousins! This explains a lot . Solomon had a brother Joseph, the father of the famous Dr. Sol, my dad’s family doctor when he was growing up. Their father was Benjamin. The name Lutsky probably originates from the town of Lutsk, Ukraine (formerly Luck, Poland).

Mother Lena Belinsky, born Lea Belinki also in Lysyanka, Ukraine. This means that Louis and Lena knew each other before coming to the US. The Lysyanka tie is confirmed with records of her brother Louis/Leib Belinsky. Her father was Abraham Belinki and mother was Ethel Gelfand(?). Again, my Ukraine researcher is not finding a history of any Belinki families in Lysyanka. I have a hunch though. Abraham had a sister Elka who married Benjamin Hochfeld. When Elka died in 1946, Benjamin reported her place of birth as Poland, not the generic “Russia”. This didn’t click with me until a few weeks ago when I connected with someone in the Hochfeld family, Laura Thompson (her tree is merged with ours now). I started searching for Belinki records in Poland and I think I might have found her family in the town of Suwalki, Poland under the name Berlinki. I’m waiting to hear back from Laura Thompson on a couple of questions. These records are easy to get from the Family History Library. I’m hoping it is Poland because the research is easier. In addition to making the Hochfeld connection here in the US, 3 years ago I connected with the family of Lena’s brother Solomon, also here in the US, and the family of her sister Sara now living in Israel (since mid-1990s…moved as part of the mass exodus from the former Soviet Union). I’ve already met one of the Israeli cousins and her fiancé and I’m going to Israel in January 2010 for their wedding.

Harvey’s family…Poland, maybe Lithuania:
Father Abraham Klein listed Kovno (now Kaunas) Lithuania as his last place of residence when he departed from Hamburg, Germany in 1896, headed for America. I don’t know where he was born. I found records for his much older brother Barnett Klein who was listing Austria as his place of birth. Klein is a common name so I haven’t been able to find any clues yet.

Mother Sara Zejburski was born in Lomza, Poland. I have the 1897 Russian census record for her family and I received copies of her birth record, the birth records of her siblings and her father (all of whom came to the US), as well as other birth, marriage, death records for the Zejburski family. Zejburski became Zebofsky in the US. I connected with one of Sara’s nephews on Facebook but he hasn’t shown much interest in taking it further (not yet anyway). Sara’s father was Abram and her mother was Chana. I don’t have a maiden name for Chana yet. According to the 1897 Russian census she was born in the nearby town of Nowograd but I haven’t found the birth record yet.

Not really a summary for some people…for me, this wasn’t a novel so it looks like a summary to me.

Melanie – I haven’t done any research on your mother’s family. If you’re interested, I can help or get you started. If anyone in our family says we’re from “Russia”, that's not modern day Russia, only the generic term that applies to any of a dozen countries.

The Tucker Puzzle

2009-07-11T14:27:00.000-07:00

My great-grandmother was Jennie Schneider. She died in 1956, 8 years before I was born, so I never knew her. All I have are these 2 pictures of her with my great-grandfather Morris. Morris came to the US first. He came in 1911 then went back home to Brest-Litovsk, Poland, made a few more babies, then returned to the US in 1922 after their youngest son was born (or at least after he was conceived). Jennie came over with all of the children in 1928. In 1928, Morris & Jennie would have been about 40 years old so this picture may have been taken around that time (I'm not good at guessing ages).

This picture was taken in September, 1946, at the wedding of their youngest son Max to Bernice Shluker. They would have been in their mid-to-late 50s at this time. I'm told that shortly after the wedding, Morris lost part of both legs to gangrene, complications related to his diabetes. Morris died in 1951. Jennie died in 1955.

Their 1908 Brest-Litovsk marriage record reads as follows:

Small town of Opalin Vladimir-Volynskiy Uyezd Moshko son of Gdal-Khuna Shnayder a single man with the single woman Sheyna daughter of Moshko-Gershko Tokarzh from Terespol.

This is the only Polish record I've found so far with Jennie/Sheyne's name. I have the birth records for some of their children but only their father's name is mentioned. All of the children were born in Brest-Litovsk and this is where the family lived until they left for the US in 1928. There are 3 towns in Poland named Terespol. So far, I've operated on the assumption that my Tokarzh family was living in the Terespol located close to Brest-Litovsk. The surname Tokarzh, and similar spellings, were commonly translated to Tucker in the US. Jennie's headstone shows her Hebrew name as Sheyne daughter of Moshe.

I have not been able to find a definitive connection to other Tokarz families in the indexed records databases on Jewish Records Indexing-Poland (http://www.jri-poland.org/). The surname doesn't appear to be very common in the towns/cities that are in modern day Poland. I do have copies of the Brest Ghetto Passports (photo IDs from when the Nazis established the ghetto) for the Shnayder and Tokar surnames (and spelling variations) but I don't see any obvious connection to Jennie's family. There was always a story that my grandpa Saul, Morris & Jennie's second son, lost 11 cousins in the Holocaust. I don't know if these cousins are among the passports I have. I believe all of the old birth, marriage, and death (BMD) records for the town of Brest-Litovsk, now Brest, Belarus, are in the archives in Belarus. Not fun...the Belarus government is openly anti-semitic and hasn't caught on yet to the idea that they could make money from the "rich Americans" if they made their archives more accessible. I was lucky to get the few BMD records I have.

Today I was doing a broad search of all of the records on JRI-Poland for surnames that began with "TOK" and I found some interesting items. In the town of Kromolow, Poland, I found an 1860 birth record for a Mordka Hersz Tokajer. This date would make sense since Jennie was born circa 1890. His parents are listed as Lejbus and Laja. The name Laja is interesting because Jennie named her second daughter Leya. I also found the 1850 marriage record of Lejbus Tokajer and Laja Frydlender in the same town, as well as an 1851 birth record for their first child Leyzor. The town of Kromolow is not located anywhere near Terespol or Brest but the coincidence is very interesting. The 1860 record is at the Polish State Archives and the other two are at the Family History Library. I think I'll order all 3 records. Maybe I'll find another clue. See UPDATE below.

I still don't have my connection to Jennie but my gut tells me that these are pieces of the Tucker puzzle. I hope the dog didn't eat all of the other pieces. UPDATE...looks like my gut was wrong...see Holocaust Victims Identified - Tokar Family. Glad to have finally found some ancestors.

Catching the Travel Bug

2009-07-05T13:17:00.000-07:00

We probably spent more summers at home than we did trekking in the brown station wagon. While the summers at home may sound boring to me as an adult, as kids we were very busy. This was back in the days before any decent video games and cable TV (I was born in 1964) so we spent most of our time outside. In our Massapequa backyard we had our little plastic pool and a swing set. There were a lot of kids on the street who were also out and about all day. Our parents only needed a general idea where we were because they knew if we were down the street, another parent was watching out for us. We had to come in for lunch, an afternoon snack, and dinner. After dinner, we could stay outside until the street lights came on.

In the pool, me at left and sister Judy
Standing l to r: family friend Hallie, me, Judy

When we were a little older, we had a family membership at Marjorie R. Post Community Park. We just called it "the pool". Mom would either drop us off or she would come also and spend the day playing mahjong with her friends. I even learned to play at one point. We were pretty much on our own until we needed money for lunch and then an afternoon snack. "The pool" is where we all had our swimming lessons. I remember one time my dad, my sisters, and I rode our bikes the 5 miles or so the "the pool" to play handball. My hands were so sore. The ride back was not fun. I think we were members through most of my high school years.

We travelled too, usually by car in our brown station wagon. The second seat was a split fold 2/3 and 1/3 across and there was a third seat too. All seats would fold down flat and we had blankets and pillows to sleep while my parents sat up front. My parents tried to come up with games to keep our minds occupied but we were more interested in fighting with each other. I think youngest sister Laura always got stuck in the middle to put a little distance between Judy and me. I don't know which trips took place in which years but here are the ones I remember:

Florida - I remember the Everglades more than anything else...not sure why.
Washington DC - visited the major sights of course.
Hershey PA - back in the days when you could tour the actual Hershey factory vs the simulated ride they have now.
Philadelphia - at the Franklin Institute, my sister Judy went up to that static electricity ball but her hair wouldn't stand on end.
Colonial Williamsburg - I was interested in history even back then so this was a lot of fun.
Howe Caverns - I remember the caverns but I also remember that we found a hotel on a hillside that had a bowling alley attached. As bowlers, we thought this was really cool.
Niagara Falls - amazing. I also remember the wax museum and we thought it was cool that you could cross from the US to Canada and back right in the middle of a bridge and that the border guards knew my dad was telling the truth about being from NY simply by his accent.
Puerto Rico - pictures below. I remember my dad got us really lost trying to drive down into Old San Juan and when we walked up the street to a restaurant, my sister was wearing really short shorts and all of the men driving by were hanging out of their cars whistling at her.

Sisters Judy & Laura with me (at right). I'm guessing this was 1979 or 1980. Judy and Laura would kill me if they knew I posted this but what they don't know won't hurt them.

Dad relaxing with a newspaper

It's funny the things I remember, or don't remember. My sisters and I fought a lot so I don't know how relaxing these trips were for my parents. Overall we had fun though. Some of the memories are blurred by my trips to these places as an adult. I'd like to go to Howe Caverns and Niagara Falls again now that I can appreciate them more.

My sisters haven't travelled much so my 4 nieces (2 per sister) haven't really been more than a couple of hours from home. I've already told the girls that when they graduate from high school, their gift from me will be a trip. The first one is in 2010 and I think that one will be Italy. Number two is the following year and I think that will be London. Not sure what 2012 will be and then I have a five year break before the youngest graduates. I caught the travel bug at a young age...now it's time for me to share the desire to see different places.

The Hochfeld Connection

2009-06-18T14:39:00.000-07:00

For several years, I kept coming across a 1906 US ship manifest for a Lea Belinka. She was coming to the US to a Manhattan address in "c/o Benj. Hochfeld". I thought it might be my great-grandmother Lena Belinsky Lutsky but I had never heard of Benjamin Hochfeld before and these pre-1907 manifests did not ask who you last resided with so I had nothing to confirm it was her. If it was her, I thought she might have been a servent for a family named Hochfeld.

In the spring of 2007, thanks to the JewishGen Family Finder, I was able to connect with Shari Videlock, my second cousin once removed. She is the granddaughter of my ggm Lena's brother Solomon. We immediately began exchanging information. Shari's mother Enid is still alive and has a lot of memories to share. Enid remembers as a small child attending Passover Seders at "Uncle Benny's". It turns out that Uncle Benny is Benjamin Hochfeld, the same person Lea Belinka listed as her US contact on that 1906 ship manifest. Now I knew I had the correct ship manifest and I also had to figure out if Benjamin was a real uncle or just a family friend or cousin that everyone referred to as "uncle".

At first I thought that the name Hochfeld might be a variation on the maiden name I had for Lena's mother Ethel Gelfand or Cholfen. This initial assumption stuck with me for a while. I started hunting down US records for Benjamin Hochfeld's family. Cousin Shari told me that we were somehow related to actor Hal Holbrook and director/screenwriter Robert Rossen and actress Carol Eve Rossen. I was able to find a mailing address for Ms. Rossen online. I wrote her a letter and she sent me an e-mail. She had no knowledge of the Belinsky connection but she shared some information about her family and I also exchanged a couple of e-mails with her cousin author Sylvia Hochfield. Neither of them thought my assumption about the surname variation was correct.

As I began organizing the US records I had found, I was able to obtain copies of death certificates for Benjamin Hochfeld and his wife Elka. Elka's death certificate provided the clue...her maiden name was Belinki (Belinsky in the US). Elka's father was listed as Gershon, the Hebrew name cousin Enid had given one of her sons. Now we knew what the connection was...Elka Belinki Hochfeld is the sister of Abram Belinki, Lena's father. We also added some spice to the family tree with celebrities and two family members who were part of a major event in NYC...

Benjamin & Elka Hochfeld had a daughter Fannie who married Max Siegel. Their daughter Sadie/Sue was married to director/screenwriter Robert Rossen who won an oscar for the screeplay for the movie The Hustler with Paul Newman. Their daughter is actress and author Carol Eve Rossen.
Carol Eve Rossen was married to actor Hal Holbrook 1966-1979
two of Benjamin & Elka Hochfeld's children were Max and Esther. They were both working at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in NYC on that fateful day, March 25, 1911, when 146 young workers lost their lives in a fire, mainly because the owners of the factory kept the doors and windows locked. Max was able to leave the building before he even knew a fire had started because it was the end of the work day and he had taken the stairs down to the street. Esther wasn't as lucky, having waited for the elevator. For more information, see http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/trianglefire/. On the list of victims, Ester is listed as Esther Gorfield. The name on her death certificate is Esther Gochfeld (there is no equivalent sound in Russian to the English "G" so "H" is a common substitute). Max's account of that day is at http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/trianglefire/audio/.

With all of this information I was able to expand the Belinsky/Belinki branch of the family tree. Carol Eve Rossen and Sylvia Hochfield didn't seem interested in staying in touch...that's fine. It's nice to know they're out there in the world making our ancestors proud.

Lomza, Poland

2009-06-03T13:05:00.000-07:00

My great-grandmother Sara Mariem Zejburska was born in Lomza circa 1894. Her father Abram Ick was also born there in 1861. Sara, her parents, and her 6 siblings emigrated to the US between 1904 and 1909. I believe some other family members also came to the US. My research on this branch of my family tree just recently took off so I don't know yet if any family remained in Europe during WWII.

According to The Encyclopedia of Jewish Life, Lomza (also Lomzha), located in the Bialystok gubernia, had an organized Jewish community with a synagogue and cemetery by 1494, with Jews dominating the lumber trade. Jews were forced from the town in 1598 and many settled nearby in Piatnica and Rybaki. In the first half of the 18th century, Jews were allowed to live in Lomza again. By 1857, the total population of Lomza was 5,881, including 2,608 Jews. The Jewish population continued to grow in spite of residence restrictions. By 1897, the total population was 19,223 including 8,752 Jews. The population remained fairly stable until WWII.

Late in the 19th century, as a result of Polish restrictions on Jewish business, the Jews of Lomza remained flexible by setting up factories (sugar, soap, chicory, bricks, and shingles), seven windmills, and carpentry and metalworking shops, one of the latter developing into a vocational school and another becoming a big machine casting plant. Jews participated in the revolutionary events of 1905, organizing strikes and joining demonstrations. In WWI hundreds were drafted into the Russian army and thousands left the city. Those remaining suffered from severe food shortages under the German occupation.

A new synagogue was completed in 1881. Among the community's institutions were an orphanage founded in 1893, an old age home for 300 residents was set up in 1894, and a new Jewish hospital was established in 1897. The community also maintained theater and sports groups and nine newspapers and journals appeared between the World Wars. In the late 1930s, Jewish butchers and bakers were shut down and Jewish merchants were physically attacked on market days. In 1937, Polish children attacked students in the Jewish school with knives and in 1934, 1000 windows were smashed in Jewish homes.

The Germans entered the city on June 22, 1941 after a two-year Soviet occupation. Throughout July, Jews were loaded onto trucks and transported to the Galczyn forest, where 2000 were machine gunned down. A Judenrat was set up in the same month and on August 12 over 10,000 Jews including refugees were packed into a ghetto. Over 200 Jews "suspected" of Communism were executed on August 16. Two thousand more without work permits were murdered in the forest on September 17. In the ghetto, efforts were made to sustain the community. A soup kitchen, hospital, old age home, and orphanage were set up as well as a small school. Even so, thousands died from starvation and disease. On November 1, 1942, the 8000 or so Jews who remained were sent to the Zambrow barracks and other transit points and from there most were deported to Auschwitz during January 14-18, 1943.

Many birth, marriage, and death records have survived and most of these records have already been indexed and are in the JRI-Poland databases at http://www.jri-poland.org/. You can see them by clicking on "Your Town" on the home page and scrolling down to Lomza.

The Lomza ShtetLinks page on JewishGen is at http://www.shtetlinks.jewishgen.org/Lomza/.

To register or not to register

2009-06-02T14:26:00.000-07:00

What's a few babies here or there...

My gg-grandfather Abram Ick Zejburski of Lomza, Poland, didn't seem to be in any rush to register the births of children with the town officials. Maybe he was too busy, maybe there was a per capita based tax he wanted to avoid, maybe the babies were sickly and he didn't see the point until they were healthy, who knows. We will never know the reason but here's what happened. A fellow researcher just told me that Abram may have registered the births in order to start on the paperwork needed to emigrate.

The first 2 children were Zelk Gilel and Sora Mariem. They are listed in the 1897 Russian Census (see link) as being 16 and 13 years old, respectively. Their births, however, were registered in 1887 with consecutive record numbers. At first I thought maybe the census was wrong and they were twins but I couldn't figure out why they would be made to look older on the census, especially son Zelk Gilel who would now be eligible for conscription into the Russian army. As I started to line up the the birth record data on the copy request I was sending to the Polish State Archives, I realized that the ages on the census were probably correct and it was delayed registration of the births that caused my initial confusion.

Zelk Gilel (Ilel) - born circa 1881, birth registered 1887
Sora Mariem - born circa 1884, birth registered 1887
Lejba - birth and death registered 1887 (birth record is not consecutive with older siblings so I think actual birth was 1887)
Aron - born circa 1888, birth registered 1901
Moszek - born circa 1892, birth registered 1901
Juszk - born circa 1896, birth registered 1901
Chawa Mindla - born after 1897 census, birth registered 1901
Rejzla Mindla - born after 1897 census, no birth record located, death registered 1898
Esther - born circa 1903 per 1910 US census, no birth record located

All 7 of the surviving children, 4 boys and 3 girls, came to New York with their parents, travelling on several ships between 1904 & 1909. I guess I should be glad that Abram registered the children at all and that the JRI-Poland workers and volunteers translated and indexed these records for me to find. I'll take what I can get!

What's with the M?

2009-06-02T12:39:00.000-07:00

In December 2008, I decided to revisit the research of the family of my great-grandmother Sarah Klein. On her 1905 Brooklyn marriage record, her maiden name was listed as Zembrowsky and her parents were listed as Isak & Pesi. On my grandfather's birth certificate, Sara's full maiden name was listed as Sarah Marjam Zabursky. Both my grandfather and his brother listed her maiden name as Zebofsky on their social security applications. I decided to start with the earliest spelling...Zembrowsky.

I had no idea which country Sarah emigrated from so I decided to start with the Poland records on Jewish Records Indexing-Poland (JRI-Poland at http://www.jri-poland.org/, also with a link from the JewishGen website) simply because it's the largest database. I searched for a sounds like Zembrowsky in Poland and, BINGO!, I found the 1897 Russian Census for her family under the name Zymburski in Lomza, Poland. With this same spelling, I was able to find Sara's 1904 US ship manifest...she travelled under the name Sambrowski. As exciting as this was, I was stuck again. I couldn't find any more records. This where it sat for more than 6 months.

Last week, I tried doing a Lomza town search on JRI-Poland so I could scan all of the records for that town. As I found out shortly after trying this, most birth & death records while recorded in the town of Lomza don't actually contain the word Lomza in the individual records so no luck there.

Next I decided to try a given name search for the Lomza Gubernia. I searched for records that contain the given names Sara and Abram (Sara's father per the 1897 Census). Another BINGO! In addition to the birth (and death) records for Sara and her siblings and Abram's birth record I found other BMD records under the same surname...Zejburski...no M. With the name Zejburski, I was able to more US ship manifests and a few US records. Then I found out that Zejburski became Zebofsky in the US and I found even more records. Late yesterday, I found 4 Zebofskys on Facebook. I sent each of them a message and received a response from my 1st cousin twice removed. Incredible!

That pesky M! Having that M in the name put me in a different soundex on the "sounds like" searches. The M only appears in 3 records, the 1897 Russian Census, Sara's 1904 ship manifest, and Sara's 1905 Brooklyn marriage record. I have no idea how it got there and why Sara was the only one to adopt that pronunciation (she couldn't read or write so the name on the marriage record was by sound alone). Her children, my grandfather and his brother, knew it didn't belong when they applied for their social security numbers. Just because a spelling appears on a record in the original language does not mean that was always the spelling. I'm glad I had the patience to get past that M.

Dad's Garden

2009-05-19T13:26:00.001-07:00

For as long as I can remember, my dad had a garden. I don't know if he tried to grow things when he was growing up but I can close my eyes and picture him in the back of the yard at the Massapequa (if you can't pronounce it you've probably never been to Long Island) house I grew up in. It wasn't the prettiest garden but who cares as long as the vegetables/fruits are good. He grew tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, and maybe a few other things. The family had a good laugh every year when he'd come into the house with some giant vegetable. Dad was a contractor so he used leftover building supplies to string up his vines and to try to create a wall that would keep the rabbits out.

One year, we started a second garden. I planted green beans...my favorite. The beans never made it into the house...I ate them right off the vines.

Also in the backyard we had a cherry tree, an apple tree, and a pear tree. I don't remember the cherries but I do remember that one year dad pruned the tree back to far and it died. The pears were small but wonderful...very hard. When you would take a bite, a chunk would break off...just the way I like them. Somehow the apples always stayed on the tree too long. When they fell to the ground, they would ferment and the birds eating them would get drunk. It was funny watching them fly around crazy. Unfortunately there would be one or two that had trouble avoiding the side of the house or a window.

The picture above was taken in 2004. My dad has been building a house in central Florida for about 6 years. Before the house was even framed, dad had a garden. The house is located in the National Forest so he will have a lot of critters to contend with. I'm sure he'll figure it out. One reason he loves to grow his own vegetables is because he's very thrifty with his money but I think he'd do it even if he was rich. He enjoys it too much.

Lozdzieje records from LDS

2009-05-12T16:00:00.000-07:00

I have copies of the following records from LDS microfilm #746680 for the town of Lozdzieje, Lithuania. These records are listed in the JRI-Poland databases. If you would like a copy of any of these records, let me know and I'll be happy to send it to you. If you can return the favor with a translation of the Polish, I'd appreciate it. The quality of the images varies but I think I have the best copies available.

When asking for a copy, refer to the first 3 sets of numbers/letters, i.e. 1827/4/M:

1827 4 M JABŁOŃSKA Estera Judel Chana z Michelów 746,680 have copy…need translation
1827 4 M JOWELSKI Hirszo Jankiel Lyba z Dawidowiczów 746,680 have copy…need translation
1827 25 B LEWIŃSKI Abraham Jankiel Szmujło Chana z Jankielów 746,680 have copy…need translation
1827 39 M JABŁOŃ Sora Kopel Szejna 746,680 have copy…need translation
1827 39 M BOX Jankiel Josiel Basia z Izraelowiczów 746,680 have copy…need translation
1827 44 D LEWINOWICZ Lejba Irsz Leja 746,680 have copy…need translation
1827 48 M LEWIN Nisiel Jankiel Chana z Lejbowiczów 746,680 have copy…need translation
1827 48 M SMOLNIK Elka Fajwel Dwera 746,680 have copy…need translation
1827 59 B JABŁONKO Lejba Bomcha Bejla z Kopelowiczów 746,680 have copy…need translation
1827 59 M CWYKLER Chana Dawid Rasza 746,680 have copy…need translation
1827 59 M SZYMAŃCZYK Fajbuś Szymel Zyska z Lejbowiczów 746,680 have copy…need translation
1827 63 M LEWIN Nisiel Jankiel Chana z Tanchelowiczów 746,680 have copy…need translation
1827 63 M SMOLNIK Etka Fajbuś Dworka 746,680 have copy…need translation
1827 67 M BERKSON Gołda Mejer Rocha 746,680 have copy…need translation
1827 67 M PUŃSKI Jankiel Owsiej Złatka z Berkowiczów 746,680 have copy…need translation
1828 29 D LEWINSON Zoruch Erck Gołda 746,680 have copy…need translation
1828 38 B JABŁOŃCZYK Reuza Boruch Szejna z Dawidowiczów 746,680 have copy…need translation
1830 12 B BERKSON Chana Eliasz Inda z Ajzykowiczów 746,680 have copy…need translation
1830 23 B JABŁOŃ Merka Boruch Bejla z Dawidowiczów 746,680 have copy…need translation
1831 3 D LEWIN Icko Abram Dwera 746,680 have copy…need translation
1831 13 B LEWIN Mendel Urja Touba z Szmójłowiczów 746,680 have copy…need translation
1831 24 B LEWIN Reuza Szmerko Rywa z Herkowiczów 746,680 have copy…need translation
1831 25 B LEWIN Reuza Wolf Sora Dwera z Herckowiczów 746,680 have copy…need translation
1831 56 D LEWIN Ele Abram Rywa 746,680 have copy…need translation
1833 4 B LEWINOWICZ Gitla Mortchel Estera z Josielowiczów 746,680 have copy…need translation
1833 16 D LEWINSON Dawid Michel 746,680 have copy…need translation
1833 52 B LEWINZON Szamszel Wolf Sora Dwera z Herszkowiczów 746,680 have copy…need translation
1834 20 B LEWIN Cyrła Dawid Sora z Aronowiczów 746,680 have copy…need translation
1834 66 B MARKUS Jeruchim Abram Fruma z Jeruchimowiczów 746,680 have copy…need translation
1835 24 B LEWINSON Zoruch Szepszel Irsz Sora z Mortchelowiczów 746,680 have copy…need translation
1835 27 B LEWIN Scharja Dawid Sora z Aronowiczów 746,680 have copy…need translation
1844 2 B LEWIN Basia Lejzer Sora z Judelowiczów 746,680 have copy…need translation
1844 5 B ZYNGIER Lejba Matys Josiel Gita z Matysowiczów 746,680 have copy…need translation
1844 11 D LEWIN Szmojło Lejba 746,680 have copy…need translation
1844 14 B LEWINSON Chana Cyrla Mendel Szejna Pinchesowna 746,680 have copy…need translation
1844 16 B LEWIN Owsiej Berko Pesia z Mortchelowiczów 746,680 have copy…need translation
1844 17 M LEWIN Gita Lejba Chana 746,680 have copy…need translation
1844 17 M SZYMIT Wolf Lejzer Dwera 746,680 have copy…need translation
1844 21 M LEWINOWICZ Dawid Irsz Leja z Szmojłowiczów 746,680 have copy…need translation
1844 21 M BARTŁUBOWICZ Chana Mejer Sora 746,680 have copy…need translation
1844 30 D LEWINSON Rywka Irsz Sora 746,680 have copy…need translation
1845 2 M LEWIN Itka Mortchel Dobruszka z Owsiejów 746,680 have copy…need translation
1845 2 M FRANK Lejba Chaim Merka 746,680 have copy…need translation
1845 22 B SZYSZLEW Lejba Judel Boruch Bejla z Kopelowiczów 746,680 have copy…need translation
1845 74 D JABŁOŃ Etka Chaim Łotka z Mowszów 746,680 have copy…need translation
1847 3 B JABŁOŃ Kopel Chaim Lotka z Mowszowiczów 746,680 have copy…need translation
1847 10 B LEWIN Lejzer Irsz Sora z Mortchelowiczów 746,680 have copy…need translation
1847 10 D LEWINZON Chana Cyrla Mendel Szejna 746,680 have copy…need translation
1847 14 D LEWIN Hemia 746,680 have copy…need translation
1847 18 B JABŁOŃ Kopel Dawid Reuza z Irszowiczów 746,680 have copy…need translation
1847 24 B LEWIN Boruch Berko Pesza z Calków 746,680 have copy…need translation
1847 26 B LEWIN Szmójło Uria Touba z Szmojłów 746,680 have copy…need translation
1847 28 D LEWIN Rocha Lejka Uria Touba 746,680 have copy…need translation
1847 30 B LEWINZON Chaja Gita Mendel Szejna z Pesachowiczów 746,680 have copy…need translation
1848 29 D LEWIN Gołda Mortchel Sora 746,680 have copy…need translation
1848 33 B LEWIN Gdal Zusko Gołda z Mortchelowiczów 746,680 have copy…need translation
1848 33 D LEWKUĆ Ronia Jankiel Basia 746,680 have copy…need translation
1848 39 B SZYSZKIN Sora Rocha Boruch Bejla JABŁOŃ 746,680 have copy…need translation
1848 45 D JABŁOŃ Kopel Chaim Lota 746,680 have copy…need translation
1852 6 D LEWINOWICZ Icko Dawid Sora z Zelikowiczów 746,680 have copy…need translation
1852 28 B LEWIN Chaja Mindla Scharia Fejga z Mortchelów 746,680 have copy…need translation
1852 36 D LEWIN Gdal Zusko Gołda z Lejzerów 746,680 have copy…need translation
1852 41 D LEWIN Abel Chackiel Scharia Fejga z Mortchelów 746,680 have copy…need translation
1852 44 B LEWIN Szmójło Lejba Basia z Mejerów 746,680 have copy…need translation
1852 68 D LEWIN Mejer Lejba Chana z Abramów 746,680 have copy…need translation
1853 2 M JABŁOŃSKA Fejga Mendel Bejla z Lejbów 746,680 have copy…need translation
1853 2 M MARKUS Jeruchim Abram Fruma z Jeruchimów 746,680 have copy…need translation
1853 4 M LEWIN Scharja Dawid Sora z Abramowiczów 746,680 have copy…need translation
1853 4 M SZUB Gitla Leja Mejer Fejga Jankielowna 746,680 have copy…need translation
1853 13 B LEWIN Zysko Scharia Fejga z Mortchelów 746,680 have copy…need translation
1853 16 D ZYNGIER Chaja Josiel Gitka z Motysów 746,680 have copy…need translation
1853 24 B SZYSZLEW Fejga Leja Boruch Bejla z Kopelów 746,680 have copy…need translation
1853 29 B LEWIN Chaja Rywa Jankiel Etka z Mowszowiczów 746,680 have copy…need translation
1853 31 D CWIKLER Lejba Zysk Chana z Zelmanowiczów 746,680 have copy…need translation
1853 37 B LEWIN Hirsz Lejb Berko Pesza z Całkowiczów 746,680 have copy…need translation
1854 5 B LEWIN Boruch Lejb Abram Mera Boruchowna 746,680 have copy…need translation
1854 9 B LEWINSHON Lejba Hirsz Mendel Szejna z Pinchesów 746,680 have copy…need translation
1854 12 M LEWIN Hirsz Lejba Henia z Hirszów 746,680 have copy…need translation
1854 12 M RALSKA Basia Mowszo Frejda z Fiszków 746,680 have copy…need translation
1854 22 D LEWIN Sora 746,680 have copy…need translation
1854 27 D LEWINOWICZ Hercko Lejba 746,680 have copy…need translation
1827 18 M CWIKLER Berko Lejba Henka 746,680 have copy…translated
1827 49 M CWIKLER Dwora Lejba Henia 746,680 have copy…translated
1828 25 D CWIKLER Mowsza Berek Chana 746,680 have copy…translated
1830 11 M CWIKLER Zysel Lejba Chenia z Mowszowiczów 746,680 have copy…translated
1834 36 D CWIKLER Lejba Mowsza 746,680 have copy…translated
1834 49 D CWIKLER Henia Mowszo 746,680 have copy…translated
1834 73 B CWIKLER Lejba Berko Rocha z Bendelowiczów 746,680 have copy…translated
1847 7 B CWIKLER Chanka Berko Rocha z Bendetowiczów 746,680 have copy…translated
1827 62 M JABŁOŃ Frejdka Josiel Itka 746,680 have copy…translated
1828 2 D JABŁOŃ Lejba Boruch Bejla 746,680 have copy…translated
1833 23 B JABŁOŃ Basia Boruch Bejla z Dawidowiczów 746,680 have copy…translated
1835 3 D JABŁOŃ Rauza Boruch Bejla 746,680 have copy…translated
1835 55 B JABŁOŃ Mowsza Boruch Bejla z Dawidowiczów 746,680 have copy…translated
1844 64 B JABŁOŃ Etka Chaim Lota z Mowszowiczów 746,680 have copy…translated
1845 50 B JABŁOŃ Abram Chajm Lota z Mowszów 746,680 have copy…translated
1845 78 D JABŁOŃ Abram Chaim Łota z Mowszów 746,680 have copy…translated
1835 6 M BERGSON Afroim Zusman Mejer Rocha z Lejbowiczów 746,680 have copy…translated
1844 29 M BERGZON Izrael Mejer Rocha z Lejbowiczów 746,680 have copy…translated
1844 87 B BERGZON Jochweta Zelik Frejda z Josielowiczów 746,680 have copy…translated
1845 82 D BERGZON Szołom Berek 746,680 have copy…translated
1847 69 B BERGZON Chaja Dwera Izrael Chaja Gita z Wolfowiczów 746,680 have copy…translated
1848 39 D BERGSON Chaja Dwera Izrael Chana Gita 746,680 have copy…translated
1848 51 B BERGSON Liba Zusel Frejda ZYNGIER 746,680 have copy…translated
1852 14 B BERGSOHN Szmul Zusko Frejda ZYNGIER 746,680 have copy…translated

Meeting Cousins for the First Time

2009-04-13T11:07:00.000-07:00

Earlier this month, I had the chance to meet my cousin Ella and her boyfriend Boris for the first time. They live in Israel but were in the US for their vacation and stopped to visit me for a few days before going on to Chicago to see Boris's family. I was a little nervous about the language issue and the age difference. It turns out I was worried for no reason. Their English was much better than I had expected. As for the age difference, Ella is my 3rd cousin but is 20 years younger than I am. I had warned them ahead of time that I had no idea where any kind of nightlife exists here.

Ella's great-grandmother is Sara Belinki Avrutzki, the younger sister of my great-grandmother Lena Belinki Lutzki. Until about 2 years ago, I had no idea that Sara existed, let alone that her descendants were alive and well in Israel. Sara and his daughter Riva were living in Odessa, Ukraine, when WWII began. In 1941 they were evacuated east from Odessa ahead of the Nazi invasion. Then ended up in Tashkent & Chust, Uzbekistan. Riva was only 10 years old at the time. According to Riva, life was hard but Sara was a seamstress so they were able to get a little money and food. Unfortunately, it wasn't enough. Sara died of starvation in 1942. Riva's older half-brother came to get her and took care of her for several years until Riva was cast out as a teenager to make her own way. She is a strong person and survived on her own. Riva (now Rita), her husband, and their children & grandchildren left Ukraine as part of the mid-1990s exodus from the former Soviet regions.

About 2 years ago, thanks to JewishGen Family Finder, I came into contact with Shari, my 2nd cousin once removed. She had a lot of Belinki information from her mother. With that information, we found the Page of Testimony that Rita submitted to Yad Vashem for Sara. Thanks to some help from a fellow resarcher in Israel, I came into contact with Rita and Ella. It's been very exciting and wonderful getting to know them.

Almost immediately after Ella and Boris left here, I began searching for good airfares to Israel for me to go visit and meet the rest of the family. Hopefully I will be able to make the trip this year. I feel a lot more comfortable about going now that I have met Ella and Boris. I know it will be fun to meet the rest of the family and they are already talking about all of the places I have to visit.

This year in Jerusalem...hopefully!

Irene Klein, a 1985 Eulogy

2009-03-07T09:51:00.001-08:00

Irene Klein (pictured here in 1981 with husband Harry at their 50th anniversary party), born Ida Lutsky in Brooklyn in 1911, died on January 4, 1985. The following was written by my Uncle Len, Irene's oldest son, for her January 6 funeral.

She was married 53 years ago in very uncertain times and she tried very hard to see the better times that were yet to come. She was a young wife and quickly a mother. Although not formally educated she loved to read and to learn. Her active mind turned to nutrition as her family grew, and then through her reading she became interested in Freud's psychoanalytic understanding of people. And it was people - her family and friends - that truly interested her most. She listened well when people talked, and when her relatives needed someone, she was there.

She was a singer of songs that came from the heart and everyone who heard them felt touched by here and this was especially so when she sang in Yiddish. The singing was important to her, the song was important, but most of all it was the people who mattered.

She loved her family and genuinely enjoyed her grandchildren - and they, in return, loved her and enjoyed being with her. She tried always to see the good things in life and was not one to re-live the bad. She had a good sense of humor and often saw funny things in otherwise bad events. We remember her laughter - mixed with her own - and we always will.

Harry Klein, a 1991 Eulogy

2009-03-07T09:26:00.000-08:00

My grandfather Harry Klein (pictured here in May 1989), born Aaron in NYC in 1907, known as Harvey by his grandchildren, died on October 9, 1991. The following was written by my Uncle Len, Harry's oldest son, for the October 11 funeral.

He was born in 1907 and reached the age of 84 years. He grew up with his twin brother Joe, for whom he had especially strong feeling, and had three other brothers and a baby sister as well. When he got married he raised a family of two sons and two daughters. Very much a family man, he loved getting together at gatherings and celebrations. He greatly enjoyed having ten grandchildren to play with, each of who he really loved, and they in turn were eager to be with him and loved him back.

He was a plumber by trade and a very good one at that. His membership in Local One of the Plumbers Union was something of which he was very proud. Like the good family family he was, he was a good union man as well.

He was an easy-going guy, slow to anger and quick to soothe things over. He was always fixing things for his little grandchildren which they always knew to bring to Grandpa. Cooking omelets and soups for his little waiting faces was one of his pleasures, and he never went to a family gathering without bringing his famous chopped liver. His playful personality enabled him to amuse adults and children alike and he was always ready to share a smile, make a funny face, and do a little comic dance. He liked to read the newspaper, watch television, and especially he liked falling asleep in the easy chair. His other pastimes included looking out the window and make sure that the lights were out if there was no one in the room.

We remember his playfulness and the way we laughed together...and we always will.

Those Who Save Us by Jenna Blum

2009-03-04T16:07:00.000-08:00

When I purchased this book, I expected it to be about Jews who were able to survive in Germany during the WWII with the help of a Nazi soldier. I was wrong. The story is about a German woman who did what she had to do to ensure the survival of herself and her young daughter while still trying to help the prisoners at the nearby Buchenwald camp. Even though it wasn't what I had expected, I found myself looking forward to reading more each evening.

The story switches between the present day and the war years. From reading the story of the war years, you know that at some point Anna finally told her daughter Trudy about life during the war but you don't find out what made Anna decide to open up until the last few pages. It's a wonderful surprise at the end.

In the "Acknowledgements", the author makes a passing comment that this story is historical fiction. I found it to be very believable in part due to the author's writing style and in part due to the fact that very little of the history is fictional.

Unidentified Photo Identified...finally!

2009-02-27T06:06:00.000-08:00

This copy of a photo was in my grandma Irene's box of photos when I first got them and it's been at the back of the photo album I put together with the other unidentified photos (including a naked baby on an animal skin rug). The mystery is finally over. My cousin Marty Klein sent me an e-mail yesterday after his daughter sent him this same photo and identified the woman as Marty's "Grandma Sarah". That makes this photo Abraham and Sara Klein, my great-grandparents.

Sarah Zymburska emigrated from Lomza, Poland in 1905. Within a couple of months, she met and married kosher butcher Abram Klein in New York City. They had 6 children, 5 boys and 1 girl and divorced in 1931. Sarah filed for the divorce claiming that Abraham was having an affair. For more information about Sarah, see The Elusive Sarah Klein.

It feels good to finally identify this photo but it feels even better to now have faces to go with the family stories.

Brownsville: The Jewish Years, by Sylvia Siegel Schildt

2009-02-24T12:49:00.000-08:00

This book was recommended to me by a cousin. My dad and his siblings grew up in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn so I definitely jumped on the recommendation. I had already learned a lot about their childhood from my dad and also my Uncle Len's stories. This book helped provide a more detailed picture of what life was like at that time.

The author uses an informal style to tell her story. The typos and grammatical errors are proof of that. The author and my Uncle Len appear to be about the same age and attended P.S. 175 at the same time. It would be funny if they had been classmates. I'm looking forward to bringing the book up to New York at Passover to show the family and see if my dad and Len have the same memories of Pitkin Avenue, the "Main Street" of Brownsville.

Of course the Brownsville of my dad's childhood doesn't exist anymore. I guess all things have to change. My ancestors wouldn't have worked as hard as they did if they hadn't wanted better lives, or to put it better, more opportunities, for their children. Maybe we need a little more of those simple days now.

DNA Results - Does the Number of Matches Mean Anything?

2009-02-16T08:14:00.000-08:00

I mainly do tax work now but I'm an accountant and auditor by nature so I'm always looking for patterns in data. Sometimes patterns are coincidental, other times they point towards something. I've been wondering about the results of the various DNA tests I've had done for myself and several family members.

Me - mtDNA=no matches, not a single one

Arnold Klein (my dad) - Y-DNA=3 exact at 12 markers, 1 at 25 markers, 1 at 37 markers
Arnold Klein - mtDNA=239 low resolution, 61 high resolution

Jerry Schneider - Y-DNA=39 exact at 12 markers, 1 at 25 markers, none at 37 markers

Jason Berger - Y-DNA=118 exact at 12 markers, 4 at 25 markers, none at 37 markers

Barry Lutsky - Y-DNA=133 exact at 12 markers (upgrade just ordered)

The results for Jason's Y-DNA test are both exciting and disappointing at the same time. What I've been wondering is, is it just a coincidence that a lot of DNA cousins just happen to be interested in DNA testing for genealogical research or is this really a very large Y-DNA pool with lots of male babies being born each generation? At the 12 marker level, there are matches in India, Italy (Catholic), and the Caribbean. Unfortunately, these are all distant matches and the common ancestor will probably never be found. Too bad...the stories I've heard from several people would add some spice to my family history.

Arnold's Y-DNA test yielded some exciting results. We have an exact 37 marker match with an Eli Lande. Unfortunately I can trace my Klein family back to Kovno/Kaunas, Lithuania in 1895 and Eli Lande's daughter Myrna has her dad's family traced back further but in Berdichev, Ukraine. Unfortunately Myrna passed away before we could find the connection. If I ever do find it, I will make sure to tell her husband.

The Lutsky test results surprised me. I expected a few matches but not this many. Wow! I just ordered the upgraded tests so hopefully we can whittle it down to a match with a common ancestor that lived not too long ago.

I discovered a couple of years ago that the mtDNA testing is generally a waste of time. It is a lot less precise than the Y-DNA testing. I still do find it odd that my mtDNA does not have a single match. This may just be that not as many people purchase the mtDNA tests. The number of mtDNA matches on my dad's test would be very exciting if the results were better at pinpointing when a common ancestor might have lived.

It only takes one good match to find a closely related ancestor. Many matches doesn't ensure a common ancestor will be found. I haven't figured out yet if the large number of matches is just a coincidence. Maybe a discernible pattern will eventually emerge. In the meantime I'll just keep my fingers crossed that I will hear about closer matches in the not too distant future.

David Berger

2009-02-08T13:11:00.000-08:00

I don't think I ever met David Berger, my grandma Bessie's older brother. He only lived in the US for a short while in the early 1930s before moving to Israel. He died in 1974 when I was 10 years old. Thanks to some photos my grandmother saved and a researcher in Israel, I now know a little about him. I also know from these photos that he did visit the US in 1949 but I don't think he visited again.

David, pictured center, was born David Bergzon in Lozdzieje/Lazdijai, Lithuania in 1908/1909 to Jeruchim and Dobrusza (nee Jablon). He and my grandmother Peshe/Bessie, his younger sister, were very close in age and I have many pictures of them during their teenage years participating in drama club and Zionist sporting activities. See link 1, link 2, link 3, link 4, link 5. I don't know for sure but I think the fact that David and Peshe were still in school until what appears to be a normal high school graduation age today and had time for extracuricular activities means that the family was financially comfortable. If the family was strapped for money, the teenagers would have had to drop out of school to work.

His father Jeruchim (Rubin in the US) first came to the US in 1904. After returning home for several years and a couple of babies, Jeruchim returned to the US again in 1911 with oldest child Louis (Zalman Leib). Louis was much older than David, born in 1896, and at the age of 15 might have been moved to the US because he was approaching the age for conscription into the Russian army. It appears that Jeruchim returned to Lithuania after getting Louis settled.

Lozdzieje is in southwest Lithuania and during WWI, was in a area that was constantly changing hands back and forth between the Germans and Russians. In 1915, the family, including 7 year-old David, was evacuated east to Mogilev. The family appears in Jews Evicted From Suwalki Gubernia in the Summer of 1915 published by Landsmen Press. There's probably no way to know if they actually got on the trains provided by the Russians or if they made their own travel arrangements. I do know they went to Mogilev because my cousin Jason told me that his father Jerry (Zalman?), David's younger brother was born there in 1917. He told me this before I even mentioned the evacuation.

David and Peshe traveled to the US in 1929. I don't know how long David stayed in the US. I do know from this charicature that he was in Warsaw, Poland in 1934. The notation reads "on his way to the country 1934". This is a reference to Palestine. The picture was made by Binyamin Rozenboim. As you will see later, the nose is only slightly embelished. According to a "Register of the Departed" which was prepared when he died, he arrived in Palestine on November 12, 1934 and entered the Ein Hashofet kibbutz on the same date. He lived on the kibbutz until he died almost 40 years later. Prior to arriving at the kibbutz, David had training as a carpenter. He continued this work at the kibbutz in addition to teaching Hebrew to new arrivals. Here is an undated picture of him teaching a class.

This picture of David helped my researcher in Israel determine which kibbutz he lived on. He showed it to the "old timers" as he calls them. Apparently David was well liked and respected both within and outside the kibbutz.

Some other things I know about David:

-he fought in the War of Independence in 1948.

-at some point, I don't know when, he was imprisoned for allegedly shooting a Palestinian. The family in the US arranged his release.

-he married later in life, to Yehudit (from a neighboring kibbutz).

The Genealogy Shuffle

2009-01-19T10:38:00.000-08:00

Over the past 10 years or so since I first started my research, I'm had several occasions to kick up my feet. In a couple of cases I did actually jump up from my chair at the sight of a missing link record or an e-mail from someone. In other instances, my butt would be dancing around in my chair as I typed an e-mail to a new found connection.

The first time I felt this excitement was on my very first trip to a cemetery to visit grave sites. Early on in my research, I went with my dad and 2 nieces to Old Montefiore Cemetery in Queens, NY. I had the death certificates of my gg-grandparents Solomon and Rebecca Lutsky which showed them buried there in the early 1940s. First we found Solomon and there was a picture on the headstone. Wow! I didn't expect it and this was before I got my hands on my grandmothers photos so it was the first time I was seeing his face. Next we found Rebecca's headstone. Unfortunately her picture was missing. There were 2 unexpected burials in the same section, my g-grandfather Louis Lutsky and also Rebecca's mother Rachel Kantorowitz. Louis's picture was in good condition...my grandmother certainly did not get her good looks from him but the family resemblance was obvious. Rachel's face had been broken/chipped away from her picture. Solomon and Rebecca's headstones had large bushes growing in front of them. These must have been cute little shrubs when they were first planted but now my dad had to sit on them so I could photograph the stones. I went back again the following year armed with pruning shears and trash bags to cut the bushes back to stubs. Surprise number two...we found Rebecca's picture, the enameled porcelain plate, in perfect condition on the ground in front of the stone. I kept it with me for a year until I could go back with adhesive and caulk to re-attach it to her stone.

A couple of connections that came right on top of each other almost 2 years ago have greatly advanced my research and put me in regular contact with closely related cousins that I didn't know about. Thanks to the JewishGen Family Finder (JGFF), I came into contact with my 2nd cousin once removed Shari Videlock Malkin. She hadn't touched her research in more than 2 years but she had so much information about the family of my grandma Irene's mother, Lena Belinsky. I knew Lena had 2 brothers but she committed suicide when my grandmother was a baby and I never expected to find out much about the family. I hovered excitedly over my e-mail waiting for new information. I was able to meet Shari's mother Enid last year when I was visiting my dad in Florida. While Shari and I were exchanging information, she decided to check the Pages of Testimony on the Yad Vashem website. She found a listing for a Sara Belinki Avrutzki, most likely the sister of Lena and Shari's grandfather Shlomo. A fellow genealogist in Israel made contact with the woman who submitted the PofT and it turned out we did have the right family. I now exchange letters with Sara's daughter Rita in Israel and I'm in contact with Rita's granddaughter, my 3rd cousin, Ella (also in Israel) via e-mail and Facebook.

The most recent reason to kick up my feet occurred recently. I found the 1897 Russian census listing for my g-grandmother Sara Zymburska and her family in Lomza, Poland. No one in my family can even remember where Sara is buried or when she died so this was big. Unfortunately I just hit another dead end but at least I pushed the brick wall back a few feet.

I wouldn't mind feeling the urge to kick my feet up more often but I'll take it where I can get it. Maybe it wouldn't mean as much if it happened more often.

Sounds from Silence

2009-01-19T05:46:00.000-08:00

SOUNDS FROM SILENCE
Len Klein
Memory Sketch #21
Friday, August 10, 2001
(c) LEONARD B. KLEIN

The unit that served as my communications scanner sat on the sill of the living room window facing the back yard on the third floor of 180 Chester Street. Looking at it from the outside, it appeared to be a brown wooden box, a little larger than half a shoe box, a deceptive size considering its function. With that unit I could scan the skies and select specific lines of communication. Signals, which were otherwise silent, could be detected and amplified, thus allowing me to listen to them for as long as I wished. Each day, after school, I would sit and adjust my brown box to select out of the air such exciting lines of communication as Captain Midnight, Jack Armstrong, Lorenzo Jones, Superman, and Dick Tracy. In the dark after nightfall, the little box could still find such messages as The Inner Sanctum, and the FBI in Peace and War. I listened to them all, often on the edge of my seat, and looked forward to the experience.

The little, wood-cased radio brought me reports and explanations of many real events which when I first heard about them were more than a little confusing. In front of the Stadium Movie House on Chester Street, in the evening, there was usually a boy selling papers, using some boxes as a stand. One day, while walking by, I noticed that the newspapers had only one word on the front page, in large letters, very large and very black: WAR.Back home, no matter how I tuned my radio, the lines of communication were all talking of war, and the sound of it was serious. The WAR reporting made me think that what was happening far away could come to Chester Street and tear apart our neighborhood and the people I knew, and that was troubling. At first, nothing happened, nothing much I could see. Sure there was a lot of talk about doing this and that, but nothing was getting done. After awhile, we had air raid drills in school during which we would get under our desks until the all clear sounded. That was soon changed, and all the classes had to go into the hallways and stay away from the windows and doors. In a while, general air raid drills began with lights out or blackout shades required on windows. My neighbor, Manny Fischler, became an Air Raid Warden with a World War One teppel hat, an arm band and a whistle. He marched up and down our block and blew out any visible light with his whistle. In school and everywhere we went, we were always pledging allegiance and singing the Star Spangled Banner.

Gradually people began to disappear, like the sharp dressers that hung out at Mike & Harvey's Luncheonette, and some of the bigger guys I used to see around the block. The radio said that single men were being called up, which seemed to mean that they had to go somewhere and get on a bus together so they could get to the Army. More and more, guys in military uniform could be seen everywhere. My cousin Lou Berland went into the Navy and served valiantly with the Pacific Fleet. In my building, Danny Kaplan, an older friend who was deferred due to being in college, nevertheless, enlisted in the Army following his ideological beliefs. Cousin Maury Haykin went into the Army after having completed Pharmacy School; he was put to work on the Stars and Stripes publication because of his considerable skills as a cartoonist. After a while they began to draft married men with up to two children, and my cousin Nat Berland, Lou's older brother, also went into the Army. We were getting concerned about my father's status, so he found essential work, as did cousin Irving Kramer, building Navy ships, and they gained deferment that way in case the draft reached the three children level of call up, which I believe they did. Doing the plumbing on Naval vessels required my father to work out of town at the shipyards of Norfolk,Virginia, and we all missed him very much.

From my radio I learned that Esso Petroleum offered free War Maps to anyone who would send in a penny postcard requesting them. I sent for several of them. After June 1944, an Invasion Edition became available and I got a few of those. A year ago I discovered that I still had ten War maps from that time, and when I looked at them I could still feel some of the interest and excitement that I felt as an eleven year old obsessive-compulsive, bright-eyed kid from Brooklyn.

Each day I listened to the radio to find out how our troops were progressing, following on my war maps the names of places in which they fought and those they had taken. To me, the War seemed endless. Some days, looking at my maps I could see that they hardly made any progress at all,and I was so disappointed. I wanted our troops to be overpowering in their advance so I could follow their progress on my Esso maps. My paper war movements seemed safe enough, so that I wished I was in on the war and could make our victory possible more quickly.

In Brooklyn, of course, there was no war, just the collecting of junk metal and the silver paper from cigarette packages, until you could hardly get cigarettes anymore. Eventually, it came to the rationing of many items, and ration books with stamps in them were distributed to each of us. The most concerned talk about rationing had to do with gasoline and sugar. Seemed as though there was never enough to go around.

We also had what was called Meatless Tuesday, the one day of the week that everyone was supposed to forgo meat so that there would be enough beef to feed the troops. Rumors were heard almost daily as to the presence of horse meat in the butcher shops, and by some accounts there actually was some sold. Everyone knew of someone who could get extra ration cards for a price,but most of that was bull. Yes, of course, there developed a black market in goods that were in high demand, but I never saw any of those goods.

Buzzy and I went around taking timed pictures of stationary objects on Photostat paper which we had placed in our 120 cameras. It made people crazy to see us photographing buildings like the synagogue, and also lamp posts.They thought we had regular film, while they couldn't get any at all.

Early in the war, I told my friends that one of my cousins, I couldn't say who, was in the Secret Service and had instructed me to write down as many license plate numbers of cars as possible. So, I had all my friends copying down plate numbers and giving them to me. We stopped after a while because we just got tired of doing it.

We also collected old newspapers and tied them into bundles for collection similar to what we do now for the recycling. It was all called the War Effort, and that's what we were doing about it.

Sitting by the window sill one day, my little radio started to cry, on every station it cried while trying to say things that felt unbearable to hear. Our President was dead. The President of our country since I was born, the only one I had ever known, President Roosevelt had died of a stroke. I felt terrible and could not stop myself from crying. I ran down into the street expecting to find the world turned upside down. But everyone moved along as usual. Most people hadn't heard yet. Just returned from a day's work, the men sitting at the counter in Mike & Harvey's luncheonette just sort of shrugged when I told them that the president was dead. I don't know if they believed me. Their lack of reaction, and what seemed like a 'so-what' attitude, came as an upsetting surprise, because to me it was very painful. What was going to happen to the country, after all we were still at war. It was so hard to grasp that Roosevelt was actually dead. Once, sitting on my Dad's shoulder, I had seen him; he sat in the back of an open car which was traveling along Pitkin Avenue in Brooklyn, moving East toward Stone Avenue. I wish I could remember what he looked like then, but I can't.

One Sunday morning I had just turned on the brown box when I heard great excitement in the announcer's voice. We had bombed Japan. So what; we'd been bombing Japan for months now, why was this so exciting today? It was a new kind of bombing, it was one bomb only, from one plane only, it was an Atom Bomb. We had dropped it on Japan and wiped out the entire city of Hiroshima with just that one bomb. But, what was an Atom Bomb? It had been kept very secret, until it was ready, so there was little available information on it. Then there was mention of the Manhattan Project, and it was somehow linked to the Bomb. We later found out that the chairperson of the Mathematics Department at Thomas Jefferson High School, Dr. Kramer, was working on the Manhattan Project, so everybody said. All that time, was she making the Bomb? There was much more excitement than clarity, and it was some time before we understood what had happened. It took two bombs for the Japanese to get the message; the war was over and they had lost. The days of personal killing and beating of civilians and military prisoners alike, by Japanese soldiers, had come to a fiery end. The incredible cruelties by those who postured as the world's most polite would now become exposed to everyone, to the well deserved humiliation of the Japanese. Our technology of remote devastation had triumphed over their system of personal cruelty.

P.S. 175, Brooklyn, Blake Ave between Bristol & Hopkinson

2009-01-05T05:57:00.000-08:00

http://www.bklyn-genealogy-info.com/Graduate/Address/ps175.html

The Basement

2008-12-27T11:21:00.000-08:00

THE BASEMENT
Len Klein
Memory Sketch # 54
Saturday, December 21, 2002
© LEONARD B. KLEIN

In our parent’s house at 880 Saratoga Avenue, in Brooklyn, our family lived on the second floor. The first floor was rented by a family of four, the Arrow family. The house also had a rentable basement apartment that had been rented continuously for a time, but while I was in the Air Force, it had become more difficult to rent out the basement. A young men’s club had been renting it at the time I was discharged.

My brother, Arnie, and I had long planned to take over the basement apartment once I was relieved of Service. When that time came, we put the plan into effect. When we took over the place, we never fully renovated it, but we did put down a new tile floor in the living room. In the process of preparing for the new floor, we discovered a flow of water from a leaking pipe that had been corroding one section of the basement living room floor. The floorboards near the bathroom wall were soft and fragmenting. A sheet of metal had been put over the area to keep people from falling through. Arnie and Dad worked together to repair the leak, which had probably been running water for years. I assisted them the best I could and the situation provided my Dad and brother with an opportunity to make fun of the “college boy” with his book learning who doesn’t even know how to thread pipe.

Just inside the apartment front door, to the left, there was space under the steps in which we placed a desk. It was to be my study area. The desk we had was quite old and the wooden top somewhat warped. It had once been painted and the paint was in pretty bad condition. However, it was made of real wood throughout. I no longer remember where it came from or how it got into the basement. Anyway, we had to strip and repaint it and when it was done, I had my first desk. Everything was in working order. It even had that little pull out shelf on the right side, and a file drawer too. On the desk, I had my trusty Smith-Corona portable typewriter on which I had first taught myself to touch type. I had bought it while I was in high school and had it with me during my time of service. Now it was doing college work.

On the same side of the room as was the desk, we had built a rather long bookcase using twelve-inch deep boards. I didn’t have enough books to fill it so we had plenty of room for shelf stuff, little odds and ends that we had to put somewhere, and some plain old chachkies that we liked. For a while, I had my textbooks on the shelves with each one still wrapped in their bookstore covers. So that, to look at them, one could only see book after book with the same red and white book cover and the name “Barron’s” on each one. You could never find anything except by an elaborate search, but I felt that the books were well protected. It did rather defeat the purpose of shelving them in a library. When my cousin Maury Haykin called attention to what I was doing, I felt quite embarrassed, and removed all the covers.

There was one small room in the back of the apartment that my friend, Irwin Goodman, had hoped I would turn into a photographic darkroom in which we could both work. We had dreamed about it together before I went into the Service, but when I got out, I was no longer motivated to do it. I could see that he was very disappointed, and I felt sorry that I’d let him down, but I just couldn’t see setting up a darkroom that I was not going to use in any serious way. My attention and anxieties had turned to making it in Brooklyn College, and I really couldn’t afford any diversions. Arnie and I turned the room into a bedroom instead, hoping to have girlfriends over in some alternating order. Like the darkroom, the dream was never fully met, but it was partially achieved. I painted the walls pink and the ceiling a light blue. At the time, I thought it was so cool but now, especially since I have written about Maynard and his pink sweaters, it gives me the creeps to remember the room colors.

We had a working kitchen and bathroom with a stall shower. Arnie rebuilt the shower stall and even though it was small, it was quite pretty and nice to have. The pipes in the shower seemed to carry sound down from my parents apartment, so that one time, when Lorraine and I were crammed into the stall together, we overheard my mother cursing out Lorraine for sleeping over. I had never heard my mother speak like that so it was quite a revelation, but I felt sorry for Lorraine having to hear it. It was something that was not meant for our ears and kind of violated my parents privacy. Things like that one just keeps to oneself – well, not entirely. We did share it with friends, who from their own experiences could readily understand and we could all laugh about it.- the quaint older generation and all that.

The kitchen even had room for a table and chairs against the wall. The regular dining area, however, contained a junk pile that we never cleared out, and never saw any reason to keep a light on there. It was a really dark space and had no easily recognizable shapes, so it frightened anybody who passed by on the way to the kitchen. I remember that more than one girl did an involuntary cringe as she passed the sinister darkness.

We also had a full size metal closet that we had acquired from Uncle Israel during one of his office clean-outs. The closet served as our pantry and we filled it with cans of Chef Boyardee products. The stove in the kitchen was stuffed with empty coca-cola bottles awaiting a trip to the store for the deposit money. Obviously, we did not do much cooking downstairs, at least not until Lorraine began to come down. Then she insisted that we clean up the kitchen area so she could cook stuff. She made the most wonderful bacon, cooked western style, constantly turning the strips and draining off the fat. They were served up soft and delicious on warm bialys clad with melted mozzarella cheese. We don’t eat that way anymore, but even the memory is delicious. When my Mom made bacon, she simply burnt the shit out of each strip so that when you bit into it, it just crumbled. Of course, we ate it anyway.

The walls of the kitchen area were painted in a style that almost defies description. Whenever we painted anywhere, in the living room, the shelves there, the bedroom, I took all the remaining paint in the bottoms of the cans and shmeared it on the kitchen wall. There were large irregular patches of unharmonious colors looking like they were just plopped onto the wall, which of course they were. I called my effort, the Rorschach style of wall painting. It was interesting to look at because while we were having our coffee with bacon-cheese bialys, we could see in the wall all our mishagas come to life. Most people have mishagas that’s off the wall, but we were different.

In the short hallway before reaching the door to the apartment, we set up red and green signal lights to indicate whether it was safe to come in. We were dreaming of all sorts of sexual encounters that were in our future, just waiting for us to make them happen in our basement boudoir. Oh yes, the short hallway, between the outside front door and the door to the apartment, we painted flat black. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but scared the hell out of most people who came through it.

Since I studied in the living room and that’s where we had the TV, I had to go into the television cabinet and interrupt the audio lines running to the speaker. I attached a long audio wire that enabled Arn to watch the soundless set while wearing headsets. Of course, it was funny to hear him laugh into the silence while he was watching and I was reading.

While trying to studying at my desk one afternoon, the personal daemons that seem always to object to my intentional activities were in considerable agitation and I kept reading the same lines over and over again, getting nowhere. I tried reading aloud and that helped a little; I tried pacing the floor while reading my text, and that helped even more. While pacing in front of the bookcase I suddenly became aware of my books, only they appeared differently in my mind. Always before books had been associated with my mother, but just then they appeared to connect me to my father. Just as my father, a plumber, had his tools, so I, a plumber of the mind, had mine, only they were books. My books were my tools and I was like my father, a worker making people’s lives better. I began to cry, a joyful cry that didn’t want to stop; it was cleansing my soul and felt light and free. Connection made me free, not distancing or separation, but connection to my father. So simple it seemed yet so powerful in its effect on me that I was amazed. After the crying subsided, I studied easily and absorbed everything. For a week afterward I heard everything spoken in class with a clarity that I had not had before, and read my assignments smoothly. The usually uphill struggle to learn became an easy downhill slide. I was light and sharp, and I loved it. A week, it lasted for about a week, then it started to disappear and I was back to my usual ways, but with something retained from the experience. It was as if I had gained a taste of what I could be like if some of the inner fears and conflicts could be resolved.

We bought a thirty-inch speaker and Arnie built a speaker box out of three-quarter inch plywood to house it. It was huge. We painted that flat black too. Arnie hooked it up to his Heath kit audio equipment, which he had built himself, and we really could get some loud sounds out of that set up. Once we turned it up to see what it could do, and we drove our neighbors clear out of the house. We resolved not to do that ever again.

In the living room, we had an old couch that may have been my parent’s before we acquired it. We used it to watch the television set. The couch had a wooden frame looping around the back of it, so that whenever anyone put his or her head back it hit the wood and that didn’t feel good.

We were able to put an air conditioner in the living room and a small casement air conditioner in the back bedroom. These made the summers much more livable, and it was more pleasant for people to visit. Although it was somewhat dark in our basement apartment, we did have a lot of space.

There was one day during a deep snow of winter that we heard a knock at our door that surprised us. Opening the door, we were confronted with the Abominable Snow Man. It was covered with snow, wearing a hood from an Army fatigue jacket beneath his long Army raincoat, and hazardous weather goggles with the rest of the face wrapped in muffler. It’s khaki pants were tucked into huge boots and there were large gloves as well. Although at first we didn’t recognize him, but his voice gave him away even coming through his disguise – it was my cousin Dan. He had just completed the two-mile walk from his house to ours through the snow blizzard.

Passover

2008-12-27T11:09:00.000-08:00

PASSOVER
Len Klein
Memory Sketch # 37
Thursday, March 28, 2002
© LEONARD B. KLEIN

It’s funny that when I think back over the Passovers of my past, the many Seders I have attended, I have clear memories of only a few of them. There was, as I have written about before, the Seder at which my Great Grandmother (Rifka) lay in the bedroom dying. Another one that comes to mind now took place many years later on Chester Street. Perhaps I am remembering more than one Seder there and what I recall is a composite, but in any event, it is a memory of the Seder night.

The middle room of our apartment, normally a living room, but for us a bedroom for my brother Arnie and my sister Linda, was completely cleared. The beds were dismantled and placed in my parent’s bedroom. I guess the bureau remained in the room. There was a very long table made of boards and wooden horses; it ran almost the whole length of the wall opposite the kitchen. With no one in the room the table looked incredibly huge. The glare of the overhead lights in the mostly empty room gave it a very strange look. Where we got all the chairs for everyone to sit on, I’m not sure. I think some people brought their own chairs with them, folding chairs from card table sets or just supplementary metal ones. We had four kitchen chairs and another folding chair that I used to sit on when I listened to my little radio that sat on the windowsill of the only window in the room.

In the afternoon before the Seder began, all the holiday-dressed Jewish boys on the block used to gather outside to play our favorite Passover game of rolling hazel nuts. We would roll hazel nuts toward the building wall while standing at the curb. We each rolled three times and the one who placed a nut closest to the building won all the nuts. I was usually good at the game and won quite a few nuts – see, even then I was gathering nuts. When we wanted to eat a few of the hard-shelled nuts, the technique we used was to place the nut in the center of a handkerchief and swing it hard into the curb thus cracking the shell. Of course, in short order we all had holes in the center of our hankies. Inevitably, there came the time when we were called to attend the Seder, and it was always painful to leave the game.

Upstairs the family was gathering, and everyone was dressed up for the holiday. Who do I remember being there? Uncle Jack (three-finger Jack) and Aunt Bea, Uncle Israel and Aunt Lilly, Uncle Irving and Aunt Sherry, and a whole bunch of us kids. There were my cousins Lila and her younger sister Figgie, and my brother Arnie and sister Linda, and me. It seemed like a large group at the time.

The ceremony itself was the tough part to sit through and almost everyone pleaded with Uncle Israel to cut it short … cut it short … make it shorter still. But, there were some who remembered how it used to go when they were at their father’s Seder and they kept asking where this verse was or that dish, or that the ceremonial sequence was out of phase. For the most part, the requests were for shortening it. ‘Make it short,’ reminds me of a quip from a nineteenth century poet who wrote: “Make it short, on Judgment Day it will come only to a fart.”
No matter short or long, I had to take my turn saying the four questions, and in those days, I recited them in Hebrew, in Yiddish, and in English for each line as I spoke them. This made the asking of the questions seem endless, but we did get through it.

Uncle Israel, who led the Seder, always sat on a pillow placed on the chair he used. Was it just for his comfort or did it have some symbolic Judaic meaning? I never figured it out. Israel had a great voice for speaking and when he read the Haggadah the Hebrew words just seemed to vibrate in the air, vibrate full of meaning and mystery, words that were addressed to God.
We knew that Passover was the holiday commemorating the Exodus from ancient Egypt. The Jewish slaves that had been building one of the pyramids were released by Pharaoh after God had sent down several plagues as Moses had warned, and finally He slew the first born of the enemies of Israel. It’s very righteous stuff and bloody too. I had my doubts as to whether the story was accurate but I did believe there had been an exodus and that it had been led by Moses. The rest of it seemed to be just like many other myths of the culture hero. Of course, even myths are made of something, so who knows for sure.

The women brought the plates of food to the table and carried away the used ones. The men just sat and discussed. Uncle Israel told stories and asked questions as befits a patriarch. I found myself wondering about the future, when I would bring a woman to the Seder and she would in turn carry the plates of food back and forth to and from the table. Would I then be a part of the history of the Jewish People in a celebration unbroken in its observance since the Exodus? Pretty heavy stuff, but also heart warming in the way of belonging to family and people and culture. Did I have to believe to belong, I wondered. Or did one belong whether one believed or not? The beliefs of the Jewish people are one powerful aspect of being Jewish, but for me my family and my upbringing were my path to being Jewish, and it was more than enough to make it so. Years later I would read Freud saying that he had no particular use for religion in his life, nevertheless he was a Jew, a cultural Jew which he would always be, and so it is with me.

During the Seder, throughout the ceremony and as we ate, we kids all watched the silver cup in the center of the table to see if Elijah (who we called Elianohoo) had come in and taken his entitled drink. When the part came in which the front door was opened, we all sat wide-eyed expecting the air itself to absorb the wine, to quench a ghostly thirst, and satisfy Elijah. Of course, some of us swore that we saw the wine level go down in the cup, which meant that Elijah had had his drink, but others were dubious. Even the adults took part in the mystery.

The gefilte fish served was a treat because we didn’t have any of it during the rest of the year. Chicken soup was, of course, commonplace every Friday night with and without matzo balls. Chicken was the Friday night meal for as long as I can remember. It was mostly boiled chicken until the advent of the pressure cooker, which really destroyed the chicken so that the meat just dropped off the bone in an act of surrender so as to avoid further cooking. But, Chicken was always a good dish to me, no matter how it was prepared. Of course, fried chicken was much tastier and had delicious breading to go along with it, but on Passover, there was no breading allowed. Nevertheless, all chicken was good eating to me. I was only moderately fond of boiled potatoes but they became something special on Passover with the addition of the salt water, so I enjoyed them too.

Of all the holidays, Passover was the best, and it was even better in the earlier days when the little Pesach Haggadahs were only printed in Hebrew. Then I could imagine the most powerful and poetic things being said to God, being sung to God, being prayed to our very own Almighty. But, when they began to print the English translation opposite the Hebrew, I was quite dismayed to see that we were speaking the very same words that everyone and anyone said to their Gods, and it all sounded very trite and phony. I can appreciate how some resented the change from the Latin Mass to the English; it destroys the mystery, shrivels the fantasy, and reduces the belief. That’s what I think anyway.

Stories

2008-12-27T10:55:00.000-08:00

STORIES
Len Klein
Memory Sketch # 34
Thursday, February 14, 2002
© LEONARD B. KLEIN

The first storyteller in my life was my mother. True, it was not so much telling stories as reading them to me. I remember how expressively she read, and how nice it was listening to her. While I can remember the feeling of the experience, I can’t remember any of the stories at all. I can picture a book in her hand, open to where she was reading, but I can’t make out what book it was. I do recall that Mom used to say, “Once you can read, if you have a book you are never alone.” I had mixed feelings about what she said; after all a book is only a book and not a person. No book could ever replace my Mom. And yet, what she taught me came to be true since the book was an extension of Mom and when I was reading it I always felt close to her.

The second storyteller in my memory was Uncle Irving Luth, my mother’s brother. When he came over for a visit, he would tell us stories, not from a book but out of his own mind. They were exciting stories and we couldn’t bear to be taken away from them whenever that became necessary. It was from Uncle Irving that I learned to tell stories and to make them interesting so that I could hold an audience listening to them.

On Bristol Street my friends and I would sit on the steps leading down to the basement, and I would tell them stories. In a way it amazed me that I could do that and that they would want to listen to me, even plead with me to tell a story. Those adventure tales were stories I just made up as I told them, sometimes getting myself into a story situation that I didn’t know how to get out of – but I usually found a way.

After Bristol Street, I don’t remember telling stories until I began to write compositions for English classes in Junior High School and later on in High School. Then I used my skills to good effect, creating stories that were quite unique as far as the rest of the class went. The writing of them was difficult for me and they took a long time to develop in my mind, but when the story came it was usually interesting, not only to my teachers but also to me as I wrote it. The main drawback, since they were written and not told, was my spelling and grammar and that detracted very much from my papers. It was a source of continual frustration to me.

Somehow, when I first got to college I developed the notion that I could not write at all. It was a combination of the effects of atrocious spelling and equally good grammar. I hated essay exams, take-home papers and book reports.

The line of story telling continued with my little sister, Rochelle, and then later on when nieces and nephews became old enough to listen, I was able to story tell with them. Mostly I recall two main themes that I told in many variations: “The Jungle Books”, especially the stories about Mowgli and his adventures, and stories based on the novel “Dune.” There were others, which I just made up as I related them. In every instance, the telling of stories to little faces caught up in every phrase was, and still is, a wonderful experience.

In the Service, when I was sent to Laughlin AFB in Texas, I met a Californian by the name of Steinberg. He was a very compulsive guy, the kind who takes a mile to go from one lane to another when driving. His tires had 70,000 miles on them when I knew him. Steinberg was a radioman who worked in a group further down the flight line, and he’d been at the base for a year before I arrived there. He was a very friendly fellow and knew several local people in the town of Del Rio. What really caught my attention was that whatever Steinberg read, following its completion he would write a report on it. He had a whole pile of book reports that he had hand written in his very precise handwriting. He said it was part of his preparation for returning to college. He didn’t want to get rusty and did want to be ready for his last year to complete his BA. I couldn’t get over the fact that he was doing reports without having to do them as a requirement of anything. For a while, I considered trying to write similar reports myself, but I just couldn’t muster enough intention. However, taking a cue from him, I began to write in a journal my thoughts on anything I thought about including readings. This prompted me to read whatever I could on writing or how to become a writer. I was especially taken with the loose style recommended by D.H. Lawrence as a way of loosening up ones thinking on paper. Therefore, I wrote some stream of consciousness stuff that did help relax my style. But, during this time I did not write any stories or memories, just wrote about current thoughts and activities. Nevertheless, I did feel that I was getting myself ready to return to college just as Steinberg had done.

At the point that I re-entered College I had to be very careful about my written work. I managed a few good essays and some science papers in my Psychology courses that were acceptable writing, but I did not attempt anything more than what was required of me. My grammar and spelling deficits still condemned me to think of myself as a non-writer and so it remained until the advent of the computer and the wonderful spell-checking program. I read about computers and programs that checked spelling and grammar, and I hungered for one. I dreamt often of buying a Kaypro computer, which was one of those all-in-one-box, transportable units. Many writers, at that time, had expressed a preference for the Kaypro, but it was too expensive for me, and the more I thought about it, the more I began to have serious doubts about the seven-inch screen it had. Instead, I purchased the Commodore 128 with a thirteen-inch monitor, and with that purchase, the whole world changed, not all at once, but steadily everything changed for me. The computer and the software had to be learned, painstakingly learned, and then, new worlds opened up - and I began to tell stories again, stories written to commemorate anniversaries, birthdays, graduations and other calendar events. The most elaborate thing I wrote was a piece that related the experiences of the cousins club, written after visiting Atlanta, in 1999. It was entitled, The Markings, and my cousins club memories were combined with one of the earliest poems in English literature, Beowulf. This eventually led to my writing a series of Memory Sketches, putting into words the events of my life as I remembered them.

In 2001, I started a small novel based on the Beowulf story, but uniquely presented from the view point of Grendel (drawn as the monster in Beowulf). I combined my story of Grendel’s descendents with my own life experiences in the guise of a main character, Ben Human.

Now when I write, I tend to read over every draft many times, each time editing the copy as I go over it. The newly edited copy is reprinted and the reading process begins again. Very often, while I am reading a draft and as it begins to shape up, I have the strong feeling that I would like to have my mother read it, and I miss not being able to do that.

When I was thirteen, towards the end of my preparation for my Bar Mitzvah, the Rabbi wrote a speech for me to read at the ceremony. I thought it was formulaic, distant, and boring, and Mom agreed. She tore it up and wrote her own speech for me. I was amazed at how good it was, emotionally strong and relevant. Somehow, I had always believed that my Mom could write well, but there was the proof. When I recited the speech, it was as if I was in a trance. It seemed to just roll out of me; all I had to do was move my mouth and the sounds just came out. Even so, I could still appreciate, as I delivered it, how effective it was and how intently I was being listened to.

Animal Tales

2008-12-27T10:24:00.000-08:00

ANIMAL TALES
Len Klein
Memory Sketch # 27
Friday, November 09, 2001
© LEONARD B. KLEIN

It was the Fall and I was living back home in Brownsville, Brooklyn, and going to Lew Wallace Jr. High School 66, while Lorraine, who lived permanently in Coney Island on twenty-ninth street, was attending her local Jr. High. Unlike the Summer, when I was staying in a bungalow on twenty-eighth street, I now had to travel for about one hour to get from my house to hers.

This was the first Lorraine, Lorraine Berliner, who was my girlfriend when we were both thirteen and fourteen. On this particular day, I was walking along twenty-ninth street in Coney Island going to Lorraine's house. I was just looking forward to getting there and focused on the pleasure of seeing her, when through an open yard gate, right near where I was walking, a cat came tearing out, turning past me running full speed down the street. I barely had time to turn my head, when, following the cat came what I perceived as a giant German Shepard hot in pursuit. But, how could I besure, as the growling dog came at me, that I was not the object of his attention. The whole thing was over in a split second, but my heart kept beating at an accelerated rate for quite a while longer. Lorraine must have thought I was really excited about seeing her.

One nice day, my cousin Dan and I were spending the afternoon together and we were out walking. We must have been about ten years old, and as we walked along, we decided, because we had come upon some line rope, to tie ourselves together. So, we each tied a loop around our waist and walked along in this manner with the rope between us. We were in Dan's neighborhood but on streets that were unfamiliar. There seemed to be barn like structures on that street, with chickens and such inside. We stopped to look inside one of the open structures and as we entered, we saw, in the dark of the far end of the barn, a growling guard dog get up and start after us. We turned and ran out as fast as we could, running along the street. The dog, a black beast from hell, came tearing out of the barn door, gaining on us. We were both scared out of our wits. As I was running down the street, the rope suddenly tugged at me. Dan was no longer running along the sidewalk, but had started to cross the street. I had no choice but to follow him, and by doing so, I followed him into safety. Once we left the sidewalk, the dog stopped pursuing us, although he kept up a growling, sound attack, which was really frightening. We were hyperventilating, scared, relieved, and disbelieving, all at once, even as we realized that the dog had been well trained not to cross the street. We proceeded to walk away, not wanting to provoke the beast further by running, and we were very happy to turn the corner. That was hell of a nightmarish experience that has never faded from my memory. I keep thinking about what would have happened if we had kept running along the same side of the street that the dog was on. We would been dog meat, and I don't mean puppy chow. Today we would easily identify the dog as the kind that kills kids, gets lots of publicity, and then very little gets done about them.

At 880 Saratoga Avenue we had a Parakeet named Mr. Green. When out of the cage, the bird liked to stand on the head of my little sister, Rochelle, and to play kissing games with my sister Linda, which she had taught Mr. Green to do. With Arnie, it would reach into his mouth and pick the food from the inside of his teeth. Arnie was also trying to teach it to come to his finger when the bird was flying around the house, but I don't recall him being very successful at that. Mr. Green was with us for a long time and we allenjoyed him and his antics. If I remember correctly, it was Arnie who cleaned his cage, while everyone else just played with him.

Also at Saratoga Avenue we got the first family dog, or maybe it was the second. It was a little black puppy that Rochelle named, 'Baby.' The care and feeding of Baby fell to my mother, who had insisted that it not happen that way, but... She did get some help from Arnie, and, of course, we all played with it. Arnie would take the dog in his car, in the late evening, to various places where the dog could run free. One such place was Idlewild Airport, in Queens. Remember Idlewild? On the airport grounds the dog would run around the fountain pools, and so would we. Baby lived a long time, and after the house on Saratoga Avenue was sold, my parents tried to take the dog with them into their new apartment, in Rochdale, but it was not allowed. So, they took Baby back to Saratoga Avenue where the new owners of the house were willing to have him. We knew it was the best possible solution, but it saddened us all.

Of course, I already related the story of the cat house in "The Lot." They were a family group of cats and kittens, that lived and played in the lotnext door on Chester Street. There were times when I played with them everyday despite a sickening allergic reaction to cat fur that hit me everytime: my eyes would redden and itch, and to my great frustration, my nose would just keep dripping, often accompanied by repeated sneezing and a loss of concentration and memory.

Looking back, it seems just plain stupid that I would subject myself, time and time again, to such torture and sickness that followed my play. But, itis true that at that time I didn't realize just how much my overall health was affected by the cats. Most of the time I just thought something was wrong with me. I guess I was right, but it was something I could have changed.

When I was about eight or nine years old the family went to the country for the summer. It was in upstate New York, probably not too far from the Catskills. We stayed at a farm which belonged to the Glogger family, and which we simply referred to as Glogger's. Like many others, we had a room to sleep in and the use of the communal kitchen area in which to cook and eat. There was a pool near the house, and the daytime was mostly spent sitting around or dunking in the pool. One day a rather large snake was discovered in one of the rooms and a large man, interestingly named Mr. Sampson, who was staying at the farm house, got the snake out of the room and laid it across the road so that a vehicle could run over it and kill it. A quite typical human reaction to being scared by anything. However, to everyone's dismay, none of the vehicles that came by would ride over it. Finally, all the frustrated people had to relent and let the snake go, and it slithered off into the field.

Another time I was sitting on the grass at Gloggers's with several boys and girls watching a local stray dog gnaw on a bone. When the dog was distracted, I showed off my bravado and kicked the bone away. The little dog came at me and grabbed my leg giving me several bites. I was scared shitless. Then I realized that he had just pressed my leg, not breaking the skin at all, but punishing me for mistreating his bone. I was amazed at his skill in dealing with me, and I learned the lesson he taught; if its not your bone, don't mess with it.

The Warehouse

2008-12-26T10:27:00.001-08:00

THE WAREHOUSE
Len Klein
Memory Sketch #20
Thursday, July 26, 2001
© LEONARD B. KLEIN

Between the apartment houses on the block, was a wooden barn-like structure. From a kid’s point of view, it was quite large. It had a front door facing the street, which was always locked. On one side, fenced in, was a drive-in area where trucks could pull up next to large sliding doors. My memory says it was on Bristol Street, in the middle of the block on which we lived, but it may have been around the corner on Chester Street. Map

We kids found several openings in the structure, which we helped enlarge, and through which we gained entrance into a half dark world of slits of daylight from between the wall boards, and the light of a few small windows. It was like a huge gym in there, with plenty of beams and struts to climb on, and lots of soft bales of remnant cloths to jump onto. After school, there were kids from all over the block climbing, scaling, jumping, and just sitting fearlessly on the highest beams.

We had been playing in there very often and never saw anyone else come in except the kids, so we got to feel pretty comfortable and safe being inside. One day, my mother insisted that I take my little brother with me when I went out to play, so I took Arnie into the warehouse. He was too small to do any high climbing, but he managed to climb up one of the bales that we had knocked over. I kept an eye on him as I clambered above on the rafters with the other big kids. He looked so small down there, alone on the ground level.

Suddenly, there was a peculiar, cascading silence, followed by the staccato of the word, passing like a wind touching every kid, whether up high or low. The Man! The Man is coming! The front door was open and in the doorway, with the daylight at his back, stood the Man. The kids ran every which way as they scrambled for the openings which would allow them to escape. Hearts were beating in high gear all over the place and the sounds of shrieks and movement filled the warehouse. The Man, having entered the place, was roaring something really scary. The dim lit space was alive with sound. I turned to get to an escape opening, when I realized that my brother was down there, on the ground. He had just slid off a bale when the man grabbed him by his arm. Terrified, he tried to pull away, but could not do it, and I felt so bad for having taken him into the warehouse. There was nothing he could do but cry, so his wailing was added to the warehouse sounds. I realized that with Arnie caught, I was caught too because I couldn’t leave him. I climbed down to where the man stood holding onto him, and said, “He’s my brother,” as some kind of explanation for our being there. The Man roared something that sounded like we shouldn’t be there. I didn’t know for sure what he had said and what was going to happen. I felt like crying myself, but I held it back. After all, I was the big brother. Everyone was gone now, fled the scene successfully, while my brother and I were prisoners of the Man. He looked down upon us, one already crying and the other about to. “I don’t want you kids playing in here,” he said in more normal tones, “You could get hurt, and besides this is a place of business and not for kids.” I had never thought of the warehouse as a place of business. It was a place of soft bales of rags for running and jumping around and a cushion to land on when we leaped from the rafters. What business could there be in rags? Evidently, he could see in my face my struggle to understand the concept of business when it came to rags. He said, “I know the remnants just look like rags to you, but we deal in them. We sell those bales to people who need rags for their own businesses.” As he spoke, he was leading us out of the warehouse. At the door he said, “Go on home. I don’t want to catch you here again.” Then he said, “It’s good thing for brothers to stick together, but not in here.”

With that we left the warehouse for the last time, and the trembling that had started with the man’s appearance, gradually gave up it’s hold on us. I was thinking that we had a very narrow escape. We could have been sent to jail or something. We got away lucky. Then, as we walked home, we began to wonder whether Mom would know about what had happened. When we got home, we watched Mom carefully for signs of knowing, but she seemed quite usual in what she was doing. “We’ll eat as soon as Daddy gets home,” she said, so we played quietly waiting for him. “Do you think Daddy knows?” Arnie whispered to me. “Maybe he knows the man and he told all about us.” Arnie said. I thought it was possible, because Dad knew many men in the neighborhood that we didn’t know about. This new threat began to make us tremble again, and the waiting for him seemed so very long, endlessly long.

At last, Dad came in, his clothes having that interesting work-smell that in my mind had become the scent of the plumber. In each shirt pocket, sticking out so we could see it, was a Hershey chocolate bar. We ran to him, and with a hug we grabbed the candy bars. “Don’t eat them until after supper,” he said, as he stripped off his work shirts, there usually being more than one. Sometimes he wore three shirts to work. His shirts off, at the kitchen sink he began to wash up using Grease Solvent cleanser which was like soapy sand in a yellow can. He kept it on the fire escape just outside the kitchen window. The Solvent was vigorously rubbed on to grind the black from his hands. We watched him do everything. When he was done, his hands still were discolored, but they were as clean as they were going to get. Dinner was on the kitchen table and we all sat down to eat; Linda was in her high chair, all round-faced with curly blond hair, looking at each of us. She had already been fed, but Mom gave her something to chew on while we ate. That high chair was originally mine, then Arnie used it, and now it was Linda’s. I don’t think we got it new to begin with, so we didn’t know how much of a history it really had. It was a brown wooden chair that was convertible; it had hinges in the middle of its front legs. The bottom of the chair, the legs and the wooden shelf that was close to the floor, could be rearranged so that the shelf came up to the front of the baby seat and became a play table. To do that you first had to remove the eating tray. It was neat the way it folded one way and then another, but after the novelty had worn off we seldom used that feature. It was just too much trouble.

After dinner, while Mom was doing the dishes – she usually sang while she did them and filled the kitchen, already warm from the cooking, with melodic warm sounds as well – Dad, sitting at the table in his undershirt, lit up a Camels cigarette. In those days, both Mom and Dad smoked, and Dad was always collecting the coupons that came with each pack of Camels. There was a booklet he had that showed all the different kinds of appliances one could get by accumulating a large number of coupons. As he sat back on the kitchen chair, he looked at us and smiled. “Don’t you boys go back to the warehouse. No more.” We said ok, and that was that.

Scarlet Fever

2008-12-26T10:13:00.000-08:00

SCARLET FEVER
Len Klein
Memory Sketch #18
Friday, July 13, 2001
© LEONARD B. KLEIN

During my last year in Public School One-Seventy-Five I had to leave home, all by myself, and go forth to live with another family, not my own. When put this way, it sounds more dramatic than it actually was, and yet it was dramatic in its own way. I went to live with Uncle Jack and Aunt Beatty in East New York, about a mile or so from my house. It was only for two weeks, or perhaps ten days. The reason for my stay away from home had to do with my brother and sister; both Arnie and Linda had contracted Scarlet Fever. Our family physician, Dr. Sol, recommended that I not stay at home until they had recovered from the fever. So, off I went.

While I felt awful at having to leave home, there were some very agreeable positive aspects to the experience. First of all, I was then much closer to my cousin Dan’s house on Williams Street, so it was much easier for us to get together. Secondly, I was off from school for the whole time, and I was very much the kind of kid who really appreciated any opportunity to miss school. It felt great to be so free, and not have to go.

Aunt Beatty and Uncle Jack had no children of their own for reasons that are not clear to me. They both seemed to want children, and indeed, a few years later they served as foster parents to a girl whose name I have forgotten. It was during the time they had a German Shepard named ‘Lucky.’ The dog really was lucky because they loved him very much and were very good to him.

They grew quite attached to the girl they cared for, and she to them. I remember that she was more fearless than I when it came to playing with Lucky. When they were both pulling on a rope, Lucky would growl as he shook his head. That always made me hesitant in playing with him, but not her. Her thin, little, body frame pulled back on the rope despite Lucky’s growling sounds. It was embarrassing that a girl could play more bravely with the dog than could I.

When it came time to give her up it was very difficult for Jack and Bea. I think it wasn’t too long afterward that they enlisted Lucky in the Armed Services. A call had gone out for trainable dogs to be part of our Military Forces in the Second World War, and Jack and Bea responded by volunteering Lucky. Jack felt very proud and patriotic that his “son” Lucky was serving his country; nevertheless, they both cried a lot when he was gone.

When I was staying with them, both of them worked during the weekdays, and I was left alone. To be realistic, I have to say that I had nothing much to do during school hours and I was actually quite bored.

I slept in the living room on a pull-out, convertible couch. It was my first experience with the convertible bed, and I found it was pretty comfortable for sleeping, but what really intrigued me was that when the bed was pulled out, beneath the arms of the couch, a pocket became available on each side, which was completely concealed when the bed became a couch again. It was in those pockets that I stored my most secret papers, the ones that only Danny and I could see. As I remember, there were drawings of naked girls, which weren’t really such good drawings but all the essentials were there. That was really top secret stuff, in fact, “eyes only” as they used to say, whatever that meant. No one would examine a document with their nose, so it seemed funny to specify “eyes only.” Anyway, there were drawings of muscle men, some tic-tac-toe games, and a secret code that Danny and I were working on.

When I returned home, the secret papers were left behind in those concealed pockets; I had forgotten to take them. Many times, I wondered about how they may have been discovered, and by whom. What would have been the reaction to them? But, no one ever mentioned them to me, so it remained a mystery.

One Saturday morning when Uncle Jack and I were alone, he made breakfast for us, and I was really astounded. I had never before seen a man prepare breakfast at home, so just on that basis it seemed quite strange. Furthermore, he made salami and eggs, which was a combination that I never before had as a breakfast. To have meat in the morning was nothing short of revolutionary, and salami was one of those treat-meats, not regular meats like chicken, steak, and lamb chops. As I watched him, I thought that Uncle Jack was really quite bold to just go ahead and disregard all the rules of permissible breakfast foods, and he did it without any hesitation at all. He simply did it because he wanted to. It was the very first time I realized that breakfast menus were not written in stone, nor in fact were any other menus, or schedules of eating or how frequently one should eat. It was positively amazing how much freedom one actually had.

While the ethical philosophy deliberations went on in my head, at the table we really enjoyed ourselves eating the salami and eggs, and I believe Uncle Jack got quite a kick out of my amazement at his bold breakfast behavior.

I noticed that Uncle Jack always called me Lenny Boy, as though it was one name, and for that matter so did Dr. Sol. But, Dr. Sol also called my father, Harry Boy, so I don’t quite know what was going on there. Sol never called my mother, Irene Girl. He would use an alternative that he applied instead, he would say, “Good girl, Irene,” or “Good boy, Harry.” Maybe Sol believed, as some did, that physicians are traditional father figures for us all, perhaps even appointed by God to that position. It made me wonder what he had for breakfast.

I was at the very beginning of my interest in muscular development and exercising routines. Uncle Jack’s interest was in seeing me flex my arms to show off my biceps. He found it very humorous and had difficulty controlling his laughter, which he then had to explain away when he looked at me. There is a difference between the enjoyment of a child imitating an adult, and the demeaning laughter at the child for appearing foolish. With Uncle Jack it was a mixture of both, and once I caught on, as much as I loved him, I refused his requests to show my muscles. Although he proclaimed his unalterable serious interest in my progress, it was too late for that; I just no longer trusted him.

When I finally got home, it felt really good to be back. I couldn’t wait to tell Mom what Uncle Jack had prepared for breakfast. Would it shock her as it did me? Not at all, she just smiled in appreciation of my astonishment. That’s all there was to it. I guess to her it was not so unusual as it was to me. What else, I wondered, did my parents know, and accept as ordinary, which if I learned about would blow my mind. The door was opened to all kinds of hitherto unspoken information, but thus far, I could only perceive the new experience of ‘breakfast.’

It seemed as though I had been away for a long time, and I didn’t fully realize how much I missed everyone until I was back home again looking into their faces. As far as being away from home, the way some kids go for a week or more, that was it for me: no sleep away camps, no long trips, no out of town visits.

The Lot

2008-12-26T10:09:00.000-08:00

THE LOT
Len Klein
Memory Sketch #17
Friday, June 29, 2001
© LEONARD B. KLEIN

Between 180 Chester Street, where I lived, and the corner building, in which Irwin and Leo Goodman lived, was an empty lot. To us kids it was a fascinating and mysterious section of ground that fairly pleaded with us to enter upon it and scrounge the area. The lot always seemed to hold great promise for unusual discovery: perhaps hidden beneath the tangle of plant life, just under the ground, were Indian arrowheads, or musket balls, or something prehistoric even. What we actually found were some old keys, a marble or two, and some spent rifle shell casings. Oh yes, I found several Chinese coins with a square hole in the center of each one. The word was that the Chinese carried those coins on a length of reed, or perhaps a string, which they kept in a pouch hidden beneath a shirt or tied to the rope belt they wore. But why were the holes square? I never found out.

The lot contained some regular residents that we used to play with. They were a family group of cats and kittens, cute and playful, and full of life. We became very concerned with their well being, especially whether they had enough food and adequate shelter. Whenever we brought them food they always seemed hungry; I used to go to the butcher shop across Sutter Avenue and get some of the meats that customers would not buy. At that time people were already buying beef liver to eat, whereas a few years before it had been given away free as pet food. I was able to get some milts, which was the pancreas, and some Hertz, heart meat, to feed to the cats. Hertz and milts, not too long afterward became saleable, so I could no longer get them free. That left our food contribution at only milk, which we used to buy.

It seemed to us that the cats needed to have a protection against the rain, a sort of rain-house, so that they wouldn’t get wet in bad weather. We set about collecting materials to build a rain shelter. Buzzy and I scrounged up several milk boxes, which were the heavy duty, wood and metal cases used to prevent breakage of milk bottles during delivery to grocery stores. We placed the boxes in a rectangular pattern, with the openings toward the inside area, and entrances to the inside between the boxes. We covered them with a rectangular metal store sign that someone had tossed over the fence, instead of taking it to the dump. Once we had the roof over the milk crates, it appeared to be a proper home for our little friends, and we called it the Cat House.

Everyone we told about our Cat House laughed at us, and our eleven year old minds figured that they knew something about cat behavior that we did not. Perhaps they never believed that the pussies of the yard would actually make use of the Cat House. Well, that actually turned out to be the case. The cats, neither big nor small, would inhabit our lovingly constructed Cat House, even when we placed bowls of milk on the inside. Now, we had always heard that one could attract lots of pussy with a bowl of milk, but that time it just didn’t work. The Cat House was a flop.

Of all my friends, I was the only one who paid dearly for my persistent love of pussy cats. I had a sickening allergic reaction to pussy fur that hit me every time: my eyes would redden and itch, and to my great frustration, my nose would run relentlessly often accompanied by repeated sneezing and light headedness. At night, doing my homework, I couldn’t even think straight, but I refused to accept that it was all due to my reaction to the cats. All too often, I was also beset by sore throats and infected sinuses. With such reactions, my always practical friend, Leo Gersh used to say, “Why are you doing this to yourself? The cats are only cats. Leave them alone.” You would think, given the obvious logic of Leo’s advice, I would have stayed away, but no, no, I was drawn to pussy cats like the proverbial moth goes to the flame. But, even if I were to try to stay away from the cats on the lot, I still had to contend with the cat in the Grocery store, to which I had to go several times a week. There really was no getting away from them. To make things worse for me, I also had to watch Irwin and Leo enjoyably play with the cats on the lot, and Buzzy play with the two cats in his back yard. They did it without suffering; I was the only one with the allergies. It wasn’t fair, and so what. That’s the way it was.

One day we discovered two Police Department traffic sign posts in the lot. These were the free standing, moveable signs that had a heavy iron base, a center iron pipe, and a traffic sign attached to the pipe. The worded signs themselves were nowhere to found, but we went to work on what we had, and before you know it, Buzzy had unscrewed one base and by attaching it to the top of the other pipe already on a base, we created an impressive looking barbell. We took turns exercising with it, and trying out different lifts. To protect our newly created barbell we relocated it to Buzzy’s basement where we were able to weigh it using a hand held laundry scale. It came to eighty-six pounds, our first piece of weightlifting equipment. Gradually, I began to spend more time exercising and practicing handstands on the curb in front of the house, so that my exposure to the pussy cats was reduced after all.

The lot could be entered through my building’s back yard or through Irwin’s building, but when we got to be big enough, with a good pair of sneakers on, we could run across Chester Street and leap up the fence, grabbing the top of it, and over we went. It was a wonderful feeling to be able to do that, to have the kind of body control that made it possible. The Chester Street fence also served as our local handball court when we were reluctant to go to the park. We played out into the street with one eye always looking for the cars coming down the block.

Since Irwin and Leo Goodman lived on the third floor of the building on the other side of the lot, we decided to string a telephone wire over the lot, and with the aid of some old telephones and some dry cell batteries, we hooked up a phone system between us. It was crude, but it worked. The only thing was, when one handset was lifted the other phone rang continuously until that handset was picked up or the first handset replaced. Our parents really hated the ringing, especially when no one was home to pick up the phone. A few years later, when construction started on the lot to build a post office there, the crew chief had to find us to get permission to remove the wire we had strung, believing it was an official telephone company line. That was how we lost our personal telephone connection, and the lot too, and gone were the pussies.

Thrills & Spills

2008-12-26T09:19:00.000-08:00

THRILLS & SPILLS
Len Klein
Memory Sketch #16
Thursday, June 14, 2001

My Uncle Irving was my mother’s real, flesh and blood, brother. I know it gets confusing, it certainly did for me when I was growing up, so confusing in fact I simply gave up on deciphering family relationships for most of my life. Because of the perplexing family relations that I lived with, there was one thing I was totally intolerant of; my mother’s attempt to present her best friend, Ida, as Aunt Ida. I absolutely flipped my wig, and screamed at her that I would never call someone from outside the family by a family name. It was just too much to deal with; it seemed completely unfair to me, and I never did it.

The two little siblings, Irene and Irving Lutsky, my mother and her older brother, hadn’t grown up together for very long. When their mother died, they were separated: Irving stayed with their father, Louie, and my mother, who was then about four years old, was sent to live with her grandparents, Zaide and Bubbe (Solomon and Rebecca). That’s where she was brought up with Uncle Jack, who was just a little older than she was, and whom she came to call brother. In later years, both Jack and Irving would change their family name from Lutsky to Luth, in the hope that the more Americanized name would be better for business. From what I could see, it didn’t have any noticeable effect on anything, except to make me more confused.

When Uncle Irving would come over to our house (we always called our apartment our house), it was always a special time because he liked to do some things with us that no one else did. He would lift me up so that my body was parallel to the floor, and holding me at arms length he would “fly me around” in circles. I held my arms out like wings and he would swing me up and down as he flew me around; it really felt as though I was flying. Later on, he did the same for Arnie, while I watched and laughed with excitement. The experience of being ‘flown’ that way was incredibly thrilling and I loved it. It was also a little scary; it felt like when you are flying in your dreams with thrills and screams. I always looked forward to Uncle Irving’s visits.

Uncle Irving would also pull me up head-over-heels by having me bend forward and put my hands between my legs. He’d grab my hands and pull me straight up and I’d flip over. Well, I’ll tell you, I wasn’t too fond of that. It was Arnie who really loved the flip-over and was always ready for more. At the time I had no idea that my fear was largely due to my loss of orientation when I flipped over. Years later, in High School, when trying to learn the back handspring, the loss of orientation sent me crashing down on my neck and I sustained serious injuries. Despite my being able to do a front handspring, I never even got close to doing the back. When I tried to learn springboard diving, the best I could do was to manage a few forward somersaulting dives, but twists and back dives eluded me. The culmination of my aerial disorientation was when, at the age of 28, I smashed my head on the pipe supports of a trampoline, and Dan and Buz, who were with me that evening, had to rush me to the hospital. Luckily, the serious injuries, which required careful stitching around my left eye, and extra careful surgery to reconstruct my nose, were not life threatening.

The first baseball game I ever went to was when Uncle Irving took Dan and me to Ebbets Field in Brooklyn. Uncle Irving filled us in on all the plays and rules that we were unfamiliar with, while we watched the Saint Louis Cardinals defeat the Brooklyn Dodgers. Although my interest in baseball was at best sporadic, I remember feeling disappointed that the hometown team, the Brooklyn Dodgers did not win. The game itself, I found very slow with long periods of inactivity, so that it was hard to stay interested. Of course, I liked the ballpark franks and drinks, which eased the waiting. When, in later years, I was in the Air Force stationed just outside of Saint Louis, I went to my second baseball game there. As luck would have it, I once again watched the Cardinals defeat the Dodgers. To this day, those remain the only two baseball games I have ever been to.

In Brooklyn, not too far from where we lived, on Eastern Parkway there was a popular sports arena. My Uncle Irving took me there on a night that they had a complete boxing card. It was very crowded, smoky, and everyone was talking and yelling. During the introductions to each match, we would pick our choice to win. I always picked the bigger guy and was very surprised to see that they usually lost. This was something that Uncle Irving seemed to know about, since he always smiled when I made my pick. Except for the smoke, I really enjoyed myself, but I never again went to see live boxing. The major fights were broadcast on the radio, and we all listened to them. Then came TV.

My Uncle Jack was one of the early owners of a small TV set, and he invited my father to come over when there were fights on Friday night. My Dad and I would walk the Friday night mile to Uncle Jack’s; he lived near the Premier Theater, which was on Pitkin Avenue in East New York, so it was a bit of a hike. My Dad always walked too fast for me and in trying to keep up, I would develop terrible shin splints, not that I knew the term in those days, but I did know the pain running down the front of my lower legs. It was awful, but I never said anything about it to him. I just kept it to myself, as if it was some kind of personal failure to be in pain while trying to keep up with my Dad.

When we settled down in the little room that Uncle Jack had made into his TV room, and began to watch the fights, my father usually fell asleep. He loved the fights, but after working a full day, often in the cold, eating dinner, walking the mile, and sitting in the warm room, he just could not prevent sleep from overtaking him. Nevertheless, that didn’t stop him from going to Jack to see the fights.

Later on it would be one of the main reasons for getting a television of our own, that Dad could watch the Friday night fights at home. When we got our first set, it was placed in my parents bedroom on the bureau opposite the door. This meant that it was kind of high for viewing, but it really was the only place for it. We put chairs by the foot of the bed and along one side, and even a little out the door when we had guests, so that we could all view the set. I remember that was the arrangement during the final baseball games of the season and, of course, for the World Series.

CORRECTIONS & COMMENTS:

Irving & Irene's mother was Lena Lutsky nee Belinki/Belinsky. She committed suicide a few days after Irene's fist birthday. For more information see this link.

Lena with baby Irving ca. 1910-1

In the Name of the Principal

2008-12-26T09:01:00.000-08:00

IN THE NAME OF THE PRINCIPAL
Len Klein
Memory Sketch # 15
Monday, May 28, 2001

I spent seven years in One-Seventy-Five, my elementary school, and yet when I try to remember the name of just one teacher, just one, no one comes to mind. Of course, there were teachers and I was in their classes, but they are faceless and nameless to me. I never thought much about it before, but now that I would like to recall them, I am troubled that I cannot. In part, I understand, since throughout all of my elementary school experience, teachers were the consistent focus of my extreme hostility and disregard. Whatever positive feelings I had for them, and there was some, were dwarfed by my persistent hatred.

There was also a Principal and an Assistant Principal in my school, and their names are among the missing as well. But, in the case of the Principal, I feel the need to provide a name. Not an ordinary name, but a special one, since I feel he definitely earned it. I have in mind … a sort of dunce cap name that conveys my low regard for him based mostly on one incident that I will relate. I’ll call him Mr. Principalitis, since, in the event sequence that I remember, he behaved in a most unprofessional and irresponsible manner, which can only be attributed to a malignant inflammation of his position. As a teacher I knew years later once said about her Principal: “He thinks who he is!”

All the kids I knew were afraid of the Principal, and perhaps it was necessary that it should be that way. Control of so many children was facilitated if ‘going to see the Principal’ was a terrifying experience. This I could understand, probably even then, and it is definitely not the reason for his name being Mr. Principalitis. While fear of the Principal was used as an instrument of discipline, it did not sit well with some of the teachers. I recall, that in English spelling we were taught that the spelling of the word ‘Principal’ was easy to recall because it ended with the word ‘pal,’ and the Principal was a pal to us all. Yeah, sure.

I was in the sixth grade when, one day, I was called from the classroom to ‘go to the Principal’s office.’ My friend Alvin, who was known to all as Buzzy, was also summoned from the classroom. So, led by the monitor we made our way slowly to the dreaded Office, to which I had never been before. The monitor said he knew nothing about the reason for the summons, so our minds were left to wonder about all the bad things that we had done for which we might be reprimanded. The more I thought about it, the more I was getting scared. When we reached the secretary, she sent us right into the Office where we saw a man and a woman in conversation with our ‘pal,’ Mr. Principalitis. The woman took one look at us and said, “Yes. These are the children,” as though she was picking us out of some imaginary line-up, for reasons yet unknown to us. The ‘grown-ups’ talked among themselves for a bit, in tones of whispering negotiations, and then Mr. Principalitis ordered us to accompany the woman and the man, both of whom, in my memory, were never identified to us, out into the street somewhere.

I had never heard of such a thing, unless the Police were involved, that children should be taken from school without notifying their parents. Evidently, the notion of obtaining parental permission for the release of pupils from the school grounds did not bother Mr. Principalitis, because he went along with the request of the woman seemingly without any consideration for its propriety, or legality. We little people standing in his office didn’t even know whether or not we could object to his directive, so we complied. After all, he was the Principal and he must know what is correct for us to do. The Principalitis aspect, which in retrospect became so clear, was at the time completely obscure to us. We were too scared.

Once we had gotten our jackets from the classroom, we were walked to the middle of the Chester Street block where we lived, to the apartment building that Alvin’s family owned, and then into the back yard, without even notifying Buzzy’s parents, on whose property we were standing. One end of the yard abutted the yard of the house across the way; then and there, we were accused of breaking a window by throwing a stone across the yard. Since we hadn’t done it, it was easy to deny, but the woman was unconvinced because she had seen us playing in the yard. With no parents there to protect us from her accusations, I decided to use my most cunning courtroom logic, derived from the radio programs I listened to after school, and I asked whether she had retained the stone in question. When she replied, as if cinching her accusation, that she indeed did have the stone in her possession, I responded with, “Good! Then the matter is simple. Take the fingerprints from the stone and it will prove that neither of us had thrown it. Otherwise, there is no evidence against us.”

They looked at me as though I had said something inappropriate or sneaky and the woman repeated her accusation that we most certainly had done it and there was no use in denying it. I insisted that the stone would tell the story, and without fingerprints, they actually had no evidence at all to support what she was alleging. Just because we had been playing in the yard was in itself no proof of any misdeed. I remember the woman looking at me, nodding her head as if she knew something more than I could know, and saying, “You, boy, should become a lawyer.” From her tone, I was totally unsure as to whether that was a compliment or a put-down, but I knew it had to do with my having out-foxed her. I had undermined her certainty and made her doubtful. From there, it was back to school; nothing proven, nothing sustained.

When my mother heard what had happened, she was furious and went up to school the next day to tell Mr. Principalitis, that it must never happen again that her child should be taken from school without her permission. I’m sure she received liberal doses of bull crap while the ‘pal’ tried to cover his six, but, since I never heard exactly what happened in the Office that day, I can’t say for sure. So, there you have it, the story of how I came to have a name for the Principal of One-Seventy-Five.

880 Saratoga Avenue

2008-12-25T17:04:00.000-08:00

Kitchen Talk

2008-12-25T17:01:00.000-08:00

KITCHEN TALK
Len Klein
Memory Sketch #14
Thursday, May 17, 2001

There were so many times, impossible to remember them all, that my mother and I sat across the kitchen table and talked. On Bristol Street, I remember clearly the time she spoke about visiting with a neighbor on the second floor. I had been there with her. *Did you notice how she kept cleaning out the ash trays over and over again, even though they were already clean, *she said to me. And I had noticed and wondered about it. The woman, I was told, was very unhappy in her marriage and was fearful about becoming pregnant. Her talking to my mother about that very subject had been the main reason for the visit. *The woman doesn't want to have children just now, and it is so troubling to her that even though we were talking about it, she had to express it in her behavior as well. In a magical way, she unconsciously thought that by keeping the ash trays clean she could avoid having a child,* my mother said. My eight year old mind was totally amazed at this understanding, and it made a very strong impression on me.

Most of the talking experiences I can recall are from after Bristol Street; at 180 Chester Street, and later, 880 Saratoga Avenue. Mom once talked about a very cold winter, when she was an adolescent, and she didn't have a warm coat to wear. Money was scarce and living with her grandparents family, there were many hands outstretched for what was available. Zaide and Bubbe couldn't meet everyone’s needs, and they put their own daughters first, so there was no money to buy the granddaughter a coat. At the time she was dating my Dad, whom she called Harvey while everyone else called him Harry. For this quirk of my mother, no reasonable explanation was ever given. My father had left school to go to work because of his family’s financial needs. He left either during Jr. High School or immediately afterward, so he never got to High School, instead he got to work. He decided, as will a young man in love, to take some of his own money, keeping it secret from his mother who was the keeper of the family funds and whom I was told made a very strong claim on their earnings, and he would buy the girl he loved the coat she needed. Its not difficult to imagine how much this cemented their relationship, especially if one keeps in mind the hard times in which it took place.

Mom would talk a lot about Uncle Israel, for whom she had great love and respect. She told me that there was a special bond between them, and that it was very important for her to have him in her life. I was always amazed at the deference that Mom showed to Uncle Israel. For one thing, she seemed much more of a Mensch than did he. I also believed that she was smarter than Israel. True, my mother was on the radio only once when she sang a song under the name, Irene Kay, while Uncle Israel had two continuing radio programs on WEVD: “The Jewish Philosopher,” and “Lutsky Brings You The News,” both of which were conducted in Yiddish. I certainly was very impressed by that. After all, Uncle Israel was a genuine “radio personality,” and that did confer a status of high esteem, but, in my eyes, and I may be a little off here, in my estimation my mother was superior. Well, what can I say, she was my Mom. What I can say for sure that I was quite jealous of her deference to him. I remember being sent down to the Grocery to get some bottles of Coca-Cola because he had arrived unexpectedly at the house. My resentment flourished as I went down the three flights of stairs. “If he’s so important to you, why do you send me?” I was totally resentful and not at all rational about it.

Across the kitchen table Mom spoke often about nutrition and the importance of healthy food and supplements to insure and increase their value. She told me how she came to be interested in all things nutritional. When she first married she became responsible for a husband, and to keep her working man well fed and healthy was a challenge for her. When she had a baby to feed as well, she said that it seemed so overwhelming that she thought she could never learn enough. She had started from scratch, with two main resources: the local public library, and the Carlton Frederick's radio program. She followed up on the book recommendations that came from either source, and regularly brought home several library books full of interesting information, about which I would soon hear in the kitchen. After a while, I talked about my experiments in Chemistry and what I was learning on my own and in school. She talked about her cooking experiments with new types of pots and pans and the foods and spices she was using. I told her about the recently learned names of chemicals I had acquired from Mr. Brower, the pharmacist, and she told me the newly learned names of supplements, vitamins and minerals.

All the while we spoke, I thought I was learning about family and food, ethics and behavior. Little did I realize the process was preparing me for my future profession, sitting and talking with patients in psychotherapy. It was in the course of our kitchen discussions that my mother mentioned a name that had increasingly appeared in her readings and had been several times mentioned on the Fredericks program as well. She knew nothing about the person, except that he had developed a theory about the influence of the mind on the health of the individual. That was my first introduction to Sigmund Freud, when I was about eleven years old. In short order, my mother had located some books on Freud. Her interest in him was intensified because he was a European Jew, who in pictures of his older years bore a resemblance to Zaide, and whose middle name was Slomo, Solomon, the name of her beloved Zaide. The things she learned, and the ideas she spoke about were very exciting and appealing. It was as though a new frontier of learning was opening up for me, an extension of the research interest I seemed always to have, but one in which I could be the researcher, the subject, and the laboratory all at once. When the summer of my fifteenth birthday had come, I purchased the Complete Writings of Sigmund Freud, The Modern Library edition, and began to read. The summer was hot and I would read in the afternoon in my parents bedroom sitting next to one of the two front windows with my feet up and sticking out on the third floor. I read something every day; I didn’t always understand what I was reading; but sometimes I was blown away.

COMMENTS:

Photo left to right: Linda, Irwin Goodman (Len's friend), Arnie, Harry/Harvey, Len, Rochelle, Irene. Kitchen at 880 Saratoga Ave circa 1952-3.

The Kings Store

2008-12-25T16:51:00.000-08:00

THE KINGS STORE
Len Klein
Memory Sketch # 13
Friday, May 04, 2001

When I was but ten years old, every weekend I would walk from where I lived on Chester Street, near Sutter Avenue, to the Pitkin Avenue end of my block, then go north for about five or six blocks to the store of wonders, called Kings Toy Store. There in the window were two items that held my attention for almost an hour each trip. I always went alone because no one would stand with me for that long looking into a store window, and I was too shy to go in and ask the owner to show me what drew me to the store. I just looked and fantasized about owning the Gilbert Chemistry Set and the Gilbert Microscope Set.

Each came in its own wooden case, hinged so that it could open up twice as large as it was when closed, with places for small instruments and slides, measuring tools, test tubes and a mixing bowl. With each set there seemed to be an ample instruction book, and I could just imagine all the marvelous and mysterious things that could be done with them. I had been saving for what seemed to me to be forever; saving every cent I got. Slowly I was getting there, accumulating the money necessary for one of the sets. It was no easy matter to get the five dollars and fifty cents that was the price for each set. When I reached four dollars and seventy-five cents I realized that I would soon have to make a decision as to which set would be bought. I always believed that I would eventually buy both of them, but the dilemma was not easy to resolve; which set should come first? Several more weekend trips to Kings were to pass before I finally made up my mind.

The day came at last, when I walked self-consciously to Kings with all my savings in my pocket. I had decided, after careful deliberation, to buy the Chemistry Set. As my thoughts went over each possibility, I reasoned that the Chemistry Set would most likely provide the greater range of activity and learning, and it seemed the necessary first step to working with the microscope. I kept thinking about all the things I would do with it, and how I would wash my hands before using it, and take care to use it very gently.

When I entered the store, surely I must have been glowing, and I bet the man could see it too. At long last, I was inside Kings and I asked to see the Gilbert Chemistry Set. The man went to get it while I stood there and waited, feeling almost frightened. Then he was back and he put it on the counter right in front of me. On the lid of the wooden case there was a picture of a boy about my age doing wonderful things with the set. Excitedly, I said I was going to buy it and placed all my money on the counter. The man counted the two one dollar bills and all my coins; then he looked at me, and I knew something wasn’t right. He said, “I’m sorry, but you don’t have enough here.” I was stunned. How could that be? I had counted the money twenty times. The man said I needed sixteen cents more for the tax. I was so disappointed I could hardly speak; it was all I could do not to cry. With my head down, I left the store saying that I would be back very soon.

I did go back soon afterward and I did buy the Chemistry Set. Carrying it home, I had an unstoppable smile on my face all the way. When I showed it to Mom and Dad, with all its pieces, and the incredibly interesting instruction guide book, I felt so proud to finally have gotten it.

The first time I got to use it was Saturday night, when Mom and Dad went out for the evening and I was home watching Arnie and Linda. With Linda safely asleep, I placed the set on the kitchen table and opened it up; there it was, my very own laboratory. Arnie watched as, carefully following the instructions in the guide book, I did my first experiments. We were both in states of wide-eyed amazement. Which of them I actually did first, I no longer remember; there were so many experiments done over the following weeks and months. One time I did get into trouble though. It seems that the smell of burning sulfur left a most objectionable odor in the kitchen and when they came home my parents were very upset. My father even went so far as to threaten to throw the whole thing out, down the incinerator. Even though I was afraid of him really doing it, I countered with the idea that if he did, it would probably blow up and make a great fire in the building. I don’t know if he believed me, but he did not throw out my set.

Because of my chemistry experiments, the need to replenish my chemicals and to acquire new chemical compounds mentioned in the guide book, I came to know Mr. Brower, who’s pharmacy was on Sutter Avenue and Bristol Street, just around the corner from me. I could see that he really liked my coming in and talking to him about my experiments, and he was very helpful to me.

As for the Microscope, well, I never did get it, and, after a while, it disappeared from the Kings window, and there was always a disappointment that stayed with me about that. Many years later I actually bought Microscopes for Melanie and David, as if I could then vicariously experience what I had missed, but for them it had none of the fascination it had for me, and they just put it aside.

In Junior High School and High School my science courses were peppered with experiments that I had already read about and performed at home. It was great to have so much advance knowledge and made me feel more strongly about the relevance of my kitchen studies. It also led me to resolve to become a research biologist, but that was never to be.

180 Chester Street

2008-12-25T16:45:00.000-08:00

Telephones

2008-12-25T16:41:00.000-08:00

TELEPHONES
Len Klein
Memory Sketch #12
April 20, 2001

Hard as it may be to imagine, there was a time when we did without telephones. Well, not totally without. There was a telephone in the Candy store on Blake Avenue, but there were no phones in the house, not in ordinary people’s apartments. Rich people, I thought, probably did have private phones in their own house, just like in the movies. My Uncle Israel, Israel Lutsky, was one of those. He had his own telephone, sitting on a little table between the living room and the kitchen. This was in his big apartment on Central Park West.

The Central Park West apartment was huge, with large windows overlooking the Park from high up, very high up. It scared me to look down, it was so high. Everything in the apartment was large, the rooms were large, the furniture was large, there was a large dining room table with chairs bigger than I had ever seen. There were so many rooms, you could get lost, and if you had to go to the bathroom urgently, it was really important to remember just where it was.

When my sister, Linda, was old enough to visit Uncle Israel and Aunt Lilly, she returned with two amazing observations: first, that Uncle Israel had blankets on the floor; second, that whenever he was in the street and wanted to ride instead of walk, he would just hold up his hand and a car would come to him. Although short of stature, Uncle Israel was larger than life, and somewhat magical too.

As far as my corner of the block went, that is, for everyone I knew, the telephone was in the Candy store, which was why we took to hanging around there. My friends and I used to purposely play near the Candy store every evening because when a call came in for someone living in the nearby apartment buildings, the Candy man would come out and yell for one of us to run upstairs and tell the person that there was a call. Most of the time, we’d get three cents or a nickel for notifying them. When it came to someone who “forgot” to tip us a second time, the Candy man had to plead with us to go. Sometimes he would advise his customer to give us something if they wanted to be called to the phone, or else he wouldn’t be able to help them out. Then they would say, “OH, of course, I just forgot,” and out of their pocket would come some pennies or a nickel.

Speaking of embarrassment, I noticed that very often I felt embarrassed if I had to wait at the door while the person went to get some money. There was something about waiting, like holding out my hand, like begging, it just felt really bad. Since I never talked about it, I really don’t know what the others felt, and I certainly wasn’t going to bring it up first.

We didn’t get our own telephone until after we had moved to 180 Chester Street, and once again we were on the third floor. I think we moved when I was about eight years old. When the apartment was first set up, we had a bit of a living room, with a couch and chair. Arnie slept in a single bed along the inner wall of the living room, and I had a very little room all to myself with a bed across the width of the room right next to the window, a bureau of drawers, and a fold down desk piece of furniture which had book shelves behind glass doors above and three drawers below. For a while, Linda slept in a crib in our parents bedroom. When she got a little older, it was good-bye living room because every room aside from the kitchen, became a bedroom. All in all, the Chester Street house and apartment wasn’t as nice as on Bristol Street, but there was more room, and there was the telephone, which was on a small table just inside the living room - bedroom.

We lived on Chester Street near Sutter Avenue for a really long time. There was a luncheonette called Mike and Harvey’s on the corner, where working people, like my Dad, would stop in after work to talk. In the evening and on the weekends the local flashy dressers hung out there. The grocery store, to which I had to go very often, despite the cat there which made my nose run and my eyes itch, was located just across Sutter Avenue. On the cross corner, there was a delicatessen that served pretty good food. What I really liked was that for along time, a Candy Store was located in my very own building. On the ground floor there was an interesting apartment in which some local young women, whenever they needed some money, would periodically entertain the flashy dresser guys from the neighborhood. When they were planning to entertain, the word went out the old fashioned whispering way, without the use of the telephone.

Peanut Butter

2008-12-25T16:36:00.000-08:00

PEANUT BUTTER
Len Klein
Memory Sketch #11
Friday, April 06, 2001
© LEONARD B. KLEIN

Walking to the corner of Bristol Street and Blake Avenue, I was bouncing around alongside my mother while Arnie, who was about two years old, was trailing behind. I was pleading with my mother to buy peanut butter, which had suddenly caught the attention of my taste buds as the most delicious thing imaginable. “Peanut Butter! Peanut Butter! Buy Peanut butter, Oh please.” I wasn’t sure she was listening to me because she was looking straight ahead and the grocery store was to the right. “Ma! Ma! Please buy some Peanut Butter,” I kept at her. She turned her head, looked down at me, and said, “OK, Now go get your peanut brother.”

I was dumbfounded. What was she talking about? Did she not understand that I wanted Peanut Butter? How could she think I was talking about my brother all this time. I didn’t think I could make myself clearer than I had already done, so what was I to do next? I looked up at her searching for some kind of answer, when she looked into the face of my painful confusion and smiled. “Go get your little brother, and we’ll go buy some Peanut Butter.” Her smile unraveled my confusion, and her words were words I was able to understand, so I bounced off to get Arnie. The first thing I said to him was, “Arnie! Do you want to get some Peanut Butter?” He looked at me and responded more to my excitement than to what I was saying. Running up to Mom he yelled, “Ma! Ma! I want Peanut Butter!” Mom was laughing, laughing at our little Peanut Butter song and dance, and said, “OK, OK, Don’t gang up on me.”

I won’t keep you in suspense any longer. We did actually get the Peanut Butter, and you know what? It was every bit as delicious as I had imagined, and we loved it. Peanut Butter on Silvercup white bread; what a treat for us. We lovingly ate round the soft crust first and slowly we ate our way into the center, very carefully. It was too good to rush.

Makes me wonder that this Peanut Butter memory should still be in my head, but there it is, right along with hot dogs and mustard, French fries and ketchup, hot corn and butter. Since we never put jam or jelly on our Peanut Butter when we were young, I can’t report it as ‘peanut butter and jelly.’ We just had it on white bread, sometimes in a sandwich and sometimes on one slice.

The white bread, Silvercup or Wonderbread, was great because when it was really fresh you could pull out the center of a slice and roll it around in the palms of your hands until a sort of bread marble was produced, or by rolling it back and forth, you could make a bread stick of dough that was still sort of white. The self-rolled bread sticks were excellent for dipping in hot soup. Most of the time we ate the bread we rolled, but sometimes, you know, when the spirit grabbed us, Arnie and I just had to throw it at each other and laugh our heads off until we got yelled at.

I note that white bread is no longer something that I eat, but occasionally on a cold day in Winter, before going to my Wednesday afternoon Psychoanalytic Study Group, I’ll go into Hot & Crusty on 88th and Broadway, and have a container of hot soup and a fresh bagel. The unbuttered bagel I tear apart and dip the pieces into the soup, and the feeling that comes over me I know I’ve had many times before when soup was still new and I was just a kid.

The Longest Running Show in New York: Katz's

2008-12-25T16:31:00.000-08:00

10: THE LONGEST RUNNING SHOW IN NEW YORK: KATZ’S
Len Klein
March 2, 2001

More than anyone else, the one who loved to go to Katz’s Delicatessen was my Uncle Jack. Jack and Beatty would come to Bristol Street calling us out to go for a ride in his ‘pride and joy’ car. Like so many others, he loved his car. Whenever family got together, the men would always speak with pride about their cars. The challenge I heard most often was, “Can your car make it with a full load up to the Catskills?” Almost always, the answer came back, “My car? Of course!” Nevertheless, so many cars would over heat and conk out going up the mountains, and everybody knew it. But, unless you were actually seen with a smoking, dead car, pulled off to the side of the road, no one would ever admit to it.

Many times Uncle Jack drove us across the Williamsburg Bridge into the lower east side of Manhattan, to the theater of all delicatessens, Katz’s. He drove pretty good for a guy who, for as long as I knew him, had only three fingers on his right hand. It was due to some kind of accident when he was a boy, and it led us, the kids, to call him, amongst ourselves, ‘three fingered Jack,’ like he was some kind of gangster. Thinking of himself as a mobster was something Jack playfully enjoyed. Those were the days of the powerful Brooklyn Jewish gangs, with the hottest areas being Brownsville and East New York, right where we lived. We saw them Saturday nights, all sharply dressed in monochrome outfits, in the luncheonettes near the movie theaters and on some street corners near bars. Although we looked down on the beatings and murders, which made the newspaper headlines, there still was a certain romantic allure of being thought of as a wise-guy.

Katz’s delicatessen was a huge, wonderful place that had countless tables, and innumerable people moving around everywhere. Like many others, Jack would walk up and down the length of the endless serving counter. He would carefully look to see who was cutting the leanest hot pastrami and hot corned beef before he would give his order. Sometimes it was Hot pastrami on rye, and other times it would be Corned Beef on rye. The rye bread was always soft and fresh, with a crispy crust, and the total sandwich was unbelievably good. For years I thought those delicatessen meats were called “Hop-a-stromi,”and “Cornbeef.”

Many years later, when I was in graduate school at New York University, whenever we could, we’d pile into Bob Cutler’s little Hillman and off we’d go to Nathan’s or to Katz. One night, before Bernie Kalinkowitz’s class, Bob, Stan, Barbara and I went to eat at Katz’s. It was the very same night as the great confrontation on the high seas, between American Warships and Soviet Cargo Vessels bound for Cuba carrying missiles. Tensions ran high in everyone. Suddenly, as we were eating, we were inundated by all manner of sirens, screaming right outside the restaurant. I thought, as did the others, ‘it could be that this is it. Perhaps the missiles were really flying.' It was a very scary moment and considerably dampened our appetites. Of course, it turned out to be a nearby fire in just one building and not the world in flames, as we had feared.

The Hinsdale Move

2008-12-25T16:25:00.000-08:00

09: THE HINSDALE MOVE
Len Klein
March 9, 2001

I felt sort of weird and bewildered as I watched everything we had been living with in our single bedroom, carried out of the apartment, down two flights of stairs, and out into a moving van. For as long as I could remember we had lived in that room, in the apartment we shared with Uncle Jack and Aunt Beatty. The Hinsdale Street apartment had four rooms in all, with the two bedrooms off the living room. It never seemed crowded to me, but Mom and Dad said that it was and that we needed more space. Of course, there was the baby. I have only vague memories of my mother coming home from the hospital with my new little brother, Arnie. We barely had room for him, so I guess we did have to move.

As the moving van pulled away, we were seated high up in the cab of the truck and I saw Heshy on the street. I felt so good to be free of him. Heshy had been my only friend and my arch enemy since the first time I was allowed to play outside. Sometimes we’d play nicely together and sometimes he’d start pushing and hitting me. I don’t recall hitting him back, and that may have been part of the continuing problem I had with him. Anyway, I really got to hate him, so when I saw him standing all alone by the curb as we left, I felt great and very relieved.

Riding in the cab of the van was a new and exciting experience all by itself; to be up so high and moving through strange streets, past kids I never met, and stores I never went into, filled me with wonder. The world was getting much bigger than it had been. Finally, we came to a house on Bristol Street, across from a very pebbly park, where we stopped and started to unload. Everything had to be hand carried up three flights to our new apartment. The moving man and my father were so big and strong and they knew just how to carry all the furniture up the stairs. I was very impressed.

After we settled in, my mother took me to the new school, one-seventy-five, to register me for Kindergarten, which I had not been able to complete at the Hinsdale Street school. Going to a strange new place was a little scary at first, but I think I got over it. Kindergarten in one-seventy-five was very different than it had been in my first school. There was no flag carrying, and no circle around the flag; I do remember that we would stand by our desks and recite the pledge of allegiance from there. My first thought was, “They don’t even know how to do it!” But, gradually I got the idea that this was just another way; there was also drawing and coloring, and walking single file around the room. The girls… well they just were not as interesting as the memory of the girl who carried the flag in my very first school experience.

On my new block I found immediately three new friends, Danny, Davie, and Lenny, and my play world expanded wonderfully. It was an exciting time and every day was three days long. There was time to go to school, time to play outside, and time to play in the house, and the boundaries for each set of activities were marked by meals and sleep. It was a good time.

COMMENTS:
398 Hinsdale Street
243 Bristol Street

398 Hinsdale Street

2008-12-25T16:19:00.000-08:00

Oh How She Carried the Flag

2008-12-25T16:15:00.000-08:00

OH HOW SHE CARRIED THE FLAG
Len Klein
February 23, 2001

She had a very playful look to her, I thought; maybe it was her blond hair all in shaky curls. The expression on her face, however, was quite serious. Clutched in her hands was the staff of the American Flag, which she carried into the center of the circle. All eyes were upon her, but I alone looked at her with my heart. Did she look back at me? I don't remember. The teacher started us off on the pledge of allegiance and I tried to repeat the lines she spoke. With my hand on my heart, I looked at the girl holding the flag and mumbled my allegiance to her. Did she know that I was pledging my heart to her? I think not. It was a secret pledge, mumbled in a low voice, not for her to know, but only for me to feel. It was the very first time I felt such excitement for a girl, and it took me by surprise. I had never suspected that I would see a perfect girl on my very first day in kindergarten.

When I came home I excitedly told my two mothers about the experience, even to confessing how much I liked her. Their faces were all smiles, sort of looking at each other knowingly. There must have been other days in kindergarten when similar events were played out, but I mostly remember that one day. I never got out of kindergarten in that school, because we moved away before that could happen.

(Len with Beatty on Bristol St)

If it seems puzzling that I refer to having two mothers, I will tell you how that came to be. We were living on Hinsdale Street in the area between Brownsville and East New York in the borough of Brooklyn. At that time we didn’t have our own place but shared a four room apartment with Uncle Jack and Aunt Beatty. My mother called Uncle Jack her brother, but he was actually her Uncle. They were almost the same age and had been brought up together, as brother and sister. Jack was the youngest in the family of Zayde and Bubbe, and was a brother to my mother’s father, Louie. Louie was somebody I hardly ever saw, never knew well and never called Grandfather: he was always just Louie. I don’t think I ever really believed he was my mother’s father. On the other hand, Uncle Jack and Aunt Beatty I loved very much. Since we lived together, both Beatty and my mother looked after me. The neighbors, observing that there were two women who mothered me, passed the word and I became known on the block as the little boy with two mothers.

(Jack & Beatty)
I have some memories of playing with Beatty in the apartment. She was lying on the floor and I would climb over her, run around in a circle and climb over her again. I thought it was a great game. One time, when we played, I was wearing only a hemdle with the rest of me just flapping in the air. At one point I decided it would be a good idea for me to sit on Beatty’s face, so I attempted to execute the maneuver. Each time I tried, she would thwart me by pushing me away, and I became quite frustrated. I stopped running around and admonished her to stop pushing me away because I wanted to sit on her face. She said something like, “I know, and I’m not going to let you.” The game ended without my ambitions being fulfilled, but the story was repeated by Aunt Beatty for many years, to the obvious delight of all who heard it.

COMMENTS:

"Hinsdale Street" is 398 Hinsdale Street

The Call of the Ride

2008-12-25T16:10:00.000-08:00

THE CALL OF THE RIDE
Len Klein
February 9, 2001

Sometimes, when we were at home doing whatever, listening to the radio, doing homework, washing dishes, we’d hear that promising sound from outside, three floors down below on the street, several honks of a car horn. We’d run to the bedroom windows, which looked out onto Bristol Street. There below would be Ethel and Irving Kramer, waving to us from the street. “Come on, lets go riding.” An excited anticipation would come over us as we scurried to get dressed and get downstairs. “Where were we going to go tonight?” Into the car we loaded ourselves, becoming a family of eight, and off we went. The little ones, Arnie and Norman, had to sit on someone’s lap; Danny and I usually had our own sitting spaces, and occasionally we even got a window seat. Sometimes it’s good to be big.

There were nights when we only went out for a ride together, just to get out of the house, but other times we had a destination. The most delightful place to go was not the carousel, or the kiddy amusement park; it was Coney Island and Nathan’s. Nathan’s was a magical place, always alive with people. They were either coming from their cars to buy food at the sidewalk counters, or going to their cars with the hot food they just bought, or standing by the curb, balancing their food while eagerly eating it. To have Nathan’s Hot Dogs and Fries while staying up late was a really special treat. There was nothing like it in the whole world. The food was deliciously tasty, and my brother, Arnie, and I were happy to be with Danny and Norman. We’d be all smiles and laughing together, aside from the usual conflicts between children and parents that often interrupt good times.

There were usually several policemen around, some on horseback, without whom the traffic on Stillwell Avenue would become impassible; it would be turned into a parking lot for Nathan’s customers. If we were lucky we’d find a parking spot on Stillwell right in front of Nathan’s, but when we didn’t, the side street, between Nathan’s and the Boardwalk provided a large number of parking spots. When the crowds were too large, or it was raining, we’d stay in the car while the adults went for the anticipated delights: hot dogs, French fries, and hot corn. The adults sometimes bought hamburgers, but we kids liked hot dogs better. Of course, for reasons unknown, ketchup was always put on the French fries and the hamburgers, but mustard was dedicated to hot dogs. All huddled up in the car we’d munch on our food in the midst of the most delectable aromas imaginable. We were all one family and the livin' was good.

This was the time before air conditioning; not in homes, not in cars, was there any cool relief from the humid heat of the city. Summers in Brooklyn could be brutal, and there were many nights spent lying still in bed and perspiring anyway. I remember one sweltering night, impossible to sleep, when the Kramers honked us to the window, and off we went to Riess Park Beach to sleep on blankets in the open sea air. We stayed there most of the night as it was the only way to get some rest.

A View from School

2008-12-25T16:05:00.000-08:00

A VIEW FROM SCHOOL
Len Klein
Memory Sketch # 06,
January 26, 2001
© LEONARD B. KLEIN

My mother said I had to go to school. Although I argued with her, it did no good at all. She was firm about it, and off I went that morning to one-seventy-five, just as if it was an ordinary day. As I walked to school, I thought over and over again, I ought not to be going today. And as I write about this now, I think I was right. At lunch time I left the school building, going just across the street to a new, rather small, delicatessen store, recently opened. Mom had given me a quarter for lunch so I had two hot dogs, a knish, French fries, and a mission soda, all for 23 cents. The new mission sodas were only three cents each, so I had two pennies in my pocket afterward.

Back on the school side of the street, I waited for the bell that would summon us into the building. Then I saw them, driving slowly down Blake Avenue, right past me. It wasn’t a long procession because only a few people in my family had cars, so people were kind of squeezed together. After the hearse went by, I recognized some of the family in the cars that followed, but I don’t think they saw me. I felt very strange and scared looking at the hearse carrying death, driving in the street by my school. “That’s my Grandfather’s funeral,” I told my friend. “Nah, that’s not for your Grandfather,” was the response. “No! I mean it! It is for my Grandfather,” I insisted. “Then why are you here?” he asked incredulously. “I don’t know. My mother made me go to school.”

Zaide, my Grandfather, was actually my Great Grandfather: the father of my mother’s father, but that was unknown to me for a long time. He was tall, trim, and formal, in the European style that I knew nothing of. He was always dressed in a suit with a vest and a tie. He spoke only Yiddish and whenever I saw him he would say things to me that I couldn’t understand, but from the expression on his face and the happiness in his eyes I knew it was loving. He would reach down, extend his hand to me, and urge me to take what he held. “Nem, nem,” he would say. When I reached into his hand, there was always a dime.

I wished that I had been able to speak with him, but it was not to be, because he was part of a trap that I had discerned, and into which I was loath to fall. Observation had confirmed that while Zaide spoke only Yiddish, Uncle Israel, who was not as old as Zaide, spoke both Yiddish and English. My parents, younger still, spoke almost exclusively English, but occasionally an unexpectedly elaborate Yiddish was spoken by them. I, being so young, of course, spoke only English. The momentous conclusion I drew from my observations was to affect me for many years. The evidence showed that as one gets older one gradually loses the ability to speak English and eventually comes to speak only Yiddish. This I was determined not to allow; it would never happen to me. Therefore, I deliberately refused to learn Yiddish, and suspected all foreign languages to be insidiously contagious, and a threat to my mother tongue. Studying for my Bar Mitzvah was pure hell, and I fought valiantly, delaying the learning process whenever I could, which only extended the pain I had to suffer.

COMMENTS:

Len's "grandfather" was actually his great-grandfather Solomon Lutsky who died in June 1944.

Crying at Passover

2008-12-25T15:55:00.001-08:00

CRYING AT PASSOVER
Len Klein
Memory Sketch # 05,
January 2001
© LEONARD B. KLEIN

Saratoga Avenue, between Pitkin and Sutter, was where Zayde and Bubbe lived. Their apartment was on the ground floor, to the right off the main entrance to the building. Their living room windows looked out upon the Avenue. For Passover, all of the family would gather in that living room, seated around four or five tables. I don’t know where the living room furniture had been removed to, but the room was empty except for tables and chairs. Seated at the front of the room, with one window on either side of him, was the imposing figure of Zayde. Everyone looked to him for directions about how things were to be done, and I noticed that even Uncle Israel, whom my own mother looked up to, took direction from Zayde. You have to know that I found that to be really remarkable because at that time I still believed that Israel Street or Park, near the Pitkin Theater, was named for Uncle Israel, and I wasn’t to sure about all the other references to the name, Israel. My Uncle, who had two radio programs on WEVD was a very important man.

There was one Passover that my memory keeps returning to; it was the crying Passover. The story of the Exodus was read, in Hebrew and in Yiddish, by Zayde, who had constantly to wipe his eyes. The wine was drunk several times after prayers, the food was brought to the table as it had been before, but this day they cried as the women served and they cried as we ate. Bubbe wasn’t there helping with the food. The passages continued to be read after the meal, but at the end there was no singing, only crying. I didn’t know why. Then when people left the table, I noticed that in twos and threes they went into the bedroom in the back. When I went in, I discovered that Bubbe was there, lying in bed. She hardly moved and I don’t remember her speaking. Why was she in bed during Passover dinner? I asked. Shah, shah, Grandma is dying, I was told.

While we were eating and opening the door for Elienohu to come in and drink the wine, while the story of Passover was being read, and while I said the “fier kashes,” each line spoken in Hebrew, Yiddish, and English, Bubbe was in that room dying? Right there, in the bed, in the house, she was dying? It was all so confusing, and scary at the same time. How did they know she was dying and not just resting? What was going to happen when she died, and she’d still be in the bed? I didn’t want to be in the room when she died and became dead in the bed, so I got out of there quickly. Uncle Jack was in the living room crying very loudly; then someone told me that Bubbe was Uncle Jack’s mother. Upon that realization came the amazing fact that Uncle Israel was also the son of Zaide and Bubbe. But, my mother called Jack her brother and Israel her Uncle, and I knew Zaide and Bubbe were not her parents. After a while, I stopped trying to figure it all out and just accepted that Uncle Jack was my Mom’s brother and Uncle Israel was not, even though they both were brothers. Long after the crying stopped, I still could not make head or tails out of the family relationships.

COMMENTS:

"Zaide"/"Zayde" and "Bubbe" refer to Shlomo/Solomon Lutsky and Rebecca Lutsky (nee Kantotovich), Len's great-grandparents (pictured above). Bubbe Rebecca died in 1941. See link for more information about the Lutsky family. Uncle Jack was Israel's younger brother, only 7 years older than Len's mother.

693 Saratoga Ave was actually located between Blake & Dumont Aves.

The Little Boy Who Taps

2008-12-25T15:52:00.000-08:00

THE LITTLE BOY WHO TAPS
Len Klein
Memory Sketch # 04,
January 2001
© LEONARD B. KLEIN

The candy store was on Blake Avenue, just around the corner from where I lived on Bristol Street. When I was big enough I got permission to go there alone. I felt so very proud whenever I did it. My mother would give me a penny, or sometimes a nickel, so I could buy my own candy by myself. Down the three flights of stairs I’d go, walking out of my building I looked around to see who was there to see me go to the store.

The door to the Candy Store, on which I had to use both hands, always jingled when I pulled it open. At the counter, I would reach up and tap on the marble with the edge of my Nickel or Penny, and keep it up until someone paid attention to me. Since my head barely reached the counter, I couldn’t be sure they would ever notice me without some kind of sound effects. Most of the time, I was greeted with smiles, but sometimes, especially once I had learned to select my candy by myself and just wanted to be sure they knew I was paying for it, the lady behind the counter would snap at me. “Stop that tapping already!” Or she would take my Nickel and with a look of disdain she’d slap it down on the counter as if that would teach me to leave my Nickel there, untended, just lying there, like it was anybody’s nickel. Then who was to know that it was my Nickel? No, no, I was not going to leave my money like that.

Fresh in my mind was the beating my mother had given me for mistakenly putting a dime instead of a penny in the Polly seed machine. Her reaction seemed so out of proportion to what I had done. Ok, it was a dime, but only a dime. I really felt stupid about it, and I didn’t want anyone else to know, but my mother dragged me back to the Candy Store and asked the man if he could retrieve the dime. He said there was no way for him to do that. Only the service man, with his special key, could open the coin box, and he wasn’t due for several days. As soon as my father came home, my mother told him what had happened. The lost dime didn’t seem to upset him they way it did my mother, and he just told me that I have to be more careful. What I learned was that for my mother a dime was a really big deal.

After the dime thing, I didn’t go near those stupid machines for quite a while, but I continued to tap my coin on the marble counter, just to make sure my money was accounted for. Once, upon entering the store, I overheard the Candy Lady say, “That’s the little boy who taps.” No one else; just me, I thought? Was it a bad thing? Was it peculiar? I became more attentive to what my friends did, after all we were about the same height at the counter. They seemed to call out things like: “Lady!” or, “Candy Lady!” sometimes “Missus, Missus!” Well, I supposed I could do that, but it didn’t feel right. I wasn’t going to call out… People that worked in the store were supposed to know when a customer was waiting. Besides, I was afraid I might call out the wrong thing. I don’t really know what that could have been, but I never called out and always tapped.

Spalding Head

2008-12-25T15:44:00.000-08:00

SPALDING HEAD
Len Klein
Memory Sketch # 03,
January 2001
© LEONARD B. KLEIN

The sidewalk in front of 241 Bristol Street was much wider than sidewalks elsewhere, and to us it was like having a play area right in front of your own house. We were always running, jumping, and playing games, my friends and I, right there in front of the house.

My mother had gone to the Grocery Store on Blake Avenue, just around the corner, and I was playing an exciting game of tag with Davie, Lenny, and Danny. I was known to be the fastest kid on the block, especially since I had gotten my new pair of Keds sneakers. I could race with the wind and win. In the games I could usually tag whoever I went for. Yeah, I was fast all right, but my speed was best when going straight ahead. I have to admit that Lenny Strauss was quickest at darting and dodging from right to left. I’m saying that to you now, but in those days I would never admit that Lenny was faster than me, no matter what.

That day, in the game I was ‘IT’ having gotten tagged by Davie who was the slowest of us all. In my overconfident, super speed mode I had stayed tauntingly close to him, too close as it turned out, and he got me before I could get away. With lightening speed I turned around and saw that laughing Lenny had his back to the building wall. In one motion I dashed toward him in full flight. I’d show him who was the fastest on Bristol Street. With unbreakable momentum I extended my body and reached for Lenny, but he wasn’t there. Instead, there was the red brick wall of my own house, and I smashed into it, first with my hand and then with my forehead. Needless to say, I was stunned in more ways than one. How had Lenny gotten away from me, me, the fastest guy on the block, and why was I so stupid as to smash into the brick wall, which really hurt. Moving away from the wall, holding my head I saw my mother walking toward me, and the guys in a semicircle looking wide eyed and scared, except for Lenny who was still laughing.

By the time my mother reached me I could feel the bulge growing on my forehead and it didn’t stop. When it was the size of half a spalding ball, I thought I was growing a second head, and my mother’s upset was starting to scare me. There were other faces around me now and someone said that it was ‘a bile’ and it had to be pressed down with a knife. That really scared me!

Upstairs in our apartment my mother tried to press down the bile with a cold butter knife, and it seemed to respond a little, but not enough to make me stop wondering how I was going to look the next day with half a ball coming out of my head. When my Dad got home, our cousin, Dr. Lutsky was called and he came to the house after dinner. He checked me out and then pressed on my bile even more with a cold metal thing. He said, “Lenny boy, you’ll be all right. Don’t worry. You’re a good boy, Lenny boy.” Dr. Lutsky always said that, "Good boy ..." or "Good girl ...," to everyone he saw. At the very end of the day, in my own bed, I still believed I was really fast, but I was no longer sure I was so smart.

CORRECTIONS:
Based on later stories and conversations, I believe the family lived at 243 Bristol Street, not 241.

See map for Betsy Head Playground, P.S. 175, and 243 Bristol St
See picture of 243 Bristol St circa 1940-1941