FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE

In an October 21, 2021 email, my cousin wrote from her home in Russia: “Your letter is very important to me. Thank you for everything you do for all of us. Your information gave me a chance to find the burial of my great-grandmother. The story that our great-grandmother was buried in Leningrad has always been a legend for us.  Now it is an obvious fact.

“Now I am waiting for information about my grandfather’s birth from the Zhitomir archive. This information can help me to prove kinship with my great-grandmother Eida. This info can help me to get her death certificate from the State archive in Saint-Petersburg. The Zhitomir archive has accepted my request.

“I am very pleased to read your article. I'm touched. I am glad to meet and communicate with you. I believe our ancestors could be proud of us. 

“Eida [sister of my (Sharon’s) grandfather Nathan] and Pinsoch have grown good sons. They defended their Motherland and their children during the war.

“Now I know St. Petersburg is a city with my roots, the city of history and mysteries. My grandparents are buried here. And now, as we know, my great-grandmother is also. My father, my brother, and my daughter were born here. Every summer we visited our grandparents in Leningrad. My Grandpa has never talked about the war and his family. After the war, he never looked for his relatives. All his brothers died. It was a tragedy.”

It is a miracle to me that we have pictures of the family lost at war. The biggest miracle of all is that the cousin pictured, unbeknownst to us, left a pregnant wife and their daughter became a doctor, a mother and grandmother. She also became connected and met the son of her father’s brother and his children and grandchildren and are now one big happy family nearby one another in Russia.

My cousin’s informative email continued, “I have a higher education. I studied English and German at the University. I am a teacher of classical British English and German. I haven't worked in the profession for many years, I forgot a lot. You help me to exercise my English. 

“I visit my father every weekend. He's an important person in my life. He is now 81 years old, but he reads a lot every day. We have a lot of books.

“My father is a very well-read and educated man. My brother is an engineer. He was a military man too.”

“I like reading your blog. There is more information about you. Sharon I want to know more information about Eida or Pinsoch. Any word gives a clue and helps to put the puzzle together.”

My cousins are real people. Survivors in every sense of the word. If I hadn’t found them I’d be lost. Lost in my thoughts that their lives were somehow less than they are.

To learn that a cousin mastered the English language while growing up in Russia is spellbinding to me who struggled through a few years of foreign language in junior high and high school. Her father in his 80s reads books. Their house is filled with books as ours. There’s one big difference. Her Jewish roots were hidden and ours were celebrated.

From far across the world, we share a passion for filling in the pieces of our family tree puzzle and together we are doing just that. The other day, I received a link to archival records, which I instantaneously shared with my cousins across the seas.

Next, my cousin in Russia asked if I knew the birthdate of her great-grandmother, my father’s aunt. When I estimated it was 1875 based on the year of birth I had in my records for her first child, my cousin wrote back, “Sharon, your help is invaluable. You say that Eida’s birthday is in 1875. We supposed her husband Pinhos was her age or older. Hooray! We found it at last.

“My great — grandfather Pinhos, Eida’s husband was born in 1874.” Her brother searched for the records. They found not only the exact date of birth of their great-grandfather, but the records took them back to 1800 in their family history with the names of their great-great and also their great-great-great-grandfather. 

“It’s a miracle. A real time machine. It took my breath away.” I know the feeling as I, too, have found records back through the generations of my family and my husband’s, and it does steal your breath.

You can equate this to a budding romance. Cousins, learning the most minute details of our family’s history and loving every minute of it — biz hundert un tsvantsik. 

My cousin WWII hero His progeny can be proud