Moshe Chaim, Czar of Pinsk: #16 The Person Who Will Always Know

Who is this Joseph?

Whilst researching the members of my Terensky DNA Cluster, I kept coming across documents for a Joseph Teranski (and versions thereof). The Cluster does not include any of his descendants, and I haven't managed to identify any from amongst my AncestryDNA matches. The documents showed him to be following a similar trajectory to my Zaturenskys - Russia to Peoria to Los Angeles - although I couldn't find anything to pin him down as a member of this family. After they moved to LA in the mid-1920s Joseph and his sons Sam and Myer anglicised their surname to 'Trent'.

This alerted me to another clue. In the Tree of Cousin Jennifer, a member of the DNA Cluster and a descendant of Shmuel Zaturensky aka Simon Morris, she shows one branch of the family adopting the surname 'Terensky', and another taking on 'Trent'. She didn't show any descendants of these branches, but at least this shows that her family were aware of the existence of these other branches.

One too many Josephs

Things began to get rather confused when I started looking more closely at a Joseph Terensky who definitely was one of mine - several of his descendants were in my DNA Cluster. This Joseph also followed the family trail from Pinsk via Peoria to Los Angeles. He's a son of Meir Zaturensky, who we came across earlier in this saga as the father of Rochel Leah Teransky. I'll be following this Joseph, and his brother and sister, in later posts.

 

The two Josephs appeared to have different birth dates, and their wives and children appeared to have different names; on the other hand, they were both shoemakers. They made the move from Illinois to California at different times, but there were periods when they were both living in the same town. On several occasions I came across documents and was not sure who I should allocate them to. Were they the same person, leading a very complicated life? We've already seen at least one like that in this family. Or were they two related people with (more or less) the same name? If they were related, how closely? Was this new Joseph Teranski indeed one of my clan?

All you need is a document

I have probably amassed more documents on this Joseph than on any of the other members of this tribe, but frustratingly I have been unable to find any mention of a specific place of birth. I want him to be born in Pinsk, of course - but all I see on Census returns is 'Russia', 'Russ Polish', 'Latvia', and 'Lithuania'. On the birth certificate of his son Samuel, in 1898, Joseph is shown as 'Polish' and born in 'Poland'. This is prescient, as Pinsk did indeed become part of Poland - but only 20 years later, after the First World War and the Polish struggle for independence from the nascent Soviet Union. And Latvia and Lithuania are hundreds of miles away, off the map. No mention of Pinsk.

Nor could I find any mention of Joseph's father's name. Joseph died in 1965, but my online searches have not turned up a death certificate, or a headstone, either of which might, if you were lucky, show a father's name. Ideally I would like him to be a son of my great-great-grandfather Movsha, or failing that, of his brother Meir. Or there could be an as yet unknown third brother.

However, even without confirmation of his place of birth, or his father's name, I was convinced that there was enough evidence in the surnames and the life-journeys, and in Jennifer's Tree, to suggest that Joseph was fairly closely related to my Zaturenskys.

All I needed was a document.

And then I found one.

I was following up Abe 'Albert Allen' Morris, born in 1912 in Peoria, the youngest son of our old friend Shmuel Zaturensky aka Simon Morris. Abe is probably the father of my mystery match, Private Morris. He was drafted into the US Army in 1940, and this is his draft card.

The 'person who will always know your address' is Sam Trent. And Sam Trent is Albert Allen Morris's cousin.

Cousin? Cousin??

Cousin? That implies that one of Albert's parents must be a sibling to one of Sam's.

Albert's parents are Simon Morris aka Shmuel Zaturensky, and Rochel Leah Teransky. Shmuel and Rochel Leah are First Cousins, children of the Zaturensky brothers Movsha and Meir respectively. Sam's father is the new Joseph Teranski. So Joseph should be a brother of either Shmuel, or Rochel Leah. And his father should be either Movsha, or Meir.

Just a minute. Meir already has a son Joseph - the other Joseph, the one we keep getting mixed up with this one.

So this new Joseph must be a son of Movsha, my gg-g'f. And Joseph's grandchildren, if I can find them, will be my Third Cousins.

When we were looking at Dora, we surmised that Movsha was probably married twice, and that his first wife may have been called *Bajla, and his second wife, *Chana. *Bajla would be the mother of my g-g'm Shprintsa, b 1858, and of Shmuel (Simon Morris) b 1861, and appears to have died by 1865. *Chana would be the mother of Bejla b 1866 and Dora b 1870. Joseph appears to have been born somewhere between 1866 and 1872, according to which document you are looking at, so he would probably be a child of *Chana.

As it now stands

So Movsha's family now looks like this:

We have no documentary evidence for either of Movsha's two wives, only that different family Trees suggested different names for their respective gg-g'mothers. The DNA evidence suggests that I am closer to Shmuel's descendants than to the other lines, so I am happy to suggest that he and my g-g'm Shprintsa are children of a first wife, whilst the other three are from a second wife.

We do not have documentary evidence for *Chana's daughter *Beila, but somebody with her name would fit very nicely. DNA evidence suggests that I have a closer connection to Dora's descendants than to *Beila's, so I am surmising that there may be a Kawin link further back, possibly via *Chana, that was reinforced when Dora married Joseph Kawin.

In Joseph Teranski's case, there is fairly good circumstantial evidence in the surname and the family journey from Russia to Peoria to Los Angeles, but crucially there is one document that clinches the relationship. It tells us that Sam Trent is Albert Morris's cousin, and that he is The Person Who Will Always Know.

Just like a jigsaw

Our first success
I did an autosomal DNA test with FTDNA getting on for 5 years ago, and since then a few of my cousins have done so too. Week after week I check our match lists, occasionally spotting a promising looking match, but never yet managing to establish a connection with anyone.

Well, we've just had our first success: my cousin Katy has been able to confirm a previously unknown cousin. It's on her father's side, and I'm connected to her on her mother's side, so it's not a new cousin for me, but the discovery could indirectly be of some help to my own researches.

A few days ago a new match, Niel, appeared in Katy's list, with figures too big to ignore: they share a total of 225cM, with a longest single segment of 75cM. FTDNA predicts they should be 2nd-3rd Cousins. We all have plenty of predicted 2-3Cs, as do most people with Jewish ancestry, and I have never yet been able to connect to any of them. But none so far have shown figures as high as this, so it was obviously worth investigating.

Mystery Man
I have pretty full information on our close relatives on Katy's mother's side, but I have no record of Niel's name. He appears on my match list, and that of my brother, but we share such a small amount of DNA with him that the match probably has very little significance. So the first conclusion is that he'll probably turn out to be on her father's side.

Next step: ask Katy. She had never heard of him. She asked her Dad. He didn't recognise the name either.

So I tried looking online. My first port of call was the Geni world-wide Family Tree - and bingo!, there he was, in a Tree with a handful of relatives, none of them known to us. One of these was his father, Louis, so I tried looking for him on Geni, to see if there was maybe another Tree for this family. There was, and it showed Louis' mother with a surname not too far from Katy's own family name. This did indeed look promising.

Yesterday, while we were still scratching our heads over this, Katy received an email from Niel. He had seen her in his own match list, and recognised her surname as being close to his grandmother's maiden name. He looked for her via Google, found her website, and saw that she had family connections to South Africa.

Jigsaw
This is where the jigsaw comes in.

Niel told us that his grandmother, Mary, was "sent to Canada" to marry his grandfather, Noah, whose wife had died, leaving him with two young children. She herself had a young child, and as Niel puts it, "Unfortunately in those days they thought it was OK to leave her baby behind in Lithuania." This child, Heidi, was brought up by one of Mary's brothers, who later emigrated with his family to South Africa; Niel didn't know the name of this brother.

This last sentence immediately rang a bell with Katy. She knew from her father that his own father, Bentzion, had grown up in South Africa with a "cousin" called Heidi as part of the family. However none of the children seemed to know how she was connected, nor who her parents were.

Now we know. Piecing together the information from Niel and Katy, we have been able to re-constitute the family tree. Mary (also known as Miriam) has to be a sister of Woolf, Bentzion's father (and Katy's great-grandfather) - they have the same surname, and the two stories fit. Heidi is Mary's daughter by a first partner, brought up as a member of Woolf's family, and emigrating to South Africa with them. Meanwhile Mary and Noah had two children in Canada, including Niel's father Louis.

So Niel is Katy's 2nd Cousin-Once-Removed. Without the DNA test to spark the contact, we would most likely never have known. They are now moving on to swapping photos and more stories, no doubt.

Bonus
And as an added bonus, FTDNA uses the DNA that a person shares with known close relatives to allocate some of their other matches to one side or the other of their family. In Katy's case, her mother is a First Cousin to myself and my brother. The DNA we share has enabled FTDNA to create a list of Maternal-side matches for her. Fitting together the pieces of the jigsaw with Niel has now produced a list on her Paternal side. This should help orientate further researches for her.

It may even have repercussions for myself and Brian, as we are more likely to be related to her Maternal matches than to her Paternal ones. So if a promising match appears on my own list, I can use Katy's lists as a steer, and pay it more attention if it is also on her Maternal side.

So we haven't exactly completed the jigsaw, but it's nice at least to fit two of the pieces together - and at the same time, to increase our chances of finding more pieces!

Is this the Missing Link?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I have a feeling that we are related

So starts the email I received out of the blue from Louis K, about 6 weeks ago. He'd been looking in the Family Finder section of the JewishGen website, where we can list the family names we are interested in, and the places they come from. He'd spotted that I had listed a few names that tallied with his own family, from Gombin in Poland.

He mentioned his great-grandfather, Baruch Nussan Rajn, and Baruch's father Kalman. I knew I had a few Rajns, so I checked on my Tree. I did have Baruch listed, but I hadn't managed to link him to my own family as yet. I had the names of several children, and the given name of his wife, Sura Ryfka - but not her maiden name. Nor, as yet, his father's name.

The Rajn I had in my own family was Gersz Ber Rajn, who was married to two of my great-grandfather's sisters, Tauba and Ryfka Laja Frankensztajn. Not at the same time, I hasten to add. Tauba had two children, and then twins; however she died soon after giving birth, along with the new-born twins, and Gersz Ber then married her younger sister Ryfka Laja. I was pretty sure there would be a connection between this family and Boruch, but I hadn't yet found it.

I then had another look at what I had on Gersz Ber. Sure enough, his father was Kalman. Given that from 1821 onwards, Jews in this part of Poland were required by the Russian Empire to use one surname per family per town, it is unlikely there would have been a second Rajn family in Gombin. So I concluded that there was only one Kalman Rajn, and that Gersz Ber and Boruch were therefore brothers.

So I told Louis we appeared to be connected, but not directly related - he was my great-grandfather's sisters' husband's brother's great-grandson. I'm not sure if there's a cousin-label for that. We agreed to keep sharing notes.

A couple of emails later, Louis mentioned that his mother, Sarah Rose, was named after her grandmother, Boruch Nusyn's wife - Sura Rifka Siegelman. Wait a minute, this was the maiden name I was missing ....

Siegelman? Siegelman??

My great-grandfather's mother was Rachla Zegelman, and I had managed to sketch out some branches of this family from the 19th Century records, but didn't know what had become of any of them, apart from one.

Sure enough, I had a note of a Sura Ryfka Zegelman, born about the right time - but I hadn't found any further records of her. By the same logic as before with the Rajns - same name, same time, same place - she has to be the same person. And I know who she is - she's the daughter of Rachla's brother Hemie.

So, I'm from Rachla's branch, and Louis is from Hemie's. We are obviously both descended from their parents, Wolek Zegelman and Wajla Chern - they are our 3x-great-grandparents. So Louis and I are indeed directly related: we Fourth Cousins.

But there's more.

Rachla Zegelman's husband was Wolek Frankensztajn. Hemie Zegelman's wife was Hana Laja Frankensztajn. And - you've probably guessed it by now - Wolek and Hana Laja were brother and sister. As of course were Rachla and Hemie. So brother and sister married sister and brother. Is there a word for that?

All of which means that not only do Louis and I share Zegelman 3x-g-grandparents, as outlined above - we also share Frankensztajn 3-timers, the parents of Wolek and Hana Laja: Lewek Frankensztajn and Libe Taube Szczawinska.

So we're not just Fourth Cousins, we're Double Fourth Cousins.

And that's not all.

My Third Cousin Fran is not only a Frankensztajn and a Zegelman, as are Louis and I, she's also from the Gersz Ber Rajn family, mentioned at the beginning of this post. So she and Louis both go back to the same 2x-g-grandparents, Kalman Rajn and his wife, another Sura Rifka. So Fran and Louis are related 3 ways: they are not only Double Fourths, they are also Third Cousins!

I'm trying to find a way of visualising the relationships between these families, but they seem to be too complex for the family tree websites and software I'm using. They all use straight lines to portray relationships, and can't display the interconnections on screen - or paper - at the same time.

I'm thinking I'm going to need something more bendy. It might be time for a mind-map ...

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?

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.

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.

Finding more new cousins

It's happened again.

Four weeks ago I found some Shreibmans, on my father's side, that I never knew existed. They are descendants of Aron, a cousin of my grandfather. We didn't know of Aron's existence until he appeared in the research we commissioned in Belarus last year. Aron emigrated to America, and became Harry, and now we are sharing family stories with the sons and daughters of his sons and daughters. If only my father - or any of his seven brothers and sisters - were alive to share this moment with us!

Two weeks on, and I've found some Frankensteins.

My mother's father, Leibisch 'Louis' Frankenstein (above), came to England from Poland some time in the 1910s. A few years later his brother Itzhak 'Isaac' Finkelstein, emigrated to South America, and then after a few years went on to Israel. Before you ask, neither Isaac's nor Louis' families have ever been able to explain why the brothers used different surnames. Did one of them change his name? And which was the 'genuine' family name? No-one knows.

The extent of our families' meagre 'knowledge' is that their parents were Jacob and Gittel, there were probably three other siblings, all girls, called Hava, Haia and one whose name we don't know, and they came from a town called Gombin (Gabin) in Poland. We have a rough idea of Louis' and Isaac's years of birth. Other than that, nothing.

Or rather, next to nothing.

My cousin Bracha, Itzhak's daughter, and I have been getting our heads together. Bracha tells me that Itzhak had a relative called 'Reimond Ball', who was active in the Gombiner Society in America, and that Itzhak himself had been President of the Society in Israel. And that there were other relatives, called Schwartz, who had six sons, all tailors, who went to London, and helped my grandfather when he arrived there 100 years ago: one of them was called Abraham.

Now this being the 21st Century, the Gombiner Society in the US has a web-site. On the web-site I came across a reference to a 'Raymond Boll'. Promising! They also had a database with listings of Gombiner families from a few years around the turn of the 20th Century, with dates of birth and, where appropriate, death.

Amongst the families in the database I found a Jacob and Gitla Finkelstein, with a daughter Jenta Bajla who married a member of a Svarc family. And a Bajla Frankenstajn, who also married a Svarc, and had eight children; the two girls died young, the six boys survived. One of them was called Abraham. This Abraham Svarc was just a few years younger than my grandfather Louis and his brother Isaac.

And then I found that some of the US Gombiners have even set up a Facebook Group; it is 2012, after all. When I saw that the owner of the group is called Dana Boll, I felt we might be on the right track.

And indeed we are. Dana and her cousin Joyce are grand-daughters of Raymond Boll; their fathers recall Raymond being in contact with Itzhak Finkelstein, who they assume was a cousin to Raymond. They tell me that Raymond's mother was Rifka Leah Frankenstein, who married twice and had mountains of children. They also have a Bajla Frankenstein, who married a Schwartz, and had 10 children. However, although they think of Itzhak as a cousin, they know nothing further about him. He does not appear on their family tree, and at the moment, no-one quite knows how he fits in.

They do, however, have a 'Lajb (?)' - with a question mark - on their tree, and a Chava, as brother and sister. So they do have reference to two names that appear in my grandfather's family - his own, and one of his sisters' - although, again, they are not sure which bit of their family they 'belong' to.

So, to sum up:
1) My own family's knowledge includes:

• an Itzhak Finkelstein who used to be in contact with a cousin Raymond Boll, both involved in the Gombiner Societies in their respective countries

• Itzhak has a brother Leibisch and a sister Chava, plus two other sisters, one called Chaya and the other unknown

• their parents are Jacob and Gittle

• Itzhak also has a cousin Abraham Schwartz, one of six brothers, who went to London and knew Leibisch there

• we do not know the exact relationship with Raymond Boll and Abraham Schwartz

• no other related Frankensteins or Finkelsteins are known to us

2) In the database, we find:

• a Jacob and Gitla Finkelstein who had a daughter Jenta Bajla who married a Svarc

• a Bajla Frankenstajn who married a Svarc and had six sons, one of which was called Abraham

3) Our possible new cousins' knowledge includes:

• a Raymond Boll who used to be in contact with a cousin Itzhak Finkelstein, both involved in the Gombiner Societies in their respective countries

• Raymond Boll was a son of Rifka Leah Frankenstajn

• Itzhak's parents and siblings are unknown

• a brother Lajb and a sister Chava, who are closely related but whose parents and any other siblings are unknown

• a Bajla Frankenstajn who married a Schwartz and had about ten children

So, nothing definite, as yet, no absolute proof. In particular, we do not yet have anything that identifies a specific relationship between Jacob Finkelstein and Rifka Leah Frankenstein, Raymond's mother. Were they brother and sister? Cousins maybe??

Nevertheless, life is short, and I'm happy to accept the weight of evidence, which as far as I'm concerned points to the conclusion that, for the second time in a fortnight, I've found new cousins.

The sharing of stories is about to begin. If only my mother were alive to share this moment with us! Happily, two of her sisters are still here, as is their cousin Bracha - and they are going to be the ones with the best stories to tell.