I have to thank Randy Seaver for his challenging Saturday night fun posts that help me get out of my genea-blogging slumps. This time around he asks us to:
1) List your 16 great-great-grandparents in pedigree chart order. List their birth and death years and places.
2) Figure out the dominant ethnicity or nationality of each of them.
3) Calculate your ancestral ethnicity or nationality by adding them up for the 16 - 6.25% for each (obviously, this is approximate).
4) If you don't know all 16 of your great-great-grandparents, then do it for the last full generation you have.
5) Write your own blog post, or make a comment on Facebook or in this post.
I followed Randy's advice and grabbed my info from a RM4 Ahnentafel list:
1. Avraham Benjamin KIELCZEWSKI: b.? m.? died bef 1 Jun 1918. POLAND
2. Zywa Golda KRUG: b.? m.? died bef 1 Jun 1918. POLAND
3. Haim Shmuel KALMANIEWSKI: b.? m.? d.? POLAND
4. ???: b.? m.? d.? POLAND
5. Shlomo SMORGONSKI: born abt 1836. m.? d.? POLAND
6. Hanna Minka ?: b.? m.? d.? POLAND
7. Jacob SEGALCHIK: b.? m.? d.? POLAND
8. Ita ?: b.? m.? d.? POLAND
9. Jacob Yitzhak DOMBEK: b.? m.? d.? POLAND
10. Sarah Rachel KARPIK: born abt 1861 in Sterdyn, Sokolow, Lublin, Poland. m.? died abt 1941 in Sterdyn, Sokolow, Lublin, Poland. POLAND
11. Avram KREPLAK: b.? married 1874 in Kosow Lacki, Poland. d.? POLAND
12. Dobe JABLONKA: b.? married 1874 in Kosow Lacki, Poland. d.? POLAND
13. Aaron ZINBERG: b.? m.? d.? RUSSIAN EMPIRE
14. Sarah ?: b.? m.? d.? RUSSIAN EMPIRE
15. Joseph BENDITOVICH: b.? m.? d.? RUSSIAN EMPIRE
16. Miriam ?: b.? m.? d.? RUSSIAN EMPIRE
Hmmm. I have a lot of work to do. For starters, I know I have looked for all of these ancestors on JewishGen, but those databases are far from being complete. My next task should be to get some microfilm from the LDS, but how is that really going to help me? I can't read Russian or Polish or Latin or whatever language any of these records will be in. If they even exist.
At least I can pretty firmly say that I am 75%/25% Polish-Russian, which I have known pretty much all my life. And as I have written here before, the next generation after this one had a 75%/25% split for those who perished in the Holocaust. Yes, the entire Polish side. It's a good thing my grandfather fled to Russia.
So, does anyone have suggestions how I should go about filling in all these question marks?
I am in a bit of a stunned haze. I just confirmed that my grandfather had a twin brother which nobody knew absolutely anything about!
Well, let me elaborate.
I got my hands on some documentation that reveals a lot of information about my paternal grandfather's family. For instance, his birth date. Yes, I know it sounds strange that nobody knew when my grandfather was born, but both he and my grandmother never gave their actual date of birth. They used to say that they were born close to Passover or Hanukkah, but never an actual date. To this day I am not even certain of my grandmother's birth year, let alone an exact date.
Some more information revealed the correct spelling of my great-grandmother's maiden name as well as her full patronymic, Chaja Chaimowna Szmuelowna née Kalmaniewski, which in turn gives me the full name of my great-great-grandfather, Chaim Szmuel Kalmaniewski. There is also a lot of additional information about siblings and collateral lines that I need to dissect and analyze further.
I also found out that they were not originally from the town that we always thought they were from. The documents state that my great-grandfather, Wolf Lejb Abramowicz Beniaminowicz Kielczewski, a shoemaker from Prżytuly, gmina Kubra, was only temporarily in Radziłów. This town is just southwest of Radziłów and there are a number of towns with the name Prżytuly in the general area. For all intents and purposes Przytuly is part of Radzilow. Yes, it's officially 4 miles away and yes, it's a different town, but it's so tiny that it makes Radzilow look like a metropolis. Anyone living in Przytuly surely came to Radzilow, the "big" town, for many things, whether for goods, or the market, etc.
But let's get to the real discovery. While sifting through all this new information I stumbled onto the fact that my grandfather, Abram Beniamin Kielczewski, had the same birthday as his brother, Chaim Szmuel Kielczewski. At first I though I was mistaken, because from a page of testimony that my own grandfather filled out at Yad vashem he stated that this brother was born two years before what we knew was his birth year. Hence I always thought this brother was 2 years older.
I checked back with the family tree that started my research, my sister's roots project and there is no Chaim listed. Instead there is a Szmuel. My sister did this project about 6 years after my grandfather passed away so the information had to have come from my grandmother. Did she know about it? I don't know what to think:
But then several other pieces started falling into place. For example, they both have the same exact registration date and birth dates. They are registered one right after the other. They were both named after both their grandfathers (not necessarily evidence that they are twins, but still a nice touch).
So we went in deeper and found the word twin (двойной in Russian) in the documents!
When I first learned of the possibility that my grandfather had a twin brother, I called my dad and asked him if he had ever heard of anything like this. He said he did not and that he would talk to his younger brothers (still waiting to hear what they know, but I doubt it will be a different story). My father even called his elderly aunt on his mother's side to see if she knew anything about it, which she didn't.
We are all in kind of a shock about this new information. And I am full of questions. Why did my grandfather never mention his twin? Why did he never tell anyone his real birth date? Does anyone in the family have any vital records for my grandfather, like his ID card or death certificate? What happened to all that stuff?
Here's what I know about my grandfather's twin:
Chaim Szmuel Kielczewski was born and lived his whole life in Radzilow. Like his father, he too was a shoemaker. He married Frida Krok and they had two sons, Yitzhak and Benjamin. The entire family was burned alive in a barn with most of the Jews in Radzilow on July 7th, 1941.
My initial thoughts are that the painful memory of his twin brother and his family were too hard for my grandfather to bare. Since they had all perished before any of his own children were born, my guess is that he chose not to speak about them or mention the fact that he had a twin brother. I am not sure if it was just sadness for losing all of them or whether there were feelings of guilt for leaving everyone behind to go live a new life in Israel (back then still Palestine).
I was almost 10 when my grandfather passed away so I never really got the chance to know him very well and I was too young to ask him about his family. I have very good memories of him and of time we spent together, but I don't remember him as a happy person. I can't remember him ever laughing or even smiling. And, of course, I can't put myself in his position or even start to understand what a man goes through when he learns that everyone he knew was burned alive in a barn. But I would think that talking about them and telling stories about them would keep their memory alive. It would help future generation remember them and what happened to them.
I'm not sure why a 2 year difference means so much to me but for some reason it does. I mean, I knew about Chaim and his family before all this came to light. I knew he was my grandfather's brother. So why is it so important that they were twins? I think that perhaps knowing such an intimate fact, something that came from a completely different source, makes him and his family more real somehow. I guess that in the void of information and darkness that exists about my grandfather's past, this is like someone turned on a flood light.
My grandfather had three sons. The oldest, my father, Avshalom, who was born in 1945 was given a name that literally translates to 'Father of Peace' because he was born at the end of the war. The middle brother, my uncle Arieh, was named after their grandfather, Lejb (which means Leo or Lion).
But here's the interesting twist. We always thought that the youngest son, my uncle Chaim, was named after his maternal grandfather, but we now know he shares a name with his uncle, my grandfather's twin brother, Chaim Szmuel Kielczewski. (I just spoke to my uncle Chaim and he confirmed that he has never heard about a twin brother before and was quite shocked as well. He has all the documentation I was looking for and send it with my parents on their upcoming trip here in less than two weeks!)
In a few days, on July 7th, it will be the 68th anniversary of the atrocities that happened in Radzilow. I think that for the first time in my life, this date is going to mean something real to me (other than the fact that my favorite nephew turns five).
Yesterday afternoon we were blessed with another beautiful baby girl. We decided to call her Bella Brannon Dekel which is a great combination of her ancestry and a very cool name. My wife's maiden name is Brannon and that lineage can be traced back 11 generations. The Dekel family name is relatively new and was changed from my father's Kilchevsky (Kielczewski) by his father. But the name Bella is a whole other story.
Bella "Beile" Kreplak was my great-grandmother. I have very little information about her and most of it is from oral interviews and a single page of testimony in the Yad Vashem Database. Here is what I know (treat this is unsourced information, but it's as good as I can get right now):
Bella was born in Warsaw about 1884 to Avram Kreplak and Dobe Jablonka. She was one of 8 children in her family (Moshe, Bella, Yossel, Rivka, Haya, Esther, Meir & Noeh). She married Hanoch Meir "Heynoch" Dombek probably in Warsaw before 1905 (when her first child was born). Heynoch and Beile had 9 children and lived at 16 Woloska Street in Warsaw before the Holocaust. Their children were Moshe Mordechai, Zipora "Feige", Tamar "Tana", Hava, Michael Haim "Misha" (my grandfather), Leah, Arieh "Leib", Haya & Rivka.
Bella, her husband and 8 of 9 children perished in the holocaust (the 9th child was my grandfather who escaped east to Russia). I don't know their exact fate, but from bits and pieces of what I remember hearing, they died of Typhus in the Warsaw Ghetto. I am sure that if I dig in the Polish Archives I will be able to find more information, but that will have to wait for now. It is assumed that Bella died in 1943.
The translated page of testimony about Bella from Yad Vashem reads as follows:
Detail text:
Bela Dombek was born in Warsaw in 1884. Prior to WWII she lived in Warsaw, Poland. During the war she was in Warsaw, Poland. Bela perished in 1943 in Warsaw, Poland. This information is based on a Page of Testimony (displayed on left) submitted on 26-Jun-1955 by Rivka Geiger.
Full Record Details for Dombek Bela
Source Pages of Testimony
Last Name DOMBEK
First Name* BELA
Sex Female
Date of Birth 1884
Place of Birth WARSAW,WARSZAWA,WARSZAWA,POLAND
Name of 1st Child LEIB
Date of Birth of 1st Child 1928
Name of 2nd Child* LEA
Date of Birth of 2nd Child 1926
Name of 3rd Child KHAIA
Date of Birth of 3rd Child 1930
Permanent residence WARSAW,WARSZAWA,WARSZAWA,POLAND
Place during the war WARSAW,WARSZAWA,WARSZAWA,POLAND
Place of Death WARSAW,WARSZAWA,WARSZAWA,POLAND
Date of Death 1943
Type of material Page of Testimony
Submitter's Last Name* GEIGER
Submitter's First Name RIVKA
Registration date 26/06/1955
* Indicates an automatic Translation From Hebrew
Detail comments:
http://www.yadvashem.org/wps/portal/!ut/p/_s.7_0_A/7_0_FL/.cmd/acd/.ar/sa.portlet.VictimDetailsSubmitAction/.c/6_0_9D/.ce/7_0_V9/.p/5_0_P1/.d/2?victim_details_id=1604044&victim_details_name=++Bela&q1=53EyGfyZ998%3D&q2=nCb0IKBT2lJyrAw9hs3KZKtWDxcmsb7P&q3=VlWlwPDAqiE%3D&q4=VlWlwPDAqiE%3D&q5=5%2BnqSfv9YJY%3D&q6=rFcgqeCcjDU%3D&q7=bxVfqQaN%2Ft%2BRpyXBct1qE2j6IQqmeLWD&frm1_npage=4#7_0_V9
Update: My mother read this post and pointed out that the dates above are incorrect. She is completely right about that, because these birth years do not make much sense. But you have to remember a few things about Yad Vashem Pages of Testimony - Most of them were filled out a decade or two after people left Europe and not always by very close relatives. These sources should be treated carefully because they may contain mistakes. For Example, the same submitter filled out a page (actually two) about my own grandfather, who was alive at the time. Still, for anyone researching Jewish Genealogy, the Yad Vashem database is a must. Thanks for the comment Mom!
Had it not been for my genealogy research and newly found obsession with family history we would probably never have come up with the name Bella. I am honored and proud to be able to name my youngest daughter after my great grandmother. Two Bellas - 5 generations apart.
I've been working with Jose Gutstein who maintains the excellent Radzilow.com site in the past few weeks to try to find some of my ancestors in the region. I really have very little information to go on as far as my father's paternal side is concerned. Almost no documentation and very few photographs.
One of the things I have uncovered so far is a name of my grandfather's aunt, Leah Kielczewski, born about 1877 as well as the full name of my 2nd-great-grandmother, Zywa Golda Kielczewski (nee Krug). All I knew about her previously was that her name was Golda.
Another interesting thing to notice is the spelling change from Kielczewski to Kilchevsky. According to "Jewish Family Names and Their Origins: An Etymological Dictionary" (By Heinrich Walter Guggenheimer, Eva H. Guggenheimer, Published by KTAV Publishing House, Inc., 1992, ISBN 0881252972, 9780881252972, 882 pages) the name comes from one of the villages Kielczew (Siedlce, Kalisz):
By the way, I highly kind of (see UPDATE below) recommend this book for anyone doing Jewish Genealogy. You can view it on Google Books here.
UPDATE: One of the comments I got about my recommendation lead me to use Alexander Beider's books rather than Guggenheimer's. The only problem is that when I go to Google Books, only 2 of 9 books have a snippet view available and all others are not available. The nearest library holding these books is at UGA which is 65 miles away. So for now I'll just have to make do with what I can.
Jose added a beautiful page to his site with some information about my grandfather. Please go check it out here.
Thanks Jose!
When my parents came to visit last month, I asked my mother to bring as much family history material as she could fit in her luggage. At first she said it wasn't a problem but when she saw the amount of photos and albums she started to get worried. Eventually we agreed that she would bring the best of the best, including my sister's entire roots project.
So it's been some time since I scanned everything and I am finally starting to get around to sorting everything and getting organized. I thought I would share some of these treasures with my readers.
First is probably the oldest photograph I have from my mother's side of the family. The photo below is in very bad shape. It was printed on cardboard and is severely deteriorating. It is the picture of my great grandfather, Moshe Zinberg, probably in his 20's, which would date the photo back to around 1920:
On the back of the photo is something that I believe to be a Russian newspaper. I am not sure how the cardboard photograph ended up glued to a piece of newspaper. You can also see my grandmother's handwriting, where she wrote her father's name in Hebrew:
Next up is my father side of the family and once again, a very old photo. In this photo of the Smorgonski family you can see my great grandfather Avraham Smorgonski and his second wife, Henia Segalchik. Henia was the sister of Avraham's first wife, Esther Segalchik, who died between 1917-1918. You can also see 6 of Avraham's 7 children:
Top row (left to right): Zipora (my grandmother), Shlomo and Pesia
Bottom row (left to right): Ida (Ita), Joseph Haim and Haya
Everyone in the picture except for the top row of older siblings perished in the holocaust. They were murdered by the Polish villagers in their town of Dolhinov by being herded into a barn that was then set on fire.
Staying a while longer with my grandmother, Zipora, we have some truly incredible identity cards for her and her husband, my grandfather, Avraham Kilchevsky, from Israel in 1939-1940:
But who issued identity cards in Israel nine years prior to it gaining Independence? See below:
The Government of Palestine? But hold on one second before you jump to conclusions and we start another 5000 year war. Palestine at the time was not an independent country. It was a British Colony. Like half the world at the time.
Now back to my mother's parents. I have never seen these photos from their wedding before. These were taken in Beltz, USSR (now Beltsy, Moldova) on October 6th 1945:
Aren't they a beautiful couple? Here's a close-up:
I loved my grandfather very much. He was a cool guy and always fun to hang out with. He was always taking things apart, fixing them and putting them back together. He had a tool shed inside his apartment. He once made a guy sell him a toy that he bought for his son so that he could give it to me. It was an elliptical race track and had these little cars that had rechargeable batteries. They were always breaking down and we would take them apart and fix them.
I know this has been a long post full of big images, but I will leave you with two more. The first is a typical pose for my grandfather. I call it the "What's the Problem?" pose:
That's him on the beach at the Dead Sea in Israel where he and my grandmother used to vacation often with their friends. I remember going out there with them several times.
And here's how you relax on your Dead Sea vacation. You just get in the water and float your troubles away:
Submitted for the 6th edition of the Smile for the Camera blog carnival. Theme: Funny Bone.
I guess it's blog carnival post day today. I really enjoy all the different genea-blogs about photos and so I decided to submit my entry as well. The instructions said to "Show us that picture that never fails to bring a smile to your face! An amusing incident, a funny face, an unusual situation. Share!"
I think I have a winner here with this photo taken at the most critical moment of my Brit:
As the Rabbi leans over for the delivery of a most precision cut, my paternal grandfather, Avraham Kilchevsky, just can't bare to watch. The look on his face is priceless. It's an amazing blend of extreme happiness, some sadness, pain and sheer terror.
You see, I was his first grandchild. The first of nine to come after me. He was a very religious man who went to synagogue and prayed every day, so this was a big deal for him. He and his sister, Sarah, were the only ones from their family who survived the holocaust, so this was the continuation of our family.
You can just stare at this picture and feel all these emotions he is experiencing at the exact moment the shutter snapped.
But you can also look at this picture and laugh every time. Which is pretty much what I do.
I don't even know where to start. I guess this will turn into kind of a to-do list.
1) Uncle Glenn sent his father's medals and they are amazing. I will put up a post shortly with some pictures and more stories. Apparently this was a swimming family, including Olympic trials.
2) The Geni.com site is a hit with everyone. People are logging in, sharing information and updating the tree. I think this will be fantastic.
3) I've found a lot of similar (and rare) surnames in the Geni.com site and I have contacted a lot of people with questions about possible family connections.
4) I've done a lot of work on the Smorgonski (paternal grandmother) and Kilchevsky (paternal grandfather) trees with the help of Eilat Gordin Levitan who runs the Dolhinov site.
5) I have been reading a lot of testimonies by my relatives from Dolhinov about their escapes, joining the partisans to fight the nazis (no freakin' way do I capitalize that word, no matter what spell-check thinks) and memories of their beloved town. I found the Yizkor book (online at the NYPL) where my grand-uncle Shlomo Shamgar wrote some beautiful chapters. I am going to try to do him justice and translate them and post them here and on the other sites (JewishGen and Eilat's site).
6) I found a not so distant cousin on my wife's side who was the Governor of West Virginia in the early 1990's. I will have a post about him as well.
7) And I have a bunch of photos I need to scan and tell stories about.
8) I backed up my blogs to WordPress after reading about one too many blogs being crushed by the Google empire.
So much to do, so little time.
Where have I disappeared to? I have been busy. Busy with work, family and some more research. I have made tremendous amounts of progress, mostly by reaching out to people for help. I received a gigantic GEDCOM from a distant cousin of my wife's from the Bishop side and started adding it into my files. I only did this because this particular GEDCOM (as opposed to almost all the others I have seen) had a lot of sources and citations. I also got some additional information on the Kilchevsky (or should I just give that spelling up and go with the original Kielczewski?) side of the family. I also signed up with Footnote.com and started looking through their 43+ Million records. So, I have been a little busy.
Anyway, back to the medals:
1. Go Back and Cite Your Sources!
50 Citations - Platinum Medal
I am well into the hundreds here. And I have barely scratched the surface. Not only am I adding sources for everything I have, I also need to verify everything I have added from others. Lots to do.
2. Back Up Your Data!
This is definitely an important task. Let's see where I stand:
A. Prepare a comprehensive backup plan for your digital research files and a security plan for your hard copies and photos - I will make daily backups locally and then move all my files to my external drive weekly. I will also burn an image of the external drive to DVD once a month. Eventually all information will be secured off-line as well.
B. Secure your hard copies and photos in waterproof containers - That will have to wait another day. I don't have many documents and photos to begin with, so this became a lower priority.
C. Backup all your data using a flash drive, an external drive, CDs, DVDs, or an online resource - Done!
D. Have all your hard copies and photos scanned and secure them either in a fire-proof safe or off-site in a safety-deposit box/secure environment - It will take me a long time to scan everything I have, even though it's not much. And as far as off-site storage, that will have to wait as well.
E. All your data is backed up digitally and secured physically and you can recover from any disaster while losing only one month or less worth of research - Digitally yes, physically no (see D).
Completed Task A&C - Silver Medal - I have work to do.
3. Organize Your Research!
Complete five or more tasks - Platinum Medal - I have done everything but F. I'll work on that.
4. Write, Write, Write!
A. Write a summary of what your blog is about and post it on your blog – you may not have done this since you started the blog and it is a great way to have new readers learn more about your site. - This was my first post, July 29th, 2008.
B. Participate in a genealogy or family history related blog carnival. - I submitted one of my posts to the Carnival of Central and Eastern European Genealogy.
C. Prepare several posts in draft mode (if possible with your blog platform) and pre-publish. - Still a no on this one. I am an impulse blogger who can't pre-publish.
D. Write a brief biographical sketch on one of your ancestors. - Done.
E. Sign up to host a future carnival - Probably not going to happen just yet because of newbieness.
Complete any three tasks - Gold Medal
5. Reach Out & Perform Genealogical Acts of Kindness!
A. Comment on a new (to you) genea-blog. - Pretty much every day.
B. Join another genea-blogger’s blog network on Facebook Blog Networks. - Multi-done.
C. Invite other genealogists to join Facebook. - I decided to give this one my own spin. I have been talking about genealogy at every opportunity and getting people interested. I even hosted our monthly neighborhood poker night and after I was eliminated I checked some people's ancestors. So I will include this one as done!
D. Assist another researcher with a research request or look-up. - I have contributed to several researchers with small amounts of information.
E. Participate in an indexing project. - Not done. I am sure there is something that I could have done, but I just don't know where to start yet.
F. Join a genealogical, historical, heritage or lineage society. - I did not join the two I wanted (I will in the near future) but instead signed up for three SIG on JewishGen. So that should cover it.
Complete five or more tasks - Platinum Medal
Here's the final tally:
3 Platinum
1 Gold
1 Silver
This has been a lot of fun to do. Not only did I learn some valuable lessons about genealogical research, but I also managed to step up my research and incorporate some structure in it. Whatever I have not completed, I will strive to do in the next few weeks. Thanks to all who organized and spent time making sure we all have a good time.
