Moshe Chaim, Czar of Pinsk: #5 Herman unmasked

Finding Simon
So the challenge now was to find Simon Morris - and any references to his father Herman Turiansky - in the US records. Rebecca's Tree (above) shows a Sam Morris who looks as though he's the same person as Simon, and she also has a wife for him called Elizabeth Bessie, and a son called Al born in 1912. This was as far as her Tree went, so I presume this is probably her own family line and it's all she knows about it. As such, it should be full of clues, even if some of the detail might not quite be fully accurate. Plus, the only locations we have for them are Pinsk in Russia, and Peoria, Illinois.

If you've stayed with this story thus far, you will not be surprised to hear that I could find no suitable Simon Morris in any of the US Censuses in Peoria.

But here's Sam Morris with his family in Peoria in 1920:

Is this our 'Simon'? There are 3 daughters, followed by 3 sons: Herman, Meyer, and Abe. 'Herman' looks promising - is he named after Sam's father? And note that Abe, the youngest, was born around 1913 - could he be the 'Al' in Rebecca's Tree?

From Moses to Morris
Here's Sam in 1910 (the other family members are the same as in 1920, except for Abe, who hadn't arrived yet):

Yes, he's Simon at this point, and the surname is 'Mose'.

And in 1900 he's Simon Moses:

So Turiansky morphed to Moses, which became Mose and then Morris. At least we now know who we're looking for. The Census forms suggest that Simon and Elizabeth were married around 1892, but I haven't found a record for this as yet. Bessie, their first child, appears on the Censuses as born in Illinois in 1897.

Immigration and marriage
Unfortunately the US Census records for 1890 have not survived. We do find a Simon Moses in Peoria who took out US Naturalisation in 1886, which corresponds approximately with the year he gave in later Census returns. If this is the case, when they married in 1892 it was almost certainly in the US. There is also a Simon Moses in Joliet, Illinois in 1880, but he seems to be from Prussia, not Russia, so who knows?

Passenger manifests might possibly offer some information on his place of origin, and enable us to home in on given and family names, as well as confirming a date of arrival. There may even be travelling companions. There are several candidates for 'Simon Moses' in passenger manifests, arriving in the US from the mid-1880s onward, but I've not been able to positively identify any of them. There are none at all for Simon Turiansky/Terensky or similar.

Elizabeth was only about 18 when they married. The Census forms say she was born in Russia; she may have come to the US as a child with her family, or on her own as a later teenager. Either way, we don't know when she came (the Census forms give varying dates), we don't know how her given name would have appeared on the manifest, and we don't have her maiden name either.

This is beginning to look a bit like a brick wall.

Who is Herman?
At this point we need to remember that what we're really looking for is, who is Herman? He's almost certainly a Zaturensky, but where does he fit in?

His son Simon Morris died in 1926, as Simon not Sam, and if we're lucky, the Hebrew inscription on his headstone will identify him by his patronymic name, ie, it will say he is the son of Herman (whoever Herman is).

Here's the headstone:

The stone has been placed by his children - Elizabeth had died a couple of years earlier - so the information on Simon's Hebrew name will probably have come from them. This doesn't guarantee that it's 100% reliable, of course, but close family is a usually a better source for names than most others. All his children are under 30, and several of them had been living in the family home, at least until a few years previously. I think we can trust them, at least for the time being.

The second line tells us he is:

Mr Shmuel son of Mr Moshe Chaim

So Simon is Shmuel, and his father "Herman" is  ... Moshe Chaim.

Well, you must admit that 'Moshe Chaim' sounds a bit more Jewish than 'Herman'. Furthermore, the DNA relationship between Private Morris and myself is such that this has to be my Moshe Chaim, my great-great-grandfather. Herman Czar Terensky really is Moshe Chaim Zaturensky.

Saying "Hello" to the cousins my grandfather probably never knew he had
This in turn means that Simon Morris is the brother of my great-grandmother Shprintsa Zaturensky, and consequently his children were First Cousins to my grandfather Movsha/Morris Schreibman. This is significant to me, as it's the closest I have ever got to my grandfather, apart from his box of cabinet-maker's tools. And some of his DNA, of course. He came to London on his own in 1905, and we have never been aware of him being in contact with any relatives. This is not really surprising in this case, seeing that Simon - Uncle Shmuel - may well have left for America before Movsha was born in 1883.

My grandfather died in 1930, and I don't think my father and his siblings knew anything at all about his family apart from the name and occupation of his father - Nevakh Schreibman of Pinsk, a teacher of religion. I don't think they even knew the given name of his mother - Shprintsa.

So Private Morris and I are confirmed Third Cousins, or possibly one remove away, depending on how many generations down from Moshe Chaim Zaturensky he is. I hope he sees this!

Four more questions
All of which leaves us with at least four more burning questions:

1) Is Moshe Chaim one person or two - ie, is this one person with 2 given names, or should we read this as Moshe, son of Chaim? This question, which has come up previously over the records of my great-grandmother Shprintsa (see #1 Who is Private Morris? and #4 Two for the price of one), is not resolved by Simon's headstone.

2) How, and when, did 'Zaturensky' morph into 'Moses'?

3) The amount of DNA Private Morris shares with me is towards the top end of the range for 3C, and is getting on for 50% greater than I share with any of the other members of the Terensky Cluster, some of whom look as though they are from the same generation as him. This suggests that either:

i) he really is a generation above the others

or

ii) there's some other factor at play

4) And where exactly do all the other members of the Terensky Cluster fit in?

Questions, questions, questions ....

And Basia, too

Aharon

Six years ago I posted about the discovery that my father's Second Cousin (my 2C1R), Aharon Schreibman, had been killed during the Holocaust (May their souls rest in peace). He probably died, along with his wife Sara and all the other remaining Jews of Pinsk, when the Nazis destroyed the town's Ghetto and everybody in it in 1942. They were in their 40s, and there's no mention of any children in the testimonies submitted to the Yad Vashem Holocaust database, so I presume they didn't have any. There are no submissions for Aharon's parents, Leizer and Khasia Braina, so I presume they had died before the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union in 1941; they were born in the 1850s or 60s.

Yad Vashem is in Jerusalem, and the testimonies were collected from the late 1950s onwards, mostly from people living in Israel. They are mostly written in Hebrew, and sometimes in the witness's native language, maybe English or more likely Russian or Polish. The YV website carries translations into English of all the information submitted.

There are two testimonies for Aharon, one submitted in 1957 by a woman called Rakhel, described as his niece, and one in 1999 by someone called Varda, a 'relative'. Logic suggests that if Rakhel is a niece of Aharon, she is probably the daughter of one of his siblings, but I didn't have any information on his family apart from the names of his parents.

These submissions give basic identifying details, as far as the person submitting can recall them. As you can see, one submission was made 15 years after the events, the other 47 years after. It is quite possible that Varda, submitting in 1999, may not have known Aharon and Sara; she may not even have been born when they perished. Rakhel, Aharon's niece, may have been in a different country in 1942; she is most unlikely to have been in Pinsk at the time, for hardly anyone survived. So the details of ages, places of birth, occupation may vary between submissions, according to the knowledge of the submitter; even names, too. Sometimes the submitters are able to give parents' names, sometimes those of children.

Very occasionally there's a photo - and here we are lucky. This one was submitted by Varda; the young man is Aharon, the little girl with him is not identified. He looks to me to be about 20; he was born in 1897, so the photo probably dates from around 1918-20, just after the end of WW1. The girl is maybe 8-10 years old, so born around 1910; she is clearly not his child.

There were other Schreibmans in the database, but I did not manage to identify any of them as being from my family.

There things rested, until 5 weeks ago.

Basia
Late one evening I was checking something or other on the Ancestry website (as you do), and noticed that Ben, a fellow Schreibman/Pinsk researcher, had added a couple of names to the part of his Tree that covers my family. We have both traced our Schreibman lines back to the mid-18C, but cannot find where, or even whether, they meet. So we may be cousins, but we can't be sure. You can see a discussion of where we'd got to a year ago here: The Schreibmans of Pinsk - Thirteen Families or One?

What Ben had added was a sister for Aharon: Basia.

Where did he get this from?

You've probably guessed - the Yad Vashem database. He'd done what is always recommended, but I had neglected to do - he had followed up other testimonies by these same witnesses, Rakhel and Varda, and what he found, of course, was other members of the same family.

Rakhel had submitted testimonies for her parents, Basia and Mordekhai Wekser. Basia's maiden name is given as Schreibman, and her mother is Khasia Braina. Basia's father - Rakhel's grandfather - is not named, so he may have died before Rakhel was born; but Basia is clearly Aharon's sister. And my 2C1R!

And there was a photo! Varda had also made a submission. She identifies herself as a granddaughter of Basia, and uses the same surname as Rakhel: Ben Aharon. So she is Rakhel's daughter, testifying 40 years later. And she still had a photo of her grandmother.

Also on Yad Vashem, I came across an entry for Basia on a list of Pinsk residents from July 1941. This added a second given name: Basza Henia. The Polish spelling suggests the list was made by Polish authorities, so it must have been compiled before the German invasion. Pinsk was in the area of Belarus allocated to Poland after WW1, so inter-war records are usually in Polish. The Soviet Union seized this part of Poland under the 'Non-Aggression Pact' they agreed with Germany in August 1939, but it looks as though the administration may still nave been carried out in Polish.

The List of Residents also gives a date of birth for Basza: 1886; this makes her about 10 years older than her brother, Aharon. And her father is shown as Lozer, which corresponds to the Leizer we have from elsewhere.

There is also an address for her: Breszka Street, number 16. The list for this address shows that Basza Henia was living there with Aharon and Sara. This list does show children with some of the other families in the building, so I think it is safe to assume that Aharon and Sara did not have any.

Basia's husband Mordekhai Vekser is not in the house at 16 Brzeska with her. This is clarified in the testimony Varda submitted for him - her grandfather - in which she shows him as 'divorced'; whereas strangely, for her grandmother Basia, she puts 'married'.

Who's the little girl?
Let's now return to the photo of Aharon and the little girl. Who is she? I guessed above that she would have been born around 1910.

Well, we have now seen that Basia was born in 1886. I think it's highly likely that the little girl in the photo is Rakhel, Aharon's niece, the daughter of his sister Basia, born around 1910 when her mother Basia would have been 24. I also think the photo provides some negative evidence (no apologies for the pun) that Basia and Mordekhai did not have any other children. Surely they would have been in this photo with their uncle, along with Rakhel?

Rakhel herself does not appear in the wartime records. She would have been about 30 when the Germans took Pinsk. I know that the Soviet authorities managed to evacuate some people to the East of the USSR ahead of the invasion. However they were not many, as Pinsk was fairly close to German territory and was captured almost immediately. There are a couple of other possibilities: escape from the town to join the partisans in the forests, or prior emigration. She was in Israel in the 1950s, so it is possible she emigrated there before the War, though not many were able to emigrate from the USSR during the 1930s. The least likely scenario is that she survived the War in Pinsk.

And what of Varda? I'm guessing that she would have been born around 1945-50, by which time Rakhel would have been in her mid-to-late 30s. This would make her the same generation as me, and hopefully still around. I did try writing to someone with her name a few years back, but got no response.

Maybe I'll try again.

The Schreibmans of Pinsk - Thirteen Families or One?

Some of the 13 separate Schreibman Trees visualised in MacFamilyTree's Interactive Tree

Benjamin and Andrew go back to Pinchas Schreibman, b c1740; I go back to Movsha Schreibman, also b c1740. The two families are separate lines as far back as we know them, and both are recorded in Pinsk (Belarus) throughout most of the 200 years up to WW2. The name Schreibman is occupational, signifying 'scribe', and both families have traditions of Torah scribes, teachers, and similar. Are Pinchas and Movsha connected? Unfortunately, we can't tell. Every so often I have a big push on Schreibman research, and I did again a couple of months ago. I reckon I have found some 13 separate Schreibman lines, all from Pinsk or other towns in the region such as Kobryn or Lubishev, none of which I can connect to any of the others. As an example, there are what appear to be 3 different men called Chaim, all b c1840 to different fathers. Are their fathers connected, brothers even? We can't tell. One of the problems is that we don't know when the name Schreibman was first adopted by these families as an inheritable surname. The earliest documentation I have for my line is the 1816 Revision List, which has: Hirsh Schreibman, son of Movsha, aged 50. So Hirsh was b 1766. What we cannot deduce from this is that the family was known as Schreibman when Hirsh was born. So although I refer to my 4g-g'father as 'Movsha Schreibman', I don't actually have any evidence he was ever called that. The date of adoption of the surname is important, because this is an occupational name. Anyone could be a shoemaker, or a tailor, or a scribe. You might be from a family of shoemakers, tailors or scribes, but you didn't have to be. So when the time came to assign surnames, any old scribe could become a Schreibman. You didn't necessarily have to be related to any other Schreibmans. On the other hand, some occupational names were in use as family surnames long before the Russian Empire obliged Jews to use them. Was 'Schreibman' an early surname? It might help if we knew what regulations were in force governing the adoption of surnames at the relevant time in this part of the Russian Empire. My understanding is that in Congress Poland it was the rule that any particular surname could only be used by one family in any given town, and this certainly seems to be the case in several Polish towns I have looked at. In Belarus, on the other hand, I have the same problem with my Ilyutovich family from Lida as I have here with the Schreibmans of Pinsk. My own family is identifiable in the 1816 Revision List, and I can claim almost all the Ilyutoviches in that list as members of it. However in each succeeding List throughout the 19C, new Ilyutovich groups turn up that seem to have no connection to the original family. I believe the name originates from the given name Eliyahu, so Ilyutovich signifies 'son of Eliyahu'. Was there one Eliyahu in the 18th Century, who had loads of sons, all bar one of which went into hiding in 1816 so they didn't appear in the List, and whose sons and grandsons in turn gradually surfaced, a few at a time, over the next 100 years? Are they all connected, or was there something in the air around Lida that led them all to choose the same surname? Back to the Schreibmans. I have a DNA match with Andrew, but it's not very strong, and as 6th Cousin at closest according to the paper trail we wouldn't expect it to be. The matching segments we share (9cM and 10cM) don't line up at the moment with any other possible Schreibman matches I have. So, this too is inconclusive. So are the Schreibmans of Pinsk all connected? I'd love to find evidence that they are, but unfortunately I don't think I've found it yet.

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.

A Hundred Up

Three years ago I submitted a DNA sample to FamilyTreeDNA, and sat back and waited for the test results. The genetic 'matches' have duly been coming in, week by week since then, over 5000 of them and counting. Today I received my 100th match at the level of 2nd-to-4th Cousin. A cause for celebration, you would think - a host of new connections, new cousins, the expansion of our family tree, new family stories to hear and tell.

Well, I have not been able to establish a connection with a single one of them, with the exception of one I already knew, since before she was born so to speak - she's my cousin's daughter.

The problem is, my ancestors. And those of my matches. We are Ashkenazi Jews, and belong to a group that has been endogamous - ie, has intermarried within the group - not just for generations, but for centuries. So the DNA testing companies, and the science that underlies them, struggle to fit us into the pattern that works well for most other populations. They say they compensate to take account of the effects of endogamy, and I'm sure they do, but in my experience I have to say they end up grossly over-estimating the closeness of our relationships.

(click if it's too small to read)

Here's the listing of my top 5 matches. Katy, the first one, is a 1st Cousin Once Removed - my cousin's daughter. So I know her. The next four are classed as probable 2nd-3rd Cousins, which means we should share great-great-grandparents, or closer. 

The thing is, I know my family quite well. I know all the descendants of all my grandparents, most of them personally. I know the given and family names of all 8 of my great-grandparents, and where most of them were born and where they lived. I know the names and places for the vast majority of their descendants - ie, the brothers and sisters of my own grandparents, and their children in turn, who are my 2nd Cousins.

Moving back to the previous generation, my great-great-grandparents should in theory be the source of my 2nd-3rd Cousin matches. I know the given and family names of 12 out of 16 of them, including all 8 men and 4 of the women, and many of their places; I also know the given names of the other 4 women. My knowledge of their descendant lines - ie, those of my great-grandparents' siblings - is much more sketchy. In some cases I know only the name of my own ancestor, and have no information at all on possible siblings. Some of my DNA 2nd-4th Cousin matches will undoubtedly come from these unknown lines, maybe most of them. But surely not all 99 of them?

From my grandparents to my great-great-great-grandparents

(click on the image to enlarge it)

To take this one step further, the above implies that I actually know the family names of 12 out of 16 of the families of my great-great-great-grandparents - in other words, I know the family names that all of the siblings of my great-great-grandparents would have had, even if I don't actually know whether they existed or not. And these, of course, are the family names that the men would have passed on to the next generation.

At this point, let's make a few uncontroversial, generalising, assumptions: 

i) that any descendants that married and had children would be more or less equally divided between male and female

ii) that most women would take on their husband's surname on marriage, and thereby not pass on their own

iii) that any children they had would again be 50% male and 50% female, and so on

In this scenario, my knowledge of the surnames of any potential cousins would more or less halve with each generation, as the women don't pass on the known family name. However I do actually know who the siblings are in some cases, in particular who the women were, and who they married, and this knowledge increases the closer we get to the present day - so the halving process I am suggesting here is an exaggeration. I know much more than half of the names in my grandparents generation, but the calculation is easier to follow like this - let's just bear in mind we're being severe with the numbers.

So whereas I know all the family names of my great-great-grandparents' generation - the source of my 3rd Cousins - I will only know about half of those of my great-grandparents' generation, and a quarter of those of my grand-parents'. Which means I should expect to recognise the names of an eighth - 12.5% - of my parents' generation. And 6.25% of my own. Not 0% of any of them, which is where I am with my DNA matches at the moment.

We can halve again to get the picture for 4th Cousins - I should recognise fewer names in each succeeding generation: 12.5% of my 4th Cousins in my grandparents' generation, 6.25% in my parents', and 3.125% in my own. But again, not 0% of any of them. Especially considering we're just being theoretical, and not taking my actual knowledge into account.

And it's not just me recognising names in my own family tree - I am sharing trees with a number of my closer matches - and I don't recognise what's on theirs, nor they what's on mine.

So my conclusion is that FTDNA's match estimates exaggerate the closeness of our relationships. My guess at the moment is that they are a couple of generations out at least. I'm in touch this week with a couple of the 2nd-3rd Cousin matches in the list above, and I'll be surprised if we manage to confirm FTDNA's ratings. More than surprised - I'll be overjoyed! But I'm not expecting anything closer than 4th-5th.

A major issue of course is that most of us are finding it very difficult to trace our families back more than two or three generations, which is where we need to be to locate 3rd Cousins and further. In many areas the documentary trail has been disrupted, by emigration, war, revolution and the Holocaust, not to mention those inconsiderate ancestors who wilfully changed their names when it suited them. And all this makes it even more difficult to trace the descendants of those generations. But I still think I should be able to recognise one or two of them, at least.

On the plus side, it is useful having Katy in the list, as I can do a check on whether the people that match me also match her - she's on my father's side, so this gives me a rough orientation as to which side the others probably match me on. If they match Katy, they're probably on my Schreibman-Ilyutovich side, if they don't, they're probably on my Frankenstein-Waxman side. Reassuringly, across all 5000 matches, there's more or less half on each side.

It would help even more to have a few more known cousins do the test, as this would enable us to refine the analysis further, and get closer to identifying how our matches connect to us. Ideally I would like to have one of each line - a Frankenstein who's not a Waxman, and a Waxman who's not a Frankenstein, and similarly a Schreibman who's not an Ilyutovich, and an Ilyutovich who is not a Schreibman. That woud help us identify matches for each of my four lines.

And of course it's not just for 'my' family - they would all get matches on the other sides of their own families, as well.

Any offers?

May their souls rest in peace

This is Aharon Shreibman, whose grandfather Hirsh was a brother of my great-grandfather Nevakh. So we're sort of cousins. Or at least, we would have been, if the Holocaust had not intervened.

For years our family has wondered whether any of our relatives had got caught up in the Holocaust. My four grandparents had all emigrated to the UK in the early part of the 20th Century, and we didn't know of anyone who was still living in Eastern Europe through the 1920s and 30s. Whether there was anyone still there, or whether we had just lost touch, we didn't know.

A few years ago, on the JewishGen website, I came across a database of people who had been killed in the Holocaust. This list had been compiled by the Soviet authorities immediately after they recaptured towns from the Germans in 1944, using testimony from neighbours, eyewitnesses and survivors (the 'Extraordinary Commission'). There were around 20 Shreibmans on the list for Pinsk, my grandfather Movsha's town, but from the scant details furnished it was impossible to identify any of them as 'ours'.

I then found another listing, this time of inhabitants of the Pinsk Ghetto in 1941/2, which shows 14 Shraibmans. Again, I couldn't identify any of them as ours - except for my grandfather's elder brother David, who is listed as a shoemaker, aged 71. There are a few recognisable family groups, but David seems to be the only Shreibman in the house he is living in. He does not appear in the Soviet Extraordinary Commission list, however, so we do not know when or how he died. And we do not know anything of his own family, or those of his brothers and sisters, so we cannot we tell whether any of the other Shreibmans in these lists are related to him in any way.

I have just now searched the Yad Vashem listings of Holocaust victims, still looking for Shreibmans from Pinsk, and have been able to compile a list of over a dozen, whose names had been submitted to the Holocaust Memorial Centre by relatives or survivors. These submissions often include personal and family details, and sometimes this information can enable you to establish a connection.

And indeed, two of the people in this list do appear to be people who are on our family tree - Aharon Shreibman, whose photo above was posted on the Yad Vashem database, and Meer, younger brother of my grandfather Movsha Shreibman. And once you work through the documents, you realise that their families are there in the list too, and that some of them may be on the other lists as well.

To see why I feel that these families are indeed 'our' Shreibmans, let's take a closer look at the Yad Vashem submissions.

There are two submissions for Aharon - one entered in 1999 by an unspecified relative named Varda, and a much earlier one from 1957, by a niece, Rakhel, who also submitted one for his wife Sara. I compiled a database of all the information I could glean from these and all the other Pinsk Shreibman submissions, to see what connections I could deduce, if any.

Looking at the first two lines of these extracts, you can see that the two submissions on Aharon differ in several respects:

They differ on his date of birth - by 10 years - and also on the name of his wife. However it was the names given for his parents that clinched it for me - they correspond with those found by the research we commissioned a couple of years ago in the Belarus Archives, which turned up a birth record for Aharon dating from 1897 (in between the two dates submitted by Varda and Rakhel). This showed his parents as Leizer and Chasya-Braina. Varda gives his mother as Khasia Breina, and Rakhel gives his father as Eliezer and his mother as Khasia. I'm as certain as can be that these two submissions are for the same person, and that that person is my second cousin once removed. My cousin Aharon. Killed in Pinsk in 1942.

Similarly with Meir. There are two submissions, one by Friedel's sister Henia in 1956, and another by her brother Shmuel in 1957. There are differences, but none significant - apart from the name of Friedel's mother, who was probably (but not necessarily) their own mother too! 'Our' Meir was born in 1896, according to the Belarus research, which is close enough to the dates in these submissions. But is this Meir really 'ours'?

In this case the detective work had to be a bit more subtle. Whilst Henia and Shmuel both submitted names for Friedel's parents, neither of them had anything for Meir's. Our Meir's father - my great-grandfather - was called Nevakh (Noah), and his mother Shprintza.

Now take closer look at the names Meir and Friedel gave their children. The first son is clearly named after Friedel's father, Avraham David, suggesting the family were following the established Ashkenazi custom of naming children after a recently-deceased close relative. When their second son is born a few years later, they call him Noakh. We do not know when our Nevakh died, but we do know from the Belarus research that his son David was the householder of the family house in Pinsk in 1912, which suggests that Nevakh had died earlier. So the first son was named for the maternal grandfather, and it very much looks as though the second son was named for the paternal grandfather.

So this is our Meir Shreibman, my great-uncle. And our Friedel, and our Avraham David, and our Noakh, my first cousins once removed.

Meir is given as killed in Pinsk in 1941; he may have died soon after the German invasion. Friedel, Avraham David and Noakh are in the Ghetto List:

They were killed in 1942, according to the submissions by Friedel's brother and sister, along with all the remaining inhabitants of the Ghetto. Aharon and his wife Sara are not on the Ghetto list, but the submissions say they also died in 1942.

May their souls rest in peace.

A new Shreibman

I've found a new Shreibman! Well, he's new to us, but he's quite old really - he's the earliest Shreibman we know of. Meet Movsha Shreibman, born - we suppose - sometime around 1740.

Yesterday I came across the 1816 Russian Census ('Revision List') for the town of Pinsk on the JewishGen website - I don't know why I hadn't spotted it before - and there they were - father and son, Girsh and Movsha (here, Movsha Dovid). We already had their names, and a date of birth for Movsha Dovid, from later Censuses. This, however, takes us one step further back into the past, thanks to the Russian - and Jewish - custom of patronymic naming, as in 'Movsha Dovid, son of Girsh'. Thus the Census gives us not only the names of the people it is recording, but as part of the identification it also gives us the names of their fathers. As we can see, Girsh's father is also a Movsha.

Girsh's age is given as 50, which suggests a date of birth of 1766. This in turn allows us to guess that his own father Movsha may have been born around, say, 1740.

It is interesting to see that the surname Shreibman was already being used by the family in 1816; we can't tell from this census record whether it dates back to the previous generation as well. Most Jews in Eastern Europe used patronymics until around the beginning of the 19th century, when the Russian authorities began requiring them to use surnames.

The name 'Shreibman' means 'writer', or 'scribe', and we can assume that the first use of the name would be a reference to that person's occupation. Was Girsh the first 'Shreibman' in our family? Or his father Movsha, perhaps? Or were they from a line of scribes maybe, who were already being referred to as such before the formal adoption of surnames?

Notice also the given names, repeated across the generations, usually at one remove:

Movsha (b abt 1740) - Hirsh (1766) - Movsha Dovid (1798) - Hirsh (1827).

There was  - maybe there still is - a tradition amongst Ashkenazi Jews of naming children after deceased relatives, especially recently deceased close relatives such as grandparents, and although we don't know the dates of death of these Shreibmans, we can see the pattern in their names.  

Another of Movsha Dovid's sons was Nevakh, or Noah. Nevakh used 'Dovid' and 'Movsha' for two of his own sons. And then this latest Movsha - my grandfather - named his first son - my father - David. And although my parents were not observant Jews, they continued with the tradition: my Hebrew given name, so they told me, is 'Moishe'.

You can see this pattern of naming in the revised version of the family tree.

So, Movsha Shreibman the First, born around 1740 - welcome to the family!