100 YEARS - A WRAP — Sharon Mark Cohen

From the times we’ve danced together at family functions, my cousin Jenny will long remember me saying, “What are the chances?”

Sharon Cohen and Jenny Temnogorod 2009 South Orange, New Jersey dancing at Moss’s Bar Mitzvah Celebration

After the last few posts, including, Our Cousins, Our Heroes, Antique Letters Deliver Joy and Sorrow, How Could You? Our Family Chain is Falling Apart, The Links Are Rolling Away, and Here We Go Again, it’s time to report that, happily, there were success stories in our family. More to come about Jenny, after a little family history.

One cousin, Moshe Temnogorod, Jenny’s great-grandfather, was a military jurist of 2nd rank=major. The papers show that he was a military investigator in the Russian army until 1947. Moshe not only survived the war, but he was also a criminal defense attorney and property lawyer, and he played the violin.

Moshe was from a family of six children. His two older siblings, one male and one female (further information remains unknown), did not survive. His two younger brothers, Israel (“Isrul”) (1910-1941) and Hersh (“Gersh” or Grigoriy) (1918-1941), went missing in action in WWII. A younger brother Abram died in childhood.

The patriarch of that clan was my Granduncle Yoil (“Yellik”), my grandmother’s brother. Yellik married his step-sister Livsha Shapiro and lived from 1882 to 1953. Livshe lived from about 1889 to 1974. From Yellik’s letters, as from the letters of the other ancestors, we learned so much, yet so little.

In one undated letter, Yellik wrote, “I have three sons, may God beware them from evil’s eye.” In another letter dated May 5, 1922, the same Granduncle wrote without mentioning the children they lost at young ages, “I have keinhore (again, asking to keep the evil eye away) three sons. The oldest is thirteen years old, the second is twelve years old, and the youngest is three years old.“ Two of his three sons, whom he loved so dearly, were killed at war. After the bloodshed, Moshe was the couple’s only living descendant.

My Aunt Fannie saved a priceless letter that Cousin Moshe addressed to my uncle and my father, and another one, which her uncle, my Granduncle Yellik, Moshe’s father, sent to her:

Cousin Moshe Temnogorod wrote to my grandparents, uncle and father, addressing his cousins as brothers Translated by Harry Langsam, z”l

My aunt was born in 1918. She saved a total of 76 letters, which my grandmother received from family in Ukraine, starting from before my aunt was born. Aunt Fannie added many other telling pieces to her collection after the war and my grandmother’s death in 1949.

The initial correspondence from abroad arrived soon after my grandparents emigrated a year apart in 1911 and 1912. Temporarily parting from his pregnant wife and infant son, my grandfather left his family of six siblings in 1911. The following year my grandmother left her father, five siblings, two half-brothers and two half-sisters in the old country. They left their familiar home and many nieces, nephews and cousins never to be seen again. More than a desire to escape from poverty, theirs was a death-defying decision laden with its own perils.

That treasure chest of letters from all branches of our big family was the most precious part of an inheritance left by my Aunt Fannie. Even though she never knew most of her closest relatives, including her four grandparents, she saved a wilting wad of telltale letters. See The Life and Times of My Great-grandfather in The Old Country, dated May 17, 2022.

The letters must have survived for a reason. My aunt saved them, I suppose, to bear witness. She must have thought that if and when we ever met any surviving relatives, I would eventually tell the story of our family.

Not until the late 1950s' did my grandparent’s niece Anuita (Anna) settle in Los Angeles with her young family. After leaving a displaced person's camp in Germany, they lived in Israel for eight years before immigrating to the United States. Their trip to California started with a visit en route to our part of the clan in New Jersey. That meeting created and sealed a lifelong bond.

Ultimately, it was Harry Langsam, z"l, Anna’s husband, who, fluent in many languages, painstakingly typed translations of the stockpile of letters my aunt had saved. Harry’s mother-in-law, Fruma, dictated some of those very letters. She was my grandfather’s sister, the cherished mother of Harry's wife, Anna. Unfortunately, Harry never had the opportunity to meet her, as she was killed at the hands of the Nazis, in 1941. See my blog post dated April 5, 2022, How Could You?

After Anna and Harry made it to the Goldina Medina, it was a long 30 years before various other cousins won the lottery, allowing them to immigrate to the states. First stop on the Temnogorod side, our house. From the Shapiro side of their family, Slava met Yuriy at their cousin Donya’s home in Jersey City. Slava then invited Yuriy, his double cousin, to join our gathering with his family. More of Slava's story is coming in Envisioning and Memorializing My Grandaunt, dated June 14, 2022.

Jenny’s parents, living in Brooklyn since 1995, emigrated from Ukraine. Jenny was eight years old. Now, she’s Jenny Temnogorod, M.D., a board-certified ophthalmologist and a fellowship-trained oculoplastic surgeon. Her parents continuously bring family members visiting from Israel to meet us. Dr. Jenny often joins in.

Our children are in age increments, two years apart. Dr. Jenny is the eldest, then our son Judd, our daughter Rina, Jenny’s brother Max, and finally our youngest, Moss. Over the years, we’ve made many fun memories with Dr. Jenny, her parents, grandparents, brother, and other family members who have come to visit.

One of the all-time favorite adventures, which our children still speak about, is a hike in Kaaterskills Falls, New York. Along with Moshe’s grandson Yuriy, his wife Yulia, their daughter Jenny and son Max, we hiked near their summer rental, where we visited and stayed over at their place in Hunter, New York.

Bronislav, Moshe’s middle of three sons, and his wife Anna immigrated to Brooklyn just in time to meet my father the summer of his death. Yuriy and his family came to our house for a second of many, many future visits with his parents. In 1997, at that chance meeting we followed up on the letter Bronislav’s father, Moshe, sent to my father and my uncle in 1922.

Additionally, we saw a striking family resemblance between Bronislav and my father, not only in looks but in character. Watching my father and Bronislav shake hands on our back deck was beyond belief, and that was only a month before my father’s passing at age 86.

Moshe’s youngest son, Lev, not only visited us from Israel in 2004, where he lived since 1992, but he brought stories of his childhood. With his nephew Yuriy translating, Lev recounted his youth during the war years sheltered by his grandfather Yellik, my grandmother’s brother. He beamed when he spoke about his grandfather telling him biblical stories. My notes from Lev say that his grandfather “knew Torah by heart.”

We are so very fortunate to have this history to pass down throughout the generations of our family and to share as a part of world history. Lev confirmed that his grandfather was a tool sharpener, as was our great-grandfather, and added that his grandfather died of a heart attack. His wife, Livsha, Lev’s grandmother, died after suffering a stroke.

Lev said that he thinks the name Temnogorod is Russian for Schwartzburg (from the German for “dark city”).

From Ashkelon, where she relocated to in 1990, Lev’s daughter Violeta, the mother of four, and her daughter, Tali, have been our guests. While we never did meet Dimark, Bronislav and Lev’s older brother, many of his descendants visited. Dimark’s son, Alex, his wife, and daughter vacationed in America, crossing the river from Brooklyn with Yuriy and his family to meet us.

Dimark’s grandson, Pavel, Alex’s son, won the teenage Maccabiah Table-Tennis Championship of Israel in 2007. That summer, his parents sent him on a congratulatory trip to visit his family in America. See my blog post Wi-Fi Access Takes To The Sky, dated January 22, 2019.

Dimark, Moshe’s firstborn of three sons, lived in Beer-Sheva, Israel, from 1995 until his passing in 2017. In his first letter to me in 1997, he wrote informing me of changes to the family tree. His paternal grandparents, he noted, had two other children before his father was born in 1909. Yellik also had a son Abram, noted above, who died young. Without this letter from Moshe’s son Dima, we would not have this valued information.

April 9. 1997 letter from Dimark Temnogorod from Israel, signed by “Dima”

Part of page two of April 9. 1997 letter from Dimark Temnogorod from Israel, signed by “Dima”

Here Dimaark signed off the April 9, 1997 letter “Dima”

From another source, I learned that Gersh had a son. They lost track of this child; the child may have died in the evacuation. As more and more records become available on the internet, we will document any new details.

As I’ve said before, every little tidbit of information helps. Here, we learned of two other live births in the family, and when Dimark signed off the letter, he used a nickname, Dima. Without noticing that, I may not have made the connection.

We are connected with cousins from around the entire world now, including but not stopping at Germany, Israel, Russia, and Ukraine. We keep finding more and more relatives with the help of additional information constantly becoming available on the internet. Our ancestors surely could not have imagined this ever happening.

In a letter penned on November 4, 1922, Yellik addressed his niece, my Aunt Fannie. With sincerity, he wrote, “I would surely like to meet you one day, but what can we do when we are so spread out throughout the world.”

Letter addressed to my Aunt Fannie from her uncle Yoil, aka Yellik Temnogorod, Dr. Jenny’s great-great-grandfather-my grandmother’s brother Translated by Harry Langsam, z”l

One family. One hundred years of the journey. Watch us dance.

Jenny’s great-great-grandfather Yoil (“Yellik”) Temnogorod, my grandmother’s brother

Part of undated letter from Yellik Temnogorod telling his travails of trying to make it to America (probably early 1920s) and returning to Chudnov with no tools and no money Translated by Harry Langsam, z”l

Jenny’s great-great-grandmother Livsha Shapiro Temnogorod, my grandmother’s stepsister who became her sister-in-law when she married my grandmother’s brother Yellik Temnogorod

Letter addressed to beloved sister-in-law and beloved brother-in-law is from Yellik’s wife, my grandmother’s stepsister Livshe Translated by Harry Langsam, z”l

Livsha Shapiro Temnogorod (1889 to 1974) = My grandmother’s stepsister Livsha married her stepbrother, my grandmother’s brother Yellik Temnogorod Pictured above in 1926 as a young woman and here as an older woman

Moshe and his father Yellik Temnogorod (Jenny’s great-grandfather with her great-great-grandfather)

**Dr. Jenny’s Great-grandfather, Moshe Temnogorod (1909-1987) Son of my grandmother’s older brother Yellik Temnogorod.**

Once again, as in last week’s blog post, Antique Letters Deliver Joy and Sorrow, Cousin Masha was the bearer of bad news, recounting the family losses during WWII in a letter from Kyiv “Kiev” dated 24 February 1947.

For clarification, “Aunt Ethyl” is Masha’s mother, my grandmother’s sister “Etl.”