Tracing the X in Levin

Several of my cousins have now done a DNA test, and we are beginning to get some interesting results. Within the last couple of weeks results have come in for Beatrice, a 3rd Cousin to me, and for Dan, a 2nd Cousin. Dan and I share great-grandparents, Shliomo Dovid Ilyutovich and Mikhlya Levin, whilst Beatrice's great-grandfather is Mikhlya's brother Leib. So our connection with Beatrice is one generation further back, with the parents of Mikhlya and Leib, Berko Levin and his wife Sora Leya. Our Levin family is from a village called Streshin, in Mogilev province in the east of Belarus, and later from Gomel, a bit further south.

With these new results in, I was able to do a few checks comparing known Levin family members using the chromosome browser on the FTDNA website. Apart from my brother Brian and myself, we have results for Katy (the daughter of our 1st cousin Jenny, so she's our 1st Cousin-once-Removed), and for Patrick - a 1C1R to Dan. 

The Chromosome Browser shows us where we have segments of DNA that exactly match those of another person. These matching segments - especially the longer ones - must almost certainly have come from a common ancestor, although in many cases this ancestor will turn out to be too far back in time for us to be able to trace.

The first impression was that we all seem to match each other here and there, to a greater or lesser extent. Phew! I experimented comparing the group first against myself, then against Brian, then against Katy - and it was here that I encountered a major surprise.

Here is the chart for Katy's X-chromosome. The X has a different inheritance pattern to all the other chromosomes. It is passed from the Mother to all children, Male & Female, and from the Father only to a Female child. This makes the inheritance path quite complicated, but if you sit down with the Tree in front of you and a pencil in your hand, you can follow it through.

NB: the black background represents Katy, the green is Dan, the yellow is Beatrice. The blank lines you can discern on the right-hand side are where Brian, Patrick and myself would be, except we didn't get this X because we are all males, and our Levin line passes through our fathers. And as we saw above, fathers don't pass an X on to their sons. And none of us matches Katy on the left-hand side.

We see that Dan shares a long segment on the X-chromosome with Katy, and Beatrice also matches both of them in this segment in a couple of short stretches. Dan's match with Katy is 110cM, which I am told is unusually long for 2C1R - the segment has been passed down unaltered over 3 generations to Dan, and 4 to Katy. And although Beatrice's match is comparatively short, it is significant that she matches with both of the others at those points.

What is more, we know where this segment comes from, for any ‘match’ displayed in the Chromosome Browser has to come from an ancestor common to all the people who share the match, and our cousinship is close enough for us to know who those ancestors are.

We can trace one of Dan’s X-inheritance paths back via his mother Raya, and her father Shmuilo, to our great-grandmother Mikhlya Levin, and then on to her mother Sora Leya, born about 1830. 

Katy has a path that also wends its way back to the same place, via her mother Jenny, Jenny's father Michael, his mother Zlata, and back to Mikhlya and on to Sora Leya.

And Beatrice also has one that goes back to Sora Leya, via her mother Alice, Alice's mother Annie, and Annie's father Leib, Mikhlya’s brother.

Here's our Levin X-inheritance chart:

NB: girls are pink, boys are blue; and notice that none of these 3 paths pass through two successive males at any point - this would block transmission of the Levin X, which is why Patrick, Brian and myself can't share in the fun.

So we can trace this long stretch of X back to a known common ancestor. That in itself is nice to know, but it has further significant potential. Because anyone else matching Dan or Katy on that same stretch of X - or Beatrice, on her shorter stretch - will have got it from Sora Leya, or from her X-path ancestors, or their X-path descendants. That leaves quite a lot of possibilities, but at least we know what direction to look in.

I would say that this makes anyone matching either of Dan or Katy on the right-hand module of the X-chromosome worth following up - they will be related to us, and the relationship may be traceable. They won’t be close to us, the closest they could be is probably descendants of any siblings of Mikhlya and Leib - but it would be wonderful if we do find some! They would be 3rd Cousins to us - and that's worth knowing about!

Dan and Katy meet for the first time last year. At that point we didn't know about the X in Levin.

Two more members of the Levin X-club: Beatrice and Alice, celebrating Alice's 100 birthday in 2011 with a Yiddish song or two. Sadly Alice passed away the following year.

My Lost Cousins

To mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day, I bring together what I currently know about the fates of members of my family who were caught up in the terrible events of the Second World War in Eastern Europe. My mother’s families - Frankenstein and Waxman - were from Poland, my father’s - Schreibman and Ilyutovich - from Belarus.

All four of my grandparents had emigrated to the UK during the early 20th Century. That is why I am here. Unfortunately, during the 1920s and 30s, contact between those who had left and those who stayed seems to have been largely lost. I am not sure my parents' generation had more than a very sketchy knowledge of who their cousins back in the old country were, or even whether they knew they had any. I do not remember being told of any family members who had been killed in the Holocaust.

It is only during the last few years, since I have been researching my families and making contact with others doing the same, that I have begun to realise the extent to which all of these families have been affected.

Almost all of those who did not leave before the outbreak of war in September 1939 were slaughtered; a handful, somehow, survived. These are my parents’ lost cousins, aunts and uncles.



My Frankenstein family (Gombin)  

Killed
Rifka Laja Frankensztajn b 1870
Bajla Frankensztajn b 1879
Gitla Kohn b 1861
Chawa Frankensztajn b 1891
Chaja Tauba Frankensztajn b 1901
Sura Rajn b 1890
Herschel Boll b 1873
Yita Boll
Etka Boll
Malka Boll
Moische Boll
David Boll b 1901
Hersz Ber Szwarc b 1904
Sarah Szwarc b 1905
Ryfka Szwarc b 1911
Itzhak Szwarc b 1915
Marjem Florkiewicz b 1915
Szejwa Florkiewicz b 1919
Jakub Josek Florkiewicz b 1921
Mendel Wandt
Abram Zegelman b 1898
Wolek Zegelman b 1901
Kajla Rajn b 1892
Lajb Rajn b 1901
Fool Pindek
Sura Rajn b 1930

Survived
Laja Florkiewicz b 1917
Bronislawa Wandt
Bernie Pindek

Fate unknown
Ida Lipisz Frankensztajn b 1882
Rifka Laja Manczyk b 1887
Maier Mendel Frankensztajn b 1909
Bajla Frankensztajn b 1910
Szyfra Frankensztajn b 1912
Rachmiel Frankensztajn b 1921
Nusen Zegelman b 1896
Bajla Zegelman b 1899
Jakub Lajb Zegelman b 1924
Zysa Zegelman b 1926
Toba Zegelman b 1929
Itta Tatarka b 1901

My Waxman family (Demblin, Lublin)

Killed
Judko Klawir b 1866
Judessa Klawir b 1878
Manya Frydryk b 1881
Pola Klawir b 1897
Pesza Klawir b 1902
Manya Klawit b 1907
Icek Mietek b 1908
Rosza Klawir
Viktor Bialer
Moszek Klawir b 1897
Tsivia Etel Nest b 1892
Sara Sala Klawir b 1898
Boris Goldschmidt
Pinchas Klawir b 1900
Lajbl Klawir b 1903
Mila Studnia b 1903
Miryam Klawir b 1907
Szyia Klawir b 1911
Izak Bialer b 1928
Mira Klawir b 1924
Beno Goldschmidt
Icek Goldschmidt
Hala Klawir b 1936

Survived
Betty Klawir b 1936

Fate unknown
Miriam Bialer b 1931

My Schreibman family (Pinsk)

Killed
Ahron Schreibman b 1897
Sara Kopels b 1904
Meer Schreibman b 1986
Friedel Apelbaum b 1905
Avraham David Schreibman b 1933
Noakh Shimon Schreibman b 1938

Fate unknown
David Schreibman b 1871
Menakhem Schreibman b 1876
Sorah Schreibman b 1885
Shlema-Hirsh Schreibman b 1887

My Ilyutovich family (Gomel)

Killed
Shmuil Ilyutovich b 1919
Alexander Taratin
Aron Gurevich b 1910

Survived
Riva Ilyutovich b 1912
Yakov Ber Kozlov b 1913
Mikhlya Ilyutovich b 1918
Yeorgy Felitsin
Janna Felitsin
Vladimir Taratin b 1942
Sulama Kozlov b 1939
Ludmila Kozlov b 1943
Chaya Levin
Nekhama Levin b 1910
Necha Levin b 1917
Leya Levin b 1900
Marya Gurevich b 1936
Ilya Katzman b 1937
Manya Amronin

Fate unknown
Bogdana Levin b 1906
Genya Levin b 1907
Ilya Levin b 1918
Yankel Levin b 1890
Feiga Levin b 1894
Vulf Levin b 1894
Leia Levin b 1897
Fruma Levin b 1898
Leiba Levin b 1907
Ber Levin b 1894
Maryasya Riva Levin b 1894
Zalmon Levin b 1895
Vilya Gurevich
Raisa Babchin


Apologies for any errors or omissions - please let me know.

Cousin Report #27

There I was, at the Blowzabella do the other night, pretty much minding my own business, soaking up the music and sipping down the London Pride, when I was accosted by this woman asking "are you Michael"?

Well I couldn't really deny it, especially when she said "surname Shade?", and I'm glad I didn't because it turned out to be my distant cousin Mira. We had never met, though we did have a brief email exchange a few months ago, during which we realised we would both be going to the BZB do last Saturday.

She's my great-grandmother's brother's second wife's great-grand-daughter - is there a word for that? She'd been googling for her grandmother, Mary Levin, and came across a photo I'd put up on Flickr a couple of years ago from a Walk I did around some of our Levin places in the East End: I'd tagged the photo with some of the family names, and Google spotted them.

It turns out she and her husband are keen on French traditional music, and he plays the hurdy-gurdy. The world, as they say in Spain, is a handkerchief.

Climbing the stairs

Lewis (Leibisch) Levin was a brother of my great-grandmother Mikhlya. He was born in 1861 in Streshin, a little village on the river Dniepr, in what is now the south-east of Belarus. In the early 1900s he came to London accompanied by his three children from his first wife, who had died a few years previously, and his second wife with her own daughter. They found somewhere to live in the heart of the East End, where tens of thousands of East European Jews had settled over the previous 20 years or so.

My own grandmother - Lewis' niece - came to London soon after, aged about 18, and stayed with the Levins, probably helping to look after the children. Within a couple of years there were two more boys, and they moved from one accommodation to another, always along Whitechapel High Street and Mile End Road, presumably to have more room for the expanding family. In every document, and in various trade directories, Lewis is a 'Paper Bag Maker', even sometimes a 'Master Paper Bag Maker'; his own children, and my own young uncles and aunts, were all roped in to work in his paper bag factory, which was mostly located on the kitchen table.

We knew that he had died in 1927, aged 67, and that he was probably living on his own by this stage - his second wife had died when the boys were very young, his older children had all left home for marriage, America, or the Russian Revolution, and the younger boys didn't see their futures in paper bags and left home to work elsewhere and to put themselves through night school.

The figure of Lewis has long fascinated me, and a few months ago I ordered a copy of his Death Certificate, to see if it could offer up anything new about him. And so it did - an address: "of 84B Whitechapel High Street". So now we knew where he had been living at the time of his death.

The next time I was in the area I looked for the building. Next to the Whitechapel Library I found number 82; a few doors down was number 87. The two or three buildings in between did not appear to be numbered, but I assumed 84B would be one of them and duly took a photo as evidence.

My cousin Beatrice, Lewis' great-grand-daughter, is currently in London - her mother Alice (Lewis' grand-daughter, now aged 101) is unwell, and Beatrice has come over from the US to be closer to her. Yesterday afternoon Beatrice and I went on a 'Musical Walk round the Jewish East End', organised by the Jewish Music Institute, and guided by the historian David Rosenberg (highly recommended, by the way). Beatrice's grandfather Sam had been involved in the Workers' Circle, a friendly society established to further the interests of working-class East European Jews, from the 1910s onwards, and her mother Alice was active in the Yiddish theatre movement from the 1930s, and Workers' Circle and Yiddish theatre both featured in David's programme for the Walk.

The group met outside the Library, and then David led us off down a narrow alleyway between two of the neighbouring buildings - Angel Alley, you can see it at the extreme left of the photo above. There on the right a notice was pinned to a door: 'This is NOT 84B, it's 84A. 84B is opposite!' You can hear the exasperation in the printed words. You can probably also hear my involuntary intake of breath, for 84B turns out to be the premises of Freedom Press, the long-established Anarchist publishers and booksellers.

David was going to tell us about some of the radical figures and groups that flourished in the area 100 years ago, but Beatrice and I were just standing there, minds racing, staring at the building.

After the Walk, we grabbed David for a chat over a superb falafel lunch (PilPel, Brushfield Street), then made our way back to see if the Freedom bookshop at 84B was still open. It was. We explained why we had come, and asked the lady in the shop if she knew how the building was being used in 1927. She kindly went off to find a book containing a history of the organisation - and its premises - which told us that at least before 1942 there had been a printing press occupying the ground floor.

"Would you like to see upstairs?" I had to ask her to repeat the question, partly because I don't hear very well, but mainly because I couldn't believe what I had just heard. Upstairs? Lewis must have lived upstairs, 85 years ago. We took a deep breath, and followed her up. The staircase, banisters, walls, and some of the doors, looked as though they had had nothing done to them in 100 years or more.

She took us into one of the rooms, and we discussed the layout. The room we were standing in had a structural beam across the middle, and we reckoned it had probably originally been two rooms. On the landing there was a blanked-off door which confirmed this.

So we sat, and stood, in one half of the room, looking out to the brick wall opposite (the Library building, in fact), and tried to imagine a bed, and a chair, and a table. Where was the sink? There probably wasn't one, he'd have had to bring water in from the bathroom. Was there even a bathroom? How did he cook? Did he cook?

But it was the stairs that got me. He must have gone up and down these stairs every day for months, maybe two or three years. And here we were, treading the same steps, holding on to the same worn banisters, knocking on doors - his door, maybe - to feel the wood.

He fell ill here, and died at the London Jewish Hospital down the road in Stepney Green. I've just looked at the Death Certificate again. He died on 20 October 1927. Just 85 years and one day before we came to visit him.

Finding Great-Grandma

Michla Ilyutovich (née Levin, known in the UK as Millie Gitovitch)

d 23 March 1916

We found my Great-grandmother's grave in Edmonton Federation Cemetery today.  Michael, the guy in the office, traced it in the register of burials from the death certificate details I gave him. He gave us the section, row, and grave number, but we worked our way up and down row J19, and couldn't find it. Unfortunately the individual plots are not labelled, but Michael kindly located it for us by counting along the graves from the end of the row.

It turned out that her grave was totally unmarked, and could easily be mistaken for a passageway between the closely-packed rows.

The only people who would have known where she was buried would be her three children living in London at the time - my grandmother Sarah, and her brothers Myer and Harry. I presume they could not afford a headstone at the time. The grave has probably been unmarked and unvisited since she died, nearly a hundred years ago.

Michael made out a little grave marker for her, so at least her space is indicated, and hopefully that will discourage people from stepping on it.

We are looking at marking out the grave with a small memorial stone, placed on a couple of stone slabs. Michla Levin had an extraordinary life, which I will try to recount - at least the little we know - on the Belaroots Stories website. She had 16 grandchildren, but only ever saw four of them.

We - four of her great-grandsons - visited her birthplace in Belarus last year, and now we've located her final resting place, and feel we know her a little better. She needs a memorial, and we need to remember her.