Almost like an Auntie

11 Underwood Street

This pair of houses is at the end of a terrace in Underwood Street, in Mile End New Town in the East End of London. The house on the right is number 13, with a confectioner's shop on the ground floor - a veritable 'corner shop', very convenient for any children living nearby, and there were a few, next door at number 11.  This house seems to have played a significant role in the lives of my Frankenstein family in their early days in London.

Mutual ignorance
At this point I ask you to bear in mind that 10 years ago, neither I nor anyone else in my own Frankenstein branch knew of the existence of the family of Rachel Frankenstein, who is the central character of this part of the family story. Nor did we know of the existence of Abram Rajn's family, and how they are connected to us. The ignorance was total, and mutual.

None of us knew anything. The links which appear to have been so strong 100 years ago had grown weaker over the generations, and all but disappeared. All but: the one exception was a vestige of a family Tree reconstructed by Rajn and Boll cousins in the USA, who knew they were linked to each other by the two Frankenstein sisters, Tauba and Rywka Laja. They also knew there were more Frankenstein cousins somewhere, but they didn't know who we were, or where to find us. You can see how we found each other here: Finding more new cousins.

Since then we've got our collective heads together, rummaged through archives, searched the far corners of the internet, walked the streets, shared photos, you name it. We even have a Facebook Group with over 100 members, all Children of Frankenstein ....

Back to number 11
I introduced the house in a couple of posts two years ago - It's Rajning Cousins, and 11 Underwood Street - I but didn't go on to write up the stories of the people involved.

Here's what we know so far. First, the dates we have are:

1905: baby Jacob
The first mention we have of the house is in March 1905, when baby Jacob is born there to Morris Lefcovitch and his wife Rachel Leah Frankenstein. 

Rachel's father Israel Jacob had died in Poland some time in the mid-late 1870s, and her mother Sarah came to London a few years later with Rachel, and her siblings Boruch (Barnett) and Bajla (Betsy); Rachel's older brother Jonah (Jacob) was already there - his first child Moses was born in London in 1879. Rachel and Morris were not in this house in the 1901 Census - they were in Spelman Street, another place that figures repeatedly in the family story - so they must have moved to Underwood Street some time between that Census and the birth of baby Jacob in March 1905.

Rachel and Morris are still there in April 1911, when the next Census was taken, and we have no documents showing them anywhere else until they set off for (another) new life in Australia in January 1913.

But before they go, they play host to a couple of family events that allow us to firm up our understanding of how some of the members of our Frankenstein clan relate to each other. 

1907: Abraham and Bloomah
The first occasion is the marriage of Abraham Isaac Ray and Bloomah Freedman in 1907 (see It's Rajning Cousins)

Abraham Isaac Ray, aged 22, is our Abram Icek Rajn, b 1883 according to the Polish records, and he is marrying Bloomah Freedman, also 22. His father, "Harris Barnett Ray", is Hersz Ber Rajn, who had died in 1894. Hersz Ber was originally married to Tauba Frankensztajn, and she is the mother of Abram. However, she died in 1887, and Hersz Ber re-married, this time to Tauba's younger sister Rywka Laja Frankensztajn.

But first, why are the happy couple both down as of "11 Underwood Street"? The Lefcovitches haven't moved out, indeed they are still there in 1911, as we've seen. Is there a family connection? Specifically, is there a Frankenstein connection? Is Rachel Frankenstein Lefcovitch connected to Abram's mother, Tauba Frankensztajn Rajn? It turns out we've asked this question before, and the answer is: Yes.

In Two stones: son of Leib, we pulled together all the clues, and concluded that these two families are indeed one. The link between the characters in this story is that Rachel's father Israel Jacob turns out to be a brother of Wolek, the father of Tauba and Rywka Laja. So Rachel is a first cousin to the two sisters, and first cousin once-removed to Tauba's son Abram. So it made sense for her to host his wedding. She's almost like an Auntie to him.

1916: Freda and Aaron

In Is this the Missing Link? we looked at the marriage a few years later of Aaron Hyman and Freda Rayne (1916).  Freda is the daughter of Rywka Laja Frankensztajn and Hersz Ber Rajn, which makes her a half-sister to Abram. In fact, I am reliably advised that because they have the same father, and their mothers (Tauba and Rywka Laja) are sisters, Abram and Freda should be ranked even closer - they're three-quarter siblings.

There was also a what-house-is-it clue in that marriage. Freda's husband-to-be Aaron Hyman gave as his address 28 Blythe Street, which we recognised as the home of Barnett Frankenstein. Barnett of course is the brother of Rachel Frankenstein Lefcovitch. So Freda has the same relationship to Barnett as Abram does to Rachel - they're first cousins once-removed. He's almost like an Uncle to her.

1912: Fanny and Lewis

Then, in August 1912, just a few months before they set off for Australia, Morris and Rachel Lefcovitch play host to another happy couple - Louis Allerhand and Fanny Shalinsky - see Another Link in the Chain.

Fanny is a shadowy figure. She appears in the 1901 Census as a grand-daughter of Rachel's mother, Sarah Frankenstein. She is shown as born in Gombin, the family's home-town, around 1887, but we know little about her parents. We see on the Certificate that her father was Samuel Shalinsky, but we have found no further trace of him either in Poland or in England. As for her mother, we have to presume that she was a daughter, as yet unidentified, of Sarah and Israel Jacob. In other words, Fanny's mother is a sister of Rachel Frankenstein Lefcovitch.

Fanny is not with Sarah's family in London in the 1891 Census, so a working assumption is that her mother had died in Poland some time in the 1890s, and Fanny - probably no older than 10 or 12 - was sent over to live with Grandma Sarah. In the 1911 Census Sarah is around 70, and boarding with an unconnected family, but I have not yet found Fanny. Sarah died in June 1912.

All this suggests that when the time came for Fanny to marry Lewis Allerhand in August 1912, it made sense for the bride and groom to be staying at the house of Morris and Rachel Lefcovitch. After all, Rachel really was her Auntie.

1912: Uncle Morris

And there's one more touch that cements the relationship between our two Frankenstein branches. One of the witnesses to Fanny Shalinsky's marriage is Morris Frankenstein. This is Moszek Boruch, a brother of Tauba and Rywka Laja. If you've been paying proper attention, you will recall that Morris's father Wolek is brother to Fanny's mother's father Israel Jacob.

All of which makes Morris a first cousin to Fanny's mother (whoever she is). So he's a first cousin once-removed to Fanny herself, and thus a very suitable witness to her marriage. He's almost like an Uncle to her.

11 Underwood Street

Ding-dong! 11 Underwood Street? The bells in my head started ringing. Where had I seen this address?

I recently received the Marriage Certificate of my grandfather's cousin Abram Icek Rajn and Bloomah Freedman, who married in the East End of London in 1907. This was the address they gave. I was sure I'd seen it somewhere before. But maybe it was a different number? Maybe it was Underhill, or Underwater, or Under-something-else?

So I checked in my MacFamilyTree software, which knows everything. Well, everything I've ever told it, and since forgotten. This is what I got when I did a search for 'Underwood':

That's 13 people, all associated with Underwood something. So the bells had good reason to ring! Setting aside the two Asofs and the Faigin, who lived at number 10 and who are on my paternal side (more on that later), there are 10 people here, all on my mother's Frankenstein side, and all at number 11. Not all at the same time, though they might just about have fitted in. NB: the dates shown are their dates of birth, not when they lived in the house.

Some of my cousins from the Hyman, Rajn and Frankenstein families will recognise one or two names here. Many will not recognise any. I had never heard of any of them until I started researching my family history. And yet here they are, all at 11 Underwood Street in the Mile End New Town area of the East End over a period of 10 or 12 years at the beginning of the 20th Century.

I'm going to try to follow them in and out of the house, and maybe speculate a bit on what brought them there.

But first I wanted to find the house.

Easier said than done.

There's no such street. It's had its name changed, and it's been Underwood Road for 80, maybe even 100 years. I think it was probably changed because there's another 'Underwood Street' about a mile away, so they changed one of them to 'Road' to avoid confusion.

I was so pleased to find the street that I wasn't thinking straight when I was trying to decide where I thought the house would have been. The whole street has been demolished and rebuilt, and while the even numbers (to the right of this photo) are probably more or less where they stood 100 years ago, the odd-numbered side has been altered completely. I'm standing at the bottom end of the street, on the corner, and I fancied #11 would have been more or less where that first tree is, so that's the photo I took.

I should have turned round.

There's a short continuation of Underwood Street (I still can't get used to calling it "Road") behind me. I had noticed it, but because the even-numbered houses started at #2 parallel to me, I presumed that that was the beginning of the street, and that the little street over the way was something different. I didn't even check.

I only found this out later, when I got to the local Archives. This is from a Land Registry map from 1914:

Some time in the 1930s, this map had been annotated by the kind people at the Land Registry, and they seem to have randomly pencilled in some of the house numbers. They must have known I was coming. In the short section of Underwood Street, to the left, they've marked #1 and #13, the houses at either end of the block. You might need a magnifying glass to make them out, but the numbers are there.

So #11 must be one house before the end of the block, next door to #13. Opposite the house are the buildings of St Anne's Catholic Church, and no houses, so the even-side numbering did indeed start opposite where I had been standing for the photo, with the block known as the Metropolitan Buildings, dating from the 1860s. Counting along, I reckon #10 must be at the right-hand end of the part shown here, where it says "-olitan". These were tiny apartments, model homes for their day I suppose. The building was 4 or 5 stories high, and very solidly built; I think it was taken down some 40 or 50 years ago..

As well as the church, you can see a couple of other essential ingredients for early 20th Century living in the vicinity - they had a Pub (PH - Public House) just round the corner in Albert Street, with a strategically placed Urinal just outside. 

And according to the Post Office Directory, the corner houses doubled as equally essential shops: #13 was a confectioner's, #15 a dairy, and #2 a tobacconist.

And then I found a photo, on the British History Online site:

Underwood Street, #1-#13

The row of tiny cottages dates from the early 1850s, and it looks like they had two rooms upstairs, probably bedrooms, and two down, one of which opened directly onto the street. Looking at the Land Registry plan again, you can see that each house extended out the back on the right-hand side, creating an irregularly-shaped yard. This would have given room for a kitchen at the back of the building, and possibly a toilet at the end. If the upper storey was also extended, there may even have been a bathroom. 

And at the far end of the row you can see the shop at #13, with #11 just before it.

And now? This is the current Google Street View:

The whole block is now part of a school playground, a lovely open space for children in the heart of the East End. And counting two of these fence panels as more or less the width of each cottage, I reckon #11 would be situated between the larger tree and the yellow street sign.

Ding-dong! In my mind's eye, I rang at the door. Well I knocked actually, they didn't have bells in those days. Someone opened the door, and I explained who I was .....

- = = = = = = = = = -

That's enough for the moment. We'll look in more detail at the people who lived here in another post.

It's Rajning cousins

When I first got in touch a few years back with my Third Cousins in the USA, Fran, Joyce and Dana, they sent me a typewritten Tree, compiled in 1999, that included Abraham Icek Rajn, half-brother of Fran's grandmother Frajda. 

* * Warning: this gets pretty convoluted, but then these things usually do * *

First, a bit of family history. If you're not feeling really fresh, you can skip this bit. I'll understand. Some days I can't get my head round it myself. 

So:

Frajda Rajn's mother was Rywka Laja Frankensztajn; her father was Hersz Ber Rajn. Hersz Ber had previously been married to Rywka Laja's sister Tauba (see the clip from the Tree above), who had 4 children with him, including Abraham Icek, and then sadly died. So, according to custom at the time, Hersz Ber then married his deceased wife's sister (Rywka Laja) with whom he had a further 3 children, including  the afore-mentioned Frajda, and then passed away himself. If you're still with us, Rywka Laja then took a second husband, Herszl Boll, with whom she had a further 6 children. So there's half-siblings on all sides.

Abraham Icek Rajn
Abraham Icek was the only one of Hersz Ber Rajn and Tauba Frankensztajn's 4 children to survive into adulthood; the other 3 had all died in infancy. The Tree also showed 3 children for Abraham, but it didn’t have the name of his wife. Two of his children appear with anglicised names: Ben and Esther, whilst the third has the Yiddish name Tauba. There was a suggestion they might have gone to France. This was all anyone had about them.

I had located Abraham in the Polish records, where he appears as Abram Icek, born 1883. However, I didn't find anything further on him - no reference to a marriage, or to any children that might be his. I wasn’t sure whether the anglicised names of his children in the Tree were an indication that the family had emigrated from Poland to an English-speaking country, or if it was just the way they were referred to in my cousins' family. They didn't know either. I didn’t attempt to follow them up.

Out of the blue

Then, out of the blue, a couple of weeks ago, I was contacted by a person with the surname Raine, about a DNA match he had with one of my other Frankenstein cousins whose DNA account I manage. We couldn’t find a Morris link - which is what he was looking for - but I wondered if the Raine name might be significant. We haven’t found a Raine link yet either, but it did set me off looking at our Rajns again.

And once I started looking, I pretty quickly found Abram Icek and his family.

In London.

There they were, in the 1911 UK Census, as Abram and Blooma Rayne with the first two children, Bernard and Debbe. Hetty was born a couple of years later. All three children were born in the East End of London, between 1908 and 1913.

Go back to what my cousins had on their Tree: Bernard is Ben, Debbe is Taube, Esther is Hetty. And Rajn is Rayne. These are their cousins - or at least, they are Fran's mother's half-Second Cousins. Joyce and Dana are a bit more distant - they are the great-grandchildren of Hersz Ber Rajn's second wife, with her second husband. So maybe they're step-half-Second Cousins??

Mystery cousins

There's another family of Fran's cousins - Alan and Evelyn, also grandchildren of Frajda - who live not too far from me. When I went to see them a year or two ago to swap notes, they mentioned some cousins they vaguely remembered hearing about, who lived near them in London when they were young. They couldn't place who they were. I thought perhaps they might have been one or other of our Frankensteins that were in London around that time, including my mother's family - her father was a First Cousin to Frajda, and they came to London at the same time, in 1913. We couldn't place them, though, and we left it there.

Now I think we've found out who these mystery cousins were - they're Abram Icek and his family. Abram is closer to Alan and Evelyn than my Frankensztajns were - he's their grandmother Frajda's half brother - same father, different mother - though the mothers are sisters, of course. Is there a word for that relationship?

What's in a name?
And, of course, there's more. Here's Abram Icek's marriage certificate:

Abraham Isaac Ray marries Bloomah Freedman on 3 March 1907, at Great Alie Street Synagogue in the East End. His father is shown as 'Harris Barnett Ray' - that's Hersz Ber Rajn to you and me. What's interesting about that is that Hersz Ber had died 13 years previously, in 1894, and had never left Poland. Abraham had anglicised his deceased father's Yiddish names, using versions that had been current amongst Jews in England for over a century - Hersz becomes Harris, Ber becomes Barnett, and no-one has to explain how to pronounce or spell them.

I have managed to trace a few records for Bernard, Debbe and Hetty, the children of Abraham and Bloomah. They all married and had children, one each so far as I can ascertain, all born in London just before or just after WW2. These children are my generation, they may still be around. The next challenge is to find them.

Ding-dong
And, of course, there's more still. On their marriage certificate, Abraham and Bloomah gave the address 11 Underwood Street. That rang a bell. Hadn't I come across that address somewhere before?

But that story warrants a post of its own.

The Prayer Books of Gombin

A year ago I took part in a visit to Gombin in Poland, home town of my grandfather Lajb Frankensztajn. I went along with a few other members of the Gombin Society from the USA and the UK, all of us descendants of Jewish inhabitants of the town. We were there for a weekend of events commemorating the town’s former Jewish community, which was wiped out in the Holocaust. Several members of my own Gombin family perished at that time, including my grandfather’s two sisters, their husbands and most of their children, possibly his mother (though she may have died a year or two before the War, we don’t know), and many of his cousins.

Amongst the many moving moments of the visit, one in particular stands out for me. It happened on the Sunday, when we had a programme of walks around the town, followed by a few short films and talks in the afternoon.

The Books

It was 10am. We had just arrived in the town, and were standing around waiting for the local dignitaries to join us. A woman approached us, carrying a plastic bag, from which she pulled out a number of old, black-bound books. They were Hebrew Prayer Books, which she said had been found when her house was being renovated a few years ago. They had been hidden under the stairs, or maybe behind a wall, during the War. They must have been there for at least 75 years, as the Nazis deported all remaining Jews from the town to concentration camps in 1942.

Did we know who these books belonged to? She wanted to return them to the original family, and was reluctant to hand them over to a museum - and we had amongst us the Directors of two of the most important museums in Poland, the State Ethnographic Museum, who had organised the Conference, and Polin, the Museum of the Polish Jews, both located in Warsaw. But she insisted she wanted to give them back to the family.

She said the Jewish family who had lived in the house before was called Pindek. At that point I had not come across the name at all, and when I checked later, I couldn’t see it on any of the databases I had on my laptop. It didn’t ring any bells. None of the Jewish Gombiners amongst us recognised the name.

There was some writing on some of the blank pages at the beginning of one of the books, some in Yiddish, and a child’s hand practising letter formation in Hebrew and in Russian. A few people looked at it but no-one could make much sense of it.

Our hosts arrived, our meeting started. The lady put the books back in the bag and went off. We were busy all day and I didn't have another look at the photos I had taken.

Reading the Writing

Then at the end of the day, she turned up again, as we were all filing into a hall for some talks and films. I’m always stopping to take photos, and as usual I was at the back of the bunch to enter the hall, along with a few of our Polish friends from the Ethnological Museum. As proceedings began inside, those of us still outside had another look at the books. I can read a bit of Russian, albeit with difficulty, and I suddenly realised that the child’s writing - even reading it upside down, as someone else held the book - was that of a little boy learning how to write his own name: Lab Ran.

Lajb Rajn?

I have Rajn relatives, from Gombin. They are descendants of Gersz Ber Rajn and Rifka Laja Frankensztajn, sister of my great-grandfather. Plus, conversations with a newly-contacted cousin, Louis Kaplan, had confirmed that Gersz Ber Rajn, and Louis' great-grandfather Boruch Nusyn Rajn, were brothers, and that therefore what looked like two Rajn families in Gombin were really one. Plus, Boruch Nusyn's wife was a member of my Zegelman family.

So they're all relatives of mine, one way or another. They’re on my Family Tree, and my Tree is on my phone, and my phone is in my pocket …

There he was - Lajb Rajn, born 1901, from Louis’ side of the Rajn family. We checked the date of publication of the book: 1900. It could be him! I checked again in my notes, and there were indeed no other children called Lajb in the Rajn family at that time. It had to be him. 

As Chance would have it

I showed the Museum people the entry for the Rajn family on my iPhone - so glad I’d bought the App! - and one of them explained what I was saying to the lady, Mrs Romanowska.

She was delighted to have found someone connected with the family, but I don’t think she realised what a massive part Chance had played in bringing us together:

Chance #1: I was on the trip in the first place - there were only 5 of us from old Gombin families; none of the others was connected to the Rajn family

#2: I was still in the street, and not already inside in the hall, when she came back in the afternoon

#3: I can read a bit of Russian; I don't think any of the others could

#4: I have a ridiculous number of relatives, confirmed and potential, listed on the genealogy app on my phone

#5: I had only recently been contacted by Louis, who had helped me to join some of the dots

We had a little impromptu handing-over ceremony right there and then in the street, and a little hug. I now have the Book.

More dots joined

So we had identified the child who had written in the book, but we were still in the dark about the Pindeks. 

A few days later, back home, I was writing to Louis, who is from New Jersey, USA, to tell him that, on the Gombin trip, we had been given a book belonging to his family. While I was writing, I had another look at his Family Tree on the Geni website, and saw that since I had last looked, before the trip, he had added in some names and dates to his Rajn branch.

There they were: a Pindek married to a Rajn! Fool (probably a diminutive of Rafal) Pindek, married to Kajla Rajn! I already knew about Kajla - she’s a daughter of Boruch Nusyn, and an older sister of Lajb, the child whose writing is in the book. So Lajb's book had been found in his sister's house, and she was married to a Pindek.

Sadly, Louis also had dates of death for all 3 of them: Lajb, Kajla and Fool: 1942. All killed in the Holocaust.

Whose Books?

I suppose the book had belonged to Boruch Nusyn originally, and maybe one of Lajb’s older brothers or sisters, possibly Kajla, used the blank pages to show him how to write his name. We were told by Barbara Kirschenblatt, Director of the Polin Museum, that the book is a Mahzor (a festival prayer book), that all families had one, and that they would have been accessible to the children.

We presume that Lajb, or maybe Kajla, would have kept the Books, and hid them when the Germans came. 65 or 70 years later, the house was being renovated, floorboards were pulled up, and the books were found.

The other three books, Barbara told us, were part of a series of commentary prayer books, Mikraot Gedolot, that would only have been used by a Rabbi or other synagogue officiant, or maybe a Yeshiva student. I didn’t have the presence of mind to ask for these three books at the time, but they clearly are all part of the same collection, and we are hoping that Mrs Romanowska will agree to return them to the family.

More Mysteries

Meantime, there are a number of other mysteries waiting to be cleared up. Who was the Rabbi, or Teacher, or student, who owned the commentary books? It is probably Lajb’s father, Boruch Nusyn, but I can’t be sure as so far I haven’t managed to find out anything at all about him. Louis says he was in the leather business, and that’s about it. It could be Lajb himself, or perhaps Rafal Pindek. Again, we know nothing further about them.

Why are there only 3 volumes out of the 11 in the series? Did the Rajns/Pindeks originally have all 11? If so, where are the others? It has been suggested that maybe the books belonged to the synagogue, and that they were spread amongst the community at some point during the War in the hope that they might stand a better chance of surviving. We do not know.

There are further question marks over the house itself. It is located in Kilinskiego Street, which runs from the synagogue out to the Jewish cemetery, about a kilometre away. When the Germans created a Jewish ghetto in the town, this street became its centre. We do not know whether the Pindeks were living there before the War, or whether they were moved there when the ghetto was formed. We do not know whether Lajb Rajn and his family lived there at all. Mrs Romanowska says that her family bought the house from the Pindeks, and that she has some sort of documentation of this amongst her parents’ papers. At the moment we do not know when her family took over the house - before the War, or under the Occupation? Or after the Jews were deported to the camps?

She also says there are photos that might include the Pindeks. This leaves us wondering what the relationship was between her family and the Pindeks - were they friends, neighbours, business associates maybe? If we could see the papers and photos she has mentioned, it might help make the picture a bit clearer. We have asked.

The Pindeks

Finally, the Pindeks themselves. Rafal and Kajla were killed in 1942, but their son Bernard (probably named after his grandfather Boruch Nusyn) managed, somehow, to survive. Louis, whose mother was a cousin to Bernard, recalls: “They had a son named Bernie who survived the Holocaust and I recall meeting him when I was a little boy. The legend was that he escaped into the woods and lived out the War in hiding.”

Bernie’s escape must have been from a concentration camp, as some of the cousins who remember him from their childhood recall the camp number tattooed on his arm. Louis remembers going to visit Bernie and his family, and playing with his two sons.

Bernie died aged 50 in 1967. Louis recalls the family saying he "died before his time”; his mother said that it was from “the trials that he was exposed to during the time of the Holocaust.” It has just struck me that this year is his centenary.

Six of Boruch Nusyn’s children had emigrated to the USA in the 1910s and 20s; Kajla and Lajb were the only ones who stayed in Poland. Bernie probably knew that his uncles and aunts were in New Jersey, and he managed to locate them there after the War. Other members of the Rajn family also remember family contacts with Bernie and his family. Three of them, Arline, Lauren and Dan, recently helped me to make contact with Bernie’s sons, and with a grand-daughter, Lilly. Until they saw my emails a few weeks ago, Lilly says they thought that her Grandfather’s family had all perished in the Holocaust, and they would never be able to find out who they were.

We have pooled our knowledge, and Lady Luck has played a part, but there are still many mysteries. Maybe together we will be able to resolve some of them, and recover at least some of the history of a family torn apart by the horrors of the Holocaust.

Links to:

- photos from the Walk in Gombin, September 2016

- The Frankenstein Trail: posts on our family's history

I think he was a tailor

My cousin Sandra posted this a few days ago in our family Facebook Group:

“As a child I met relatives who came from Panama to visit us in the USA. I don't remember the names but the male was our cousin and I think he was a tailor. This was in late 40s or early 50s. I think they stayed with my Aunt Fannie.”

Well, there were 6 of them, and they were all tailors. They are the Schwartz brothers from Gombin, and their parents were Towie Aron Szwarc and Bajla Frankensztajn. They had all left Poland to try their luck elsewhere. Jack came to London in 1913, and Abraham followed him in the 1920s. Morris also came to London, then went to Panama in the 1930s, and ended up in the USA, in New Jersey. Nathan, Paul and Ralph went to Panama in the late 1930s.

They all came together in 1946, in New Jersey, for a special occasion:

Morris, Nathan, Paul, Abraham, Ralph, Jack

Cousin Belinda tells the story behind the photo:

“The picture of the 6 brothers is in my parents’ wedding.  My parents, Pinhas (Paul) and Sarah were married in New Jersey in 1946. My eldest brother Allan and I were born there, but they returned to Panama when I was a baby, so my first language is Spanish, then English, and now, Hebrew. In Panama my brothers Arthur and Eddy were born there. 

The story about the picture is the following. You'd better sit down: 

My father had emigrated to Panama with his brother Nathan. He got a visa for his mother Bajla and his brother Herzl Ber to leave Poland; his father Towie Aron had died a couple of years before. 

My father said that later on they will send for the rest of family that was staying in Poland. But Herzl Ber got sick, and they exchanged the visa and gave it to the youngest brother, Ralph. Another brother, Isaac, did not want to leave Herzl Ber alone and stayed taking care of him. 

Bajla did not want to leave because she wanted to stay with her two daughters Sarah and Rivkah.  Sarah was married with two children and her husband Izrael Zolna was in the army. Rivkah was engaged, and she was waiting for her fiancé to return - he was also in the army.  They were planning to leave Gombin in the near future.  Rivkah’s fiancé didn’t return.

Well, the Nazis got into Gombin in 1939. They killed Sarah’s two children in the snow, in front of them, and as far as we know Bajla and the sisters were sent to Auschwitz. Herszl Ber and Isaac were also killed.

My father had left in the last ship to leave Poland, bringing his young brother Ralph. They arrived in Panama, where Nathan was waiting for them. 

Several years later, after the War, my father went to the USA, where his brother Morris had emigrated earlier. He met my mother, and this beautiful picture occurred. 

The B'nai Brit magazine sent the picture all around the world. In Australia, Rivkah’s fiancé saw the picture and recognized the brothers and called via telephone to my father. (I can’t remember his name... I was a little girl). 

I know he came with his wife to Panama to explain why he never returned to Gombin.
He was sick in a hospital in Russia and couldn’t leave.  When he finally came to Gombin, it was too late.  He came to Panama to explain himself to the family.”

So who was the tailor from Panama who stayed with Sandra’s Aunt Fannie for this momentous occasion? I think it must have been either Nathan or Ralph. And what was their relationship to her?

Morris, Nathan, Paul, Abraham, Ralph, Jack - with hats

I’m pretty sure that Sandra's ‘Aunt Fannie’ was Frajda Rajn, daughter of Boruch Rajn and Sura Rywka Zegelman. This makes her not just a cousin, but a Triple Cousin to Bajla Frankensztajn, the mother of the Schwartz boys:

1. Boruch’s brother Gersz Ber Rajn married Tauba Frankensztajn, and then after Tauba died, he married her sister Rywka Laja; Bajla is their younger sister.
2. In the generation before, Sura Rywka’s father Hemie Zegelman, and Bajla’s mother Rachla, were brother and sister.
3. At the same time, Sura Rywka’s mother, Hana Frankensztajn, and Bajla’s father Wolek, were sister and brother. In other words, a sister and brother had married a brother and sister. So the children of these two couples would be cousins twice over.

(Nathan and Ralph Schwartz later kept up this family tradition, when they married two sisters, Ruchla and Siza Aizenman, in Panama in 1944.)

So Aunt Fannie's mother, Sura Rywka, and the Schwartz brothers' mother, Bajla, were Double Cousins, through both the Zegelmans and the Frankensztajns. Then in the next generation the Rajn brothers joined the party, and married a Frankensztajn and a Zegelman respectively. So in fact all of Boruch Rajn’s descendants are Triple Cousins to all of Gersz Ber’s. The rest of our Frankenstein clan can only look on in admiration. Have a look at I have a feeling that we are related for how we worked all this out.

This is now the third time in a couple of months that we have confirmed family connections through things that happen at weddings. In Is this the Missing Link?, it was where the groom was staying, in Another Link in the Chain it was the identity of a witness. This time it's where the groom's brother was staying. The first two were in documents, this one is from childhood memories.

And in this case we also have an iconic photograph, which as Belinda's childhood memories tell us, had played a part, 70 years ago, in bringing together people who had been separated in tragic circumstances.

I wonder what's next?

Is this the Missing Link?

You know that moment when you're looking for something, and you find something else? Well, this is one of those moments.

Last week I met my Frankenstein 3rd Cousins Eve and Alan for the first time. We're 3rd Cousins because my great-grandfather Jankel Josek and their great-grandmother Rifka Laja were brother and sister, born around 150 years ago in little villages near Gombin in Poland. It turns out they both live about 15 miles away from me, but we had completely lost touch - I don't think our families had had any contact since my grandfather died over 60 years ago.

In the 1900s and 1910s, several members of our Frankenstein family emigrated to England. Jankel and Rifka's younger brother Moszek (Morris) came around 1905, and then 3 of his nieces and nephews came a few years later, all in their teens or early 20s. These were my grandfather Lajb (Louis) Frankenstein, Eve and Alan's grandmother Frajda (Frieda) Rajn, and Jankel Lajb (Jack) Szwarc, son of Bajla, who in turn was a sister of Jankel, Rifka and Moszek. So basically, it looks like each of these four siblings sent one member of their family to start a new life in London.

I know that Louis and Jack arrived in 1913. Whether they came together or separately I don't know. At the moment we don't know when Frieda came, but she must have come before the outbreak of the First World War in July 1914, because travel across Europe would have been impossible after that. In any case, by 1916 all three of them were getting married, all in the same place, at the Philpot Street Synagogue in Mile End in the East End of London, the area that most recent Jewish immigrants headed to on arrival.

When Jack first arrived, he stayed with Uncle Morris, and worked with him in his tailoring workshop, run from his home in Mile End. Jack got married in March 1916 from an address nearby, in Bethnal Green, and at that point he was no longer living with Morris. I know nothing of Louis until his marriage in November 1916, when he was living not in the East End, but across town in the West End. But then his bride was a West End girl, living just round the corner, in the shadow of the Post Office Tower (which of course wasn't there at the time).

I was interested to know more about how the 3 young cousins came to end up in London. Did they come together? Did they stay together? Did Uncle Morris offer lodging and work to Louis and Frieda, as he did to Jack? And why did Louis end up in a different part of town?

Eve and Alan didn't have any details on Frieda's arrival in London and her first few years there. They weren't even sure whether she and Aaron had married in London, or in Poland, before they left. So after our meeting I checked online, and found they had indeed married in London, in 1916. I ordered their Marriage Certificate. I was hoping the certificate would throw some light on where they were living at the time, and maybe help answer some of my questions.

Well it did throw light, but from a most unexpected quarter.

This is from the marriage certificate, shown above. They were both living in Blyth Street, Bethnal Green, but at different addresses. Maybe that's how they met? Who knows.

Wait a minute. I've seen Blyth Street before. Didn't someone else live there at some point .... ?

This is from the 1911 Census for Barnett Frankenstein and his family. It's the same house. Not just the same street, but the same house.

It's only 2 years ago that I first came across Barnett and his family in the records, and I've managed to make contact with a number of his descendants. Together we've been trying ever since to establish whether our two families are connected, and if so, how. There are a couple of circumstantial clues that suggest we probably are:

• Firstly, Barnett gives his birthplace as Gombin, which is our Frankenstein town, and so far all Frankensteins found in the records for that area are members of our family. There are none that aren't.
• Secondly, the Ashkenazi Jewish tradition was to name children after deceased relatives. The effect of this is that names are not repeated from father to son, but usually skip a generation, and are passed down from a grandfather or great-grandfather. Barnett uses exactly the same names for his sons as are repeated throughout the 19th Century - and longer - in my family: Jack, Woolf, Lewis, Isaac. Notice that in this same generation, my grandfather is Louis, and his cousin is Jack Szwarc.

Neither of these on their own would be convincing; together they make a stronger case, but it's still not quite definitive. The coincidence of address looks like a third clue, albeit from 5 years earlier. The case is building.

Well, next up, this is from the Post Office Trade Directory for 1916:

They're still there in 1916, at 28 Blyth Street. So when Frieda got married in March 1916, her fiancé Aaron Hyman was staying with Barnett Frankenstein. Of all the households in London - alright, of all the households in the East End - he was staying with Barnett.

Barnett is family. We still don't know exactly where the link is, but I think there's sufficiently convincing evidence here to meet the Michael Shade Genealogical Proof Standard. 

So this is one of those moments. Hello to a whole new branch of the family. Hello to new cousins. Dozens of new cousins!