ALL IN THE FAMILY - ETL'S IN-LAWS

What part do the Portnoys play in our family? It’s complicated.

Just short of a full three years after my Aunt Fannie’s passing, I picked up the phone and called Max Portnoy’s daughter. While I thought I was dialing Anna’s number, her younger sister Goldie answered. That worked out well as Goldie had been delving into genealogy, and she found my call intriguing.

Goldie (younger daughter of Esther and Max Portnoy) and Leonard Leon 1995

On July 9, 1995, Goldie sent me a highly informative follow-up letter. Unexpectedly, she enclosed priceless family photos. One captured the 1919 wedding of her parents in Kansas City, Missouri. Her parents married on June 15, the anniversary date I celebrate with my husband.

July 9, 1995 letter from Goldie Leon (She mistakenly has my grandmother’s name as Sarah Marks with an “s” at the end, my grandfather’s name as Nachman Marks with an “s” and my aunt’s name as Fannie Marks with an “s.”

It all started when I took the time to go through more of Aunt Fannie’s papers and came across the Portnoy family telephone numbers in her old address book. Additionally, I had a couple of letters Max sent to Aunt Fannie. In one, he explained or attempted to de-mystify all the interconnections in the family.

Letter from Max Portnoy to my Aunt Fannie dated July 30, 1975

Portnoy Family Tree - My grandmother Sarah’s sister Etl Temnogorod married Ioil Portnoy. My Grandmother’s and Etl’s Aunt Sarah (sister of their mother Feiga (“Fannie”) maiden name unknown, married Ioil’s brother Berl (“Boris”) Portnoy. According to Max, my Great-grandfather Yehuda Hersh Temnogorod was some relative of Moishe Labe Portnoy.

I remembered Aunt Fannie speaking of Max Portnoy and saying he was related to Masha, her cousin, in Ukraine. Masha was the only cousin who dared send Aunt Fannie letters revealing the losses in our family during the atrocities of WWII. What Goldie Leon remembered was how fondly her father spoke of my grandmother Sarah. My grandmother was a sister of Max’s sister-in-law, Etl.

Aunt Fannie’s foresight in asking Max Portnoy to write about the family relations was extremely valuable. We knew that Max’s brother Yoil (“Ioil”) was married to my grandmother’s sister Etl and they were the parents of Masha and Moishe, who survived the war. Feiga was the eldest of Etl and Ioil's four children; she died of tuberculosis during those harrowing years, and Gershon, 16, was killed, as his mother Etl was, in 1941. See my blog post Etl, dated June 14, 2022.

We also knew that Etl’s son Moishe married my grandfather’s niece Raya Muravina. For more about Raya, see my April 5, 2022, blog post How Could You?

We knew that Max and Ioil had a brother, Berl, also known as “Boris.” Note, Max spelled his brother's name as “Barel.” While we knew about Berl, we were uninformed that their eldest brother in the clan was married to my Great-grandmother Feiga’s sister. Note the spelling of “Fages” for “Feiga” in the letter from Max. Interestingly, we were not previously aware that my great-grandmother had a sister.

We found out later the name of Boris’s wife, my Great-grandaunt, was Sarah. Note, Max wrote “fif” for “wife.” In one letter from Max, he notes that Sarah and Boris have four daughters and one son. According to a letter from Masha dated abt. 1969, they had six children, and one died young.

There were two other Portnoy brothers. One, Shika, spelled “Sheka” in Masha’s letter, married Feiga (maiden name unknown). Shika and his wife had three children, as seen in the photo. Two, Dovid (David), the younger brother, was unmarried.

A sister, Adele, was married. The names of her spouse and their three children are unknown, but luckily their images captured in a family photo establish their existence beyond a reasonable doubt.

While we were related to Max in a few ways that we know of, there is still research to be done to clarify some of our mysterious family connections. Although Max’s daughter Goldie did genealogy research, she was unsuccessful in finding some of the cousins in her father’s large family.

Upon learning that Max’s daughters Anna and Goldie would be visiting us in South Orange, New Jersey, on January 23, 1999, I asked our mutual cousin Alla to travel from Brooklyn and meet at our house.

Alla’s grandmother, my grandmother’s sister, Etl, was married to Goldie’s uncle, Ioil Portnoy. Ioil was the son of Malke Goldie and Moishe Portnoy and a brother of Goldie’s father, Max. The resemblance between Goldie and Alla, 1st cousins 1x removed, was striking.

Page 1 of November 1995 letter Shimon Goyzman sent to Goldie Leon and Goldie sent me a copy

Page 2 of November 1995 letter Shimon Goyzman sent to Goldie Leon and Goldie sent me a copy

Aside from meeting Goldie and her sister Anna from San Diego on that visit, we met Goldie’s daughter Judy from Chicago. Excitingly, Judy's youngest three of six children, Abby, Cari, and Ricky, were with them.

Anna stayed at our home while Goldie, Judy, and her children attended an event. While we were alone, Anna told me all about their family matters. She disclosed that Judy and her brother David were adopted and that she and her husband had a son Martin who died of cancer when he was not quite two.

Family of Goldie and Leonard Leon’s daughter Judy and her husband Jeffrey Silverman late 1990s? Michele, twins Abby and Cari, Jeffrey, Lori, Judy, Jamie, and Ricky

Subsequently, we met Goldie and Leonard a couple of times for brunch in Chicago. Leonard passed away before our last visit when Goldie entertained us at her apartment. On that trip, we drove around town with Judy pointing out various points of interest, including a restaurant she and her husband owned and apartment complexes where their children resided.

On one of our trips to San Diego, we met Anna’s husband at their house along with their single daughter Phyllis, a teacher. Their daughter Martine, named for her brother, lives in Los Angeles with her husband and four children. Anna and her husband Sam moved from Illinois after the death of their baby boy. Sam never returned because it was too painful.

The search continues for the descendants of Max’s and Ioil’s (Yellik’s) three brothers and their only sister, the families of Shika and Feiga, Boris and Sarah, David, who was not married the last we knew, and Adele and her spouse. In this internet age, the pictures Goldie Leon, z”l, shared with me are sure to help shore up those loose ends.

Combining the information in the letters with clues from the photos, we noted that Boris had six children. One granddaughter was living in Philadelphia. Possibly members of that granddaughter’s family are still located there, and we can make a connection.

In a 1973 letter from Harry Langsam to Esther and Max Portnoy, Harry included the names of two of Boris’s married daughters and the cities where they lived. Harry garnered that information and more during his visit with his wife Anna (not to be confused with Goldie’s sister Anna) to her sister in Ukraine. Harry further disclosed that two of Shika’s three children lived in Leningrad. No clue has been uncovered, however, on the whereabouts of Adele’s three children or their descendants.

1973 letter from Harry Langsam to Esther and Max Portnoy upon return from trip with Anna to visit Raya (Rachel) and others in Ukraine

Max Portnoy’s daughters Anna and Goldie both passed away in 2014. Anna was 92, and Goldie was 88. While I miss them, I’m fortunate we had the time to get to know one another and share family histories.

With so much help available on the internet and in social media groups, there is no time like the present to delve more into trying to find the descendants of the family of Moishe and Malka Goldie Portnoy. Possibly a descendant of theirs will have more photos to share. If not, I can give them the gift of seeing what their ancestors looked like by sharing the pictures in my collection. They will also gain insight from the treasured collection of heirloom letters.

Finding unknown descendants of Moishe and Malka Goldie Portnoy’s clan may lead to learning the maiden name of my great-grandmother Feiga (“Fannie”). Maybe someday, I'll introduce our mutual cousins Alla in Brooklyn and Alexey in Germany to more newfound relatives in their branch of our family. From Grandaunt Etl’s clan, there's also Faina and her brother Joseph in Haifa with their families and the children and grandchildren of their brother Shimon. Reuniting long-lost cousins would be the golden ticket.

It could turn out that they will want to know about their wonderful family, who started life in Chudnov, Ukraine, now with relatives around the globe. Hopefully, the cousins we find will join the Facebook group, Chudnov Children, begun by fellow Chudnover and friend Marvin Kaleky, and contribute more information to the group about their roots in Chudnov.

If they seek to learn more about our ancestral Chudnov, they can log onto my website at sharonmarkcohen.com. There they can read my blog posts and articles, many of which pertain to my father’s side of the family from Chudnov. Will we learn about the person for whom my father, Benjamin, was named?

My father started life with the name Berl. Was that the same relative from whom Berl Portnoy got his name? Or was my father named for Max's older brother Berl? That would mean that Max's brother passed away before my father was born in 1911. Did he? Did the Berl that my father got his name from have the matching Hebrew name as my father, Dov Ber?

Anna and Goldie’s father, Max Portnoy, my Grandaunt Etl’s brother-in-law, was part of our extended family. Max, also known as Mordicai or Motol, was a toolmaker, and many of my ancestors were tool sharpeners, including my great-grandfather, Yehuda Hersh Temnogorod.

The July 30, 1975 letter Max Portnoy penned to Aunt Fannie says that his father told him my Great-grandfather, Yehuda Hersh Temnogorod, was somehow related to Max’s father, Moishe Labe Portnoy.

The title page from my blog post, The Life and Times of My Great-grandfather in the Old Country, dated May 24, 2022, shows a picture of handcrafted tools. That antique rack, filled with tools and utensils, was proudly displayed in Goldie’s kitchen in the Chicago suburbs, where I snapped the photo. Her sister Anna in San Diego had a similar display of tools and utensils, which we saw when we visited. Both Anna and Goldie said they still enjoyed using them.

Although Max made the tools shown in the background of my May 24 blog post, they probably replicate the tools worked on by my ancestors, which I never was privileged to see or touch. While I have no pictures of my great-grandfather, seeing the handcrafted tools at Anna’s and Goldie’s welcoming homes was wildly exciting. At least I was afforded a glimpse of similar tools to those my great-grandfather sold from a cart in a faraway land 100 years ago.

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