ANTIQUE LETTERS DELIVER JOY AND SORROW

My mission is to bring our family tree to life. I’m diligently piecing together a photo history to accompany the names, dates, and locations where my family members lived. Some relatives made it through a very dark time in the world’s history, while others sadly perished.

My desire is to share as much documented information about each of the relatives as possible. My ultimate goal is to maintain their legacies by telling the good and the bad and propel goodness to win over evil.

One hundred years ago, my cousin Jeffroim (“Froyke”) put ink to paper and, in his letters, left a meaningful legacy. He cared deeply about family. The letters were “too sad,” was my Aunt Fannie's standard reply to my requests to read them. She said that with a deflated tone whenever asked about them. Yet, she kept the compacted pile of hand-scribed letters and documents written in the varied languages of Yiddish, Russian, Aramaic, and Hebrew stored in a protective used cookie tin.

When I inherited these coveted letters, I flew out to California with my family to hand-deliver them to my cousins. Upon receiving the typed translations and collating them with the originals, I put them together in archival plastic sleeves and neatly organized them in a five-inch binder. There they sat for close to 30 years.

Realizing that keeping them in never-read binders wasn’t much different than storing them in a cookie tin, the day finally came to devote the time necessary to assure that my ancestors regained their stolen legacies. I may not have known my relatives living in foreign lands, but I researched for years to bring their memories back to life. Becoming friends with their descendants whenever possible and collecting their photographs and writings has been my all-consuming quest.

By now, you all know my mantra is that everyone deserves a legacy. Who more than the innocent victims of the Nazi murderers? That makes a letter my grandmother received, dated February 23, 1938, handwritten in Yiddish by her young nephew Froyke Posternak,* a testimony for the family, and an important piece of world history. The line, “There aren’t any closer relatives than a sister of our mother,” is especially poignant and makes me deeply appreciative that we have formed a tight bond with the descendants of Udel, my grandmother’s sister.

Moishe (Mikhail) Posternak (1917, Chudnov-1941, MIA) pictured here with his father, Wolf, the baker (1875-May 27, 1935). There are no known pictures of Wolf’s wife, my Grandaunt Udel

Original letter from my grandmother’s nephew, her sister Udel’s eldest son Froyke, dated February 21, 1938, and written in Yiddish (my Aunt Fannie wrote on the bottom who the letter was from)
Below: Translation of this letter by Harry Langsam, z”l

Letter from my grandmother’s nephew, her sister Udel’s eldest son Froyke, dated February 21, 1938. Translated by Harry Langsam, z”l Note: the reference to Ida is actually my grandmother’s sister Udel

Jeffroim (“Froyka”) Posternak born about 1897 in Chudnov, and his wife Polina, married in 1922. They perished in 1941 in Village of Sudachevka.
According to a letter from our cousin Shimon Heusman (aka Shimon Goyzman), Froyke’s wife was Polina (not to be confused with his sister by the same name)

Froyke, born about 1897 in my ancestral Chudnov, Russia/Ukraine, was married and living in Sudachev, Ukraine, where he, and his wife, were killed in 1941. According to my cousin Shimon, as read in the translation of his memoir, Froyke’s sister declared that she sent an inquiry and sorrowfully reported that “for a long time her brother and his wife couldn’t make up their minds about leaving the house in Sudachev. When they decided, they reached on a carriage Chudnov and the Germans were already there. They went back, where they were all killed.”

The paper touched by the hands of my cousin and the words he penned are in my possession 100 years later for all to see. The translation typed by my cousin Harry Langsam, z”l, is stored with the original letter in an archival plastic sleeve in the five-inch binder, along with scores of other letters from our ancestors.

Froyke’s mother, Udel, my grandmother’s older sister, died at about age 40 in 1917. She died in childbirth during the birth of her fifth child. That son, Moishe (Mikhail aka Moisei) Wolfovich Posternak, survived that time but tragically went missing in action during WWII on a Russian battlefield at about age 24.

Moishe (Mikhail) Posternak holding baby Shimon Goyzman The way life is supposed to be. Abt 1939

Moishe (Mikhail) Posternak (1917-1941) Missing in Action

On December 13, 2021, my cousin Adel, named for her grandmother, my Grandaunt Udel, told me her father always said that he was six when his mother died in childbirth. He claimed that the reason was that she was so upset that she lost her daughter Perl (Polina) in the Civil War that year in a pogrom. Perl, born in 1900, was 17 when her life was painfully cut short.

What Adel didn’t learn from her father was about the life of his brother Froyke, 14 years his senior, until she met me and I showed her the letter from Froyke. She had some recollection of her father speaking of his younger brother, Moishe (Mikhail), missing in action, but determined it must have been too painful for her father to talk about his older brother, mercilessly killed in his village.

This letter dated May 28, Kyiv, came to my Aunt Fannie soon after WWII from her cousin Masha, at the urging of her husband not to write to the relatives in the United States. Masha was the daughter of my grandmother’s sister Etl

In a conversation with Adel on Feb. 27, 2022, she reiterated that she learned from me, from these letters, about her grandmother and others. She was telling her aunt, her mother’s sister living in Israel, what a miracle it was that I found her. When Adel immigrated, she thought there was no family in America.

Rachel, (Rakhil) Udel’s second daughter, survived and married but bore no children. She married when she was about 48. Adel’s father and his sister, Adel’s beloved Aunt Rachel (Rakhil), told her that around WWII, unmarried women were having babies, implying with encouragement that all women needed to have babies. She laughed with naivety, saying, how could I do that? Her aunt regretted that she married too old and was sorry she didn’t have children.

Rachil (Rakhil) Posternak (December 29, 1909, Chudnov - August 22, 1987, Kyiv, Ukraine) and her husband Isaac Sapozhnik (about 1913-June 1, 1985, Kyiv, Ukraine) as a young couple

From Udel’s large family, her son Yellik, born in 1911 in Chudnov, the same year and the same shtetl as my father, survived the atrocities.

Yoil (“Yellik”) Posternak (1911-1981) Two of his brothers, Jeffroim (Froyka) (1897-1941), killed in 1941, and Moishe (aka Mikhail) 1917-1941) MIA in 1941, and one sister, Perl (Polina), (1900-1917) perished in a pogrom One sister, Rachil (Rakhil) survived (1909-1987) Their parents died before the war Yellik’s first wife, Nehama Vinnik and their two young children Velvel Posternak, age 6 and Grisha Posternak, age 2, were killed in 1941 while Yellik was on the battlefield

Yellik’s first wife at age 27, along with their two children, perished while he was at war. The children were the tender ages of 6 and 2.

Nehama, Velvel, and Rakhil Posternak between 1937 and 1939
Nehama Vinnik Posternak (abt. 1914 = 1941, Chudnov) Velvel (1935, Chudnov - 1941, Chudnov) Not pictured, not yet born - Grisha (1939, Chudnov, - 1941, Chudnov) Rachil (Rakhil) (December 29, 1909, Chudnov - August 22, 1987, Kyiv, Ukraine) married but had no children

Yellik, my father’s 1st cousin with a strong family resemblance, remarried after the war.

Yoil (“Yellik”) Posternak with his second wife, Nina Valdman (June 12, 1925, Lodz, Poland - October 19, 2016, New York, New York), and his sister Rachil (Rakhil) Posternak in 1945

Yellik’s second wife bore three children. The younger two of the children, Adel’s siblings Polina and Mikhail, were born in our ancestral Chudnov.

Yellik Posternak, with his wife Nina and their three children Polina, Mikhail and Adel 1955

Adel, the eldest of three children of Yellik, and his new wife, Nina, was named after Yellik’s mother, Udel. Adel, whose Jewish name, used for prayers for good health, is Udel bas (the daughter of) Bella, was born in Kyiv in 1946.

My cousin’s name “Adel” has a fifth letter after it to soften it, she explained, but they don't have that letter in the English alphabet. She also noted that her father would often endearingly call her Udelah, a form of the Yiddish name of her grandmother, Udel.

Three months after Adel immigrated to America with her family in 1997, they all enjoyed a picnic at my house. My dear cousin Adel remains single and now lives in New York City.

Adel’s younger sister, Polina, whom their father often called by the Hebrew name Perl, was named for their aunt, Perl (Polina) who perished in the pogrom. Polina from the younger generation passed away at age 62 on May 10, 2010, in Brooklyn, after a courageous battle with cancer. She left two sons and a grandson. Now there are even more descendants to keep her beautiful memory alive.

The youngest of Yellik’s three offspring from his second wife, Nina, is Mikhail, named for his father’s brother, Moishe (Mikhail), who went missing in action in WWII. The younger Mikhail, an attorney living with his family in Israel, and his wife, who recently retired from work at Yad Vashem, have two children, both attorneys, and six grandchildren. Each year, on Yom HaShoah, while working at Yad Vashem, Mikhail’s wife read the names of the list of martyrs from our family who perished in Chudnov.

My brother Nate, second from right with cousin Mikhail Posternak, left, his wife, daughter, and son Jerusalem, Israel 2003

Mikhail, born one month after me, was visiting with his wife at his sister Adel’s apartment in New York City for her 65th birthday in October 2011. Sitting next to him on the sofa, I took his hand and didn’t want to let go. I sullenly said, “We should have played together as children,” while asking one of the others in the room to translate since Mikhail and I don’t speak the same languages.

"Read between the lines," my cousin Harry Langsam, z"l, my hero, who translated the letters, implored, "and you will see how your family existed in poverty, illiteracy, and some jealousy, too. It all came with the territory, the oppressions of the czarist regime.”

My response is: Look at the innocent faces of our young cousins killed in 1941, and in their memory, accomplish an act of kindness. The world is still in desperate need of it.

Judd’s bar mitzvah celebration South Orange, New Jersey March 17, 2001 Left to right, seated, Norma Mark, Bob and Rema Nadel, Esther Friedberg Standing left to right Nina, Adel Posternak, Alla Vlodova, Arnee and Sharon Cohen, Flora Wilson, Michael Friedberg

Rina’s bat mitzvah celebration - Temnogorod side - Five of six branches of my paternal grandmother Sarah represented, three branches of the seven of my paternal grandfather, two branches of their mutual cousin Sheindl’s three branches South Orange, New Jersey April 5, 2003

Rina’s bat mitzvah celebration South Orange, New Jersey April 5, 2003
Standing left to right, Faina Irilevich, Polina Posternak, Sharon and Arnee Cohen, Adel Posternak, Moss Cohen - seated left to right Alla Vlodova, Nina Posternak, Maryam Sandal

Moss’s bar mitzvah celebration with various branches of the Mark Family South Orange, New Jersey June 10, 2007
From the Posternak branch: Gleb Posternak standing fourth from left, Adel Posternak standing fourth from right in front of her mother Nina Posternak

Moss’s bar mitzvah celebration with Nina Posternak and Sharon Cohen South Orange, New Jersey June 10, 2007

Exploring NYC with Arnee Cohen, Adel Posternak, Lauren, Sharon, and Moss Cohen July 4, 2019

*I spoke with Adel before the publication of this piece, and we discussed names.

Adel says there was confusion about their family name and determined that the correct spelling is Posternak, not Pasternak, as in my charts. Thus, for the narrative, I changed all spellings to Posternak.

Fun fact: пастернак (Pasternak) is the Russian name for the vegetable parsnip.