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.

WW2 commemoration, Gąbin

On 1 September several members of the Gombin Society were invited to attend events in the town to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the Nazi invasion of Poland that sparked the outbreak of the Second World War. I was asked to deliver a short speech on behalf of the Society. I started with some general comments, then told the story of how my mother's cousin, Wiejsza Wandt, survived the War.

Speech for WW2 commemoration, Gąbin 1 Sep 2019

On behalf of the descendants of the Jews of Gąbin, my friends and I would like to thank you for including us in this commemoration.   

Today we join together with you in honouring the memory of all those Poles, both military and civilian, of all religions, who risked their lives, and in many, many cases died, in defence of all the citizens of Poland.

Jews lived in Gąbin for several hundred years. There was already a substantial community by the beginning of the 18th Century - for the Great Wooden Synagogue was built in 1710. For over 100 years, up until the 1920s, Jews constituted half the population of the town. Our ancestors lived, laughed and loved here, they studied, worked and played here. They died and were buried here. 

My own grandfather was born here in Gąbin, in 1892. Marlene’s mother was born here in 1917. Vicky’s grandfather was born here in 1890, Scott’s grandmother in 1905. 

1 September 1939 marks a fateful day in the lives of all of us here. In particular, for the Jews of Gąbin, it was a day of no return. Very few of the Jews who were in the town on that day survived to see the end of the War.

My friends and I are very conscious that we are the lucky ones. We are only alive today because our parents and grandparents emigrated before the outbreak of the War. Almost all of our aunts, uncles and cousins who stayed here were killed, including at least 25 members of my mother’s family.

The young Jewish men were sent to the forced labour camp at Konin, and were later killed there. All the others - over 2000 men, women and children - were sent to the extermination camp at Chelmno nad Nerem, where they were gassed to death within hours. Only a handful escaped this fate.

Of course, it was not only the Jews that suffered the Nazi onslaught. The three great prayer houses of Gąbin were all destroyed - the Synagogue was burnt down, and the Catholic and Evangelical Churches were destroyed by bombing.

We would like today to pay a special tribute to those people who risked their own lives to help Jews in danger during the War. They were truly heroes. I will speak of just one such incident, there were many more.

Priest, mayor, council leader and other dignitaries listen attentively

So let me tell you about my mother’s cousin Wiejsza Wandt. It was 1941 or 42, she was 8 years old. She was shot in the street, and badly wounded. We presume she was shot by German soldiers. One of the soldiers carried her home. He told her mother that if she wanted her child to survive, she would need to leave the Ghetto.

“Give me a name and address, and I will take her there”, he said. Wiejsza’s mother gave him the name of a non-Jewish friend. The German soldier put the girl in a bag so no-one would see her, and carried her there. A daughter of this family, about the same age as Wiejsza, had recently died. 

At great personal risk to themselves, this family took the little Jewish girl in as their own child, and gave her their daughter’s identity. Wiejsza became Bronislawa. She survived the War. Her mother did not.

We give our heartfelt thanks to all those who resisted the German occupation, in whatever way they could. Some of their efforts succeeded, some sadly did not. They were all heroes.

We would like to finish with a poem by Rajzel Zychlinski, who was born in Gąbin in 1910. She wrote her poems in Yiddish, the language spoken by the Jews of Poland. Today Scott, who is a descendant of the Zychlinsky family, will read the poem in English, and Wojtek will follow with the Polish translation. [poem to be added]

Thank you.

Two stones: son of Leib

Sometimes the smallest details can pass unnoticed. This stone has stood for 100 years, and it has kept its family secrets only because none of us has ever looked at it closely enough.

The other evening I put in a request for photographs of two headstones, to the Jewish London Genealogy Group site on Facebook. Less than 24 hours later, here they are. There are a few kind people in the Group whose hobby is photographing headstones for others. We owe them an enormous debt of gratitude!

The first one (above) is the stone for Sarah Frankenstein, who was born in Gombin in Poland around 1840, and died in London in 1912. She is buried in the Federation Cemetery at Edmonton in North London. She's the mother of Jacob and Barnett Frankenstein, and along with several of their descendants, I've been trying for several years to link our two families together. Sarah was a widow when she first appears in the UK records in the 1891 Census. We assume her husband, Israel Jacob Frankenstein, had died before Sarah and her children left Poland. He's the one I'm trying to connect to my family.

What we knew
You can see where we had got to a while back in these posts from a couple of years ago:

Is this the Missing Link? - Another Link in the Chain

To summarise these posts, we found that there was a significant amount of evidence accumulating to show that our two families are closely linked; however, it was all more or less circumstantial:

i) they all say they came from Gombin; I have found that all Frankensteins in the known records from the Gombin area belong to my family; however Sarah's family do not appear in any of these records 

ii) there is a striking coincidence of male given names in the two families 

iii) Aaron Hyman stayed with Barnett Frankenstein (son of Sarah on the stone) when he got married to Frajda Rajn (my family) in 1916 

iv) my great-grandfather's brother Morris Frankenstein was a witness at the marriage of Fanny Shalinsky (granddaughter of Sarah) in 1912

Then, just the other day, this came up:

v) Frajda Rajn's brother Abram (my family) stayed with Sarah's daughter Rachel when he got married in 1907

All in all, too much to be merely coincidental - but there was no proof, no single document that explicitly shows a connection. The obviously close family links, though, are pretty convincing, and the timescale leads me to surmise that Sarah's husband, Israel Jacob, is probably a brother to my own 2nd-great-grandfather Wolek, born 1839, and that both are sons of my 3g-g'f, Lewek, who was born around 1800. 

We already know Morris (in iv above) to be an uncle to the Rajn siblings, Frajda (iii) and Abram (v) - their mothers are sisters of his, Tauba and Rywka Laja Frankensztajn. If my conjecture is correct, Morris would also be a first cousin to Barnett (iii), and a first cousin once removed to Fanny (iv). And Barnett and his sister Rachel would be 1C1R to Frajda and Abram Rajn. We have a picture building up of a family that had settled in London earlier giving a helping hand to their younger cousins who had recently followed them over.

What we needed
A key piece of evidence to confirm the relationship would be a document showing the name of Israel Jacob's father - if it's Lewek, we're in business. This information could appear on a birth, marriage or death record for Israel Jacob, or in an entry in a Book of Residents, or on his headstone. However, he lived his whole life in Poland, and very few vital records for the Gombin area have survived. I've seen several Books of Residents, for different districts, and he doesn't appear in those either. And there's no chance of a headstone - most of the Jewish cemeteries in the area, including that of Gombin itself, were totally destroyed by the Nazis during WW2. So we're resigned to the fact that we are most unlikely to ever find any sort of proof. 

What we got
I wanted Sarah's headstone because I thought it might tell us a bit about the family she came from, and indeed it does (see next post). But - and here's the surprise - much more significant is what it tells us about her husband, Israel Jacob - and of course he's the Frankenstein that I'm trying to connect to mine.

Here's what is engraved at the top of Sarah's headstone:
Top line: Sarah daughter of Yonah
Next line: Widow of Israel Yakov son of Leib

This second line is most unusual. The headstones for widows that I have seen here in the UK sometimes do tell us the name of their deceased husband, but they rarely give his patronymic - the name of his father.

This one does. And Israel Jacob's father's name is Leib.

You will recall that I was hoping his father would be Lewek. Well he is. 'Leib' is the Yiddish form, used across Yiddish-speaking Eastern Europe. 'Lewek' is a diminutive, affectionate version of the same name, used by Jews in Poland. The '-ek' ending is commonly used in this way with boys' names, as for instance in Wolek, for Wolf.

So Leib is Lewek, and Israel Jacob is the brother of Wolek. And, as we surmised earlier, Morris is a first cousin to Barnett. We now have the piece of documented evidence that we needed, and thought we would never be able to find.

And Brian, David, Sandy and Linda are my 3C1Rs.

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?

Another Link in the Chain

Once again, you're looking for one thing, and you find another. In my last post, Is this the Missing Link, I described how I came across evidence that linked my own Frankenstein family with another branch I was sure we were related to.

Well, it's happened again. With the same family.

The Marriage Certificate above is for Lewis Allerhand and Fanny Shalinsky, at the East London Synagogue in 1912. Fanny appears in the 1901 Census as a grand-daughter of Sarah Frankenstein, matriarch of the family I have been trying to link with my own. By this time Sarah is allegedly 70 years old, although I believe she must have been a good 10 years younger.

Sarah is a widow, her husband Israel Jacob had probably died in Poland before the family came to England in the 1880s. Sarah is described as a 'Hawker (Cakes)', and her birthplace is Gombin, Poland - this is what first caught my eye when I was trawling through all the Frankensteins I could find in the 19th Century UK Censuses. Gombin is our Frankenstein town.

Also with Sarah is a daughter, Betsy, aged 30, described as a 'Cripple'. I've no idea what kind of disability she suffered from. Fanny is 14, and a Tailoress, and has the surname Shalinsky. Both Betsy and Fanny are born in Gombin. Sarah's other children, Jacob, Barnett and Rachael, have all married by this time, and set up their own homes. Sarah is down as Fanny's grandmother, but what is not clear is, who is her mother? Is it Betsy? Or is it another daughter that we don't yet know of? And where has her surname Shalinsky come from?

In an attempt to pursue those questions, I ordered a copy of Fanny's marriage certificate, and it arrived last week. Unfortunately it doesn't answer my questions. The only new information it gives about her is that her father is Samuel Shalinsky, a cabinet-maker. It doesn't say he is deceased - which it does say of her bridegroom Lewis's father - so I presume he was still alive at the time of the wedding. However I can find no such person in any UK records, so maybe he never left Poland. I haven't found him there either, though. So he's still a mystery.

But there's something else. Maybe you've noticed by now. I didn't until I looked at the marriage certificate for the third or fourth time. Have another look.

Who's the first witness?

Morris Frankenstein? Morris who?? We've got a Morris Frankenstein, and he lived within walking distance of the East London Synagogue. Could it be him?

There are three Morris Frankensteins in the 1901 UK Census, and they don't include ours. One is in Manchester, the other two are in the East End of London. Our Morris - Moszek Boruch - was my great-grandfather's younger brother. He was born near Gombin in 1886, and came to London around 1905, so he's in the 1911 Census. However, by then, one of the East End Morrises had emigrated to the USA, and the other had died. So our Morris was the only one left in London. It has to be him.

It was Uncle Morris who welcomed my grandfather Leib (Lewis) Frankenstein, and his cousin Jankel Szwarc (Jack Schwartz), to London when they came in 1913 aged around 20. He was probably also there for another cousin, Frajda Rajn, when she arrived at about the same time. These three are children of Moszek's siblings Jankel Josek, Bajla, and Riwka Laja, respectively.

Now then. In the Missing Link post, I traced how when Frajda got married in 1916, her fiancé gave his address as 28 Blyth Street, which we know was the home of Barnett Frankenstein. This, together with other evidence discussed in that post and elsewhere (see A Frankenstein by Any Other Name), led me to conclude that these two families are indeed closely related.

Barnett was the son of Sarah - which makes him an uncle of Fanny Shalinsky. He must have been at her wedding. And as we can see from the certificate, Morris Frankenstein, uncle of my own grandfather, was there too. I'm taking this as further confirmation of the closeness of the family connection.

And if the relationship between these two families is located where I think it is - a couple of generations further back - then Moszek is also a sort of Uncle Morris to Fanny, and hence a suitable family witness to her marriage. And he's Cousin Morris to Barnett and his siblings Jacob and Rachael.

Unfortunately, over the course of the last 100 years, we have lost track of most of these relationships. But documents such as these marriage certificates show us how closely-knit our families once were.


In 1948 Jack Schwartz put together a photo album to commemorate those members of his family killed in the Holocaust; the only ones to survive were Jack and 5 of his brothers, who had all emigrated before the outbreak of the Second World War.

As well as photos of his parents, brothers and sisters, there are some of other relatives, including this one.

'Uncle Morris Frankenstein and wife Leah

London - England - 1922'

So here's to Uncle Morris - the man who links us all together.