With my series of blog posts on my ancestry from Chudnov nearing completion, I’ve been thinking about what spearheaded this latest endeavor. The answer could quite simply be from having internalized the comments in an email from a cousin in Russia. Why hold on to this information in the palm of my hands? This testimony is for the world to see.

The 3-2-2022 email, “Sharon, I can't stop admiring you. I follow your blog regularly. So many thoughts, so much valuable information. Thank you for the photos of letters and notes. Sharon, thanks to you, we have so much important and valuable information about our origins. The more I talk to you, the more I understand the depth of everything you do. Tell me a little about Polina's children. I've read the letter from Polina's brother. There are all my relatives. It is fantastic. I found information about dressmakers ( Eida and Pinhos), a new version of the surname Kaya aka Katz and etc. There is a lot of information between these lines.”

Our cousins, the Tenenbaums, immigrated to Owings Mills, Maryland. That was in 1991. See my blog post, Our Cousins, Our Heroes, dated March 22, 2022. Polina, the granddaughter of my grandfather Nathan’s sister, Eida, soon reached out to our cousins Anna and Harry Langsam in Los Angeles. Harry suggested she contact me.

Excitedly, Polina and her husband Mikhail took a bus trip from Maryland to surprise us. We were apple picking at a New Jersey farm with my cousin Shari and her family when a call came from Harry in Los Angeles. He needed to tell us that our newfound cousins were on their way. I immediately arranged for my parents and brother to pick them up at the bus stop and drive them to our house.

We rushed home, where I quickly prepared and popped a fresh apple pie into the oven. We had a magical visit. Polina not only sang Yiddish nursery rhymes to our baby at the time, she told me about another cousin living in the states. That was Peter Nesterchuk and his family, whom she knew from Chudnov. See the testimonial letter by Cousin Raya Muravina at the conclusion of my blog post Here We Go Again, dated May 17, 2022.

Undated letter from Polina and Mikhail Tenenbaum responding with Peter Nesterchuk’s contact information. The envelope is postmarked 19 Oct. 1999

Peter and Anna Nesterchuk Flint, Michigan late 1990s-early 2000

Upon learning from Polina that Peter’s daughter knew English, as soon as I heard about my 3rd cousin, Raisa, I reached out to her. She was slow to respond, and correspondence immediately dropped off. I wondered why, so I called. She could hardly believe it. What she heard from others was that Americans are not interested in the immigrants. I told her that she couldn’t be more wrong about me.

My cousin Yuriy Temnogorod laughed when I told him what she thought since we remained so close from the first time we were introduced in 1996, shortly after he emigrated from Nikolaev. See 100 Years, A Wrap, dated May 31, 2022.

After my call to Raisa, we visited her family in Flint, Michigan, on a family road trip in the summer of 2003. Unfortunately, her father was no longer living, but we met her elderly mother and two of her three sons. Her middle son lives in Israel.

Peter Osipchuk at the grave of his namesake, his great-grandfather Peter Nesterchuk (aka Perez Kuperschmidt)

Raisa’s eldest son of three traveled with his wife, infant son, and mother-in-law from their home in Ohio to meet us at his parent's place in Flint. Her younger son showed our children some fancy soccer moves and permitted them to play on his computer.

Raisa and her husband with their youngest son - bar mitzvah 1997 Flint, Michigan

On that day, Raisa and I felt like sisters. We have sporadically been in touch over the years throughout her relocations. Continuing a relationship the best we can, we look for any chance to communicate. While I also contacted her brother in Massachusetts, we have not yet met.

August 2003 Flint, Michigan with cousins Anna Nesterchuk, (left) and her daughter Raisa Osipchuk (standing in front, second from right) and her family. My husband was taking the picture as I’m standing with Judd behind me, Rina to my left and Moss in front.

On February 11, 2018, my cousin Raisa wrote: “Germany, the end of the war (WWII), the ostarbeiters* go home to Ukraine, my father, Peter (Perez Kupershmidt) Nesterchuk (April 12, 2021, Chudnov, UKR - March 3, 2001, Flint, MI), with the cover head.” That was the description of the picture which Raisa sent. It said so much.

Peter Nesterchuk was the name my father’s cousin took with forged Aryan papers during WWII. Peter’s mother, Gitl Muravina (Murovany), was the daughter of Leib Muravin (Murovany). Leib was the brother of my great-grandfather, my grandfather Nathan’s father, Moishe Muravin (Murovany). Leib and Moishe’s father was my great-great-grandfather, whose name we do not know.**

That will necessitate another chart as needed in last week’s Tuesday blog post, The Legacy of the Six Weinerman Sisters, dated July 19, 2022.

Leib Muravin was the brother of my Great-grandfather Moishe Muravin (originally Murovany), my grandfather Nathan Mark’s uncle

Leib Muravin (Murovany) and Basja (maiden name unknown) married about 1883. The couple had four children. Their eldest son, Zelig Muravin (Murovany) (October 3, 1884 - 1941 in Chudnov), married his cousin, my grandfather Nathan’s sister, Fruma. For the story of Zelig and Fruma’s family, see my April 5, 2022, blog post, How Could You?

The limited information we have on Leib and Basja’s younger two children is that their daughter Perl was born before 1921. That was probably long before 1921. We have no information on their youngest child, a son, not even his name.

Gitl, Leib and Basja’s second child, had three children. Peter was the only one who survived the war.

In a 1999 letter from Raisa, she tells of Perez Kuperschmidt changing his name to Peter Nesterchuk during WWII to stay alive
Where she says the relatives died in 1941, with more probing it was determined that they were ruthlessly killed by the Nazis.

Peter’s mother, Gitl, born in 1886 in Chudnov, was killed there in 1941. Her firstborn child, her daughter, Chaja, was born in 1916 in Chudnov. With more probing, it became clear that in 1941 Chaja, and her offspring, were mercilessly killed in Chudnov.

A flow of warmth rippled through me when I reread a November 13, 1999 letter from Raisa reporting that her father, Peter, told her my Great-granduncle Leib was "very good."

Gitl Muravina was my paternal grandfather’s first cousin (my grandfather also had a sister Gitl)

Judka (Idl) Kuperschmidt, the youngest of Gitl’s three, like his sister Chaja, mercilessly met his fate in 1941 in Chudnov. That is all we know about Idl. Their father, Gitl’s husband, Elli Kuperschmidt, had been married before. He died in 1926. From his first marriage, Elli was the father of Shiay Kuperschmidt. Shiay married Rachel, maiden name unknown, and they had two children, Sonia and Leonid. Sadly, while serving in the army in 1941, Leonid was killed. The fate of Sonia is unknown.

In October 2018, while at a family reunion on my mother’s side in Texas, we were dinner guests of Raisa’s eldest son Boris and his family, now living in Houston. Since January 10, 1996, when they came from the other side of the world, it took some years, but yes, we have seen each other around the country.

2018 Houston, Texas Sharon second from left with arm around my cousin Boris Osipchuk. His wife, Iryna on left and his mother-in-law next to the three children, Peter, Samuel, and Daniel.

Our ancestors, brothers Moishe and Leib Murovany, more than likely lay buried together in Chudnov, where my 2nd cousin, Polina Tenenbaum’s brother, Mikhail Fishman, cared for the Old Jewish Cemetery until his death in 2014. We possibly have more relatives buried nearby one another in Ukraine than anywhere else.

We, Chudnov Children, are now connected throughout the world. Social networking came into play and made it all so much easier. Our friend Marvin Kaleky, also a Chudnov Child, started and is the administrator of the Facebook group Chudnov Children. Please consider joining if you have roots in Chudnov.

Our ancestors would be amazed. The story continues.
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*Ostarbeiter

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to navigation Jump to search Ostarbeiter Woman with an Ostarbeiter badge at the Auschwitz subsidiary IG-Farbenwerke factory Ostarbeiter badge OperationPeriod1939 – 1945 Location German-occupied Europe Prisoners Total At least 7.6 million foreign civilians in 1944 [1]

Ostarbeiter (German: [ˈɔstˌʔaʁbaɪtɐ], lit. "Eastern worker") was a Nazi German designation for foreign slave workers gathered from occupied Central and Eastern Europe to perform forced labor in Germany during World War II. The Germans started deporting civilians at the beginning of the war and began doing so at unprecedented levels following Operation Barbarossa in 1941. They apprehended Ostarbeiter from the newly-formed German districts of Reichskommissariat Ukraine, District of Galicia (itself attached to the General Government), and Reichskommissariat Ostland. These areas comprised German-occupied Poland and the conquered territories of the Soviet Union. According to Pavel Polian, over 50% of Ostarbeiters were formerly Soviet subjects originating from the territory of modern-day Ukraine, followed by Polish women workers (approaching 30% of the total).[2] Eastern workers included ethnic Ukrainians, Poles, Belarusians, Russians, Armenians, Tatars, and others.[3] Estimates of the number of Ostarbeiter range between 3 million and 5.5 million.[2]

By 1944, most new workers were under the age of 16 because those older were usually conscripted for service in Germany; 30% were as young as 12–14 years of age when taken from their homes.[2][4] The age limit was reduced to 10 in November 1943.[2] Ostarbeiter were often the victims of rape, and tens of thousands of pregnancies due to rape occurred.[5]

Ostarbeiter often received starvation rations and were forced to live in guarded labor camps. Many died from starvation, overwork, bombing (they were frequently denied access to bomb shelters), abuse, and execution carried out by their German overseers. These workers were often denied wages; when they did get paid, they received payment in a special currency which could only be used to buy specific products at the camps where they lived.

Following the war, the occupying powers repatriated many of the over 2.5 million liberated Ostarbeiter.[6] Those returning to the USSR suffered from social ostracism.[citation needed] American authorities banned the repatriation of Ostarbeiter in October 1945, and some of them immigrated to the U.S. as well as to other non eastern-bloc countries. In 2000 the German government and thousands of German companies made a one-time payment of just over € 5 billion to Ostarbeiter victims of the Nazi regime.

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**Hot off the press, the latest records released online in March 2022 (See my blog post, The Philly Branch From Chudnov, dated May 3, 2022) show Morovanniy family members (note spelling) dating back to 1855. Included are the names Berko Leibovich married to Gitl, with a daughter, Eidia (my grandfather’s older sister, Eida Kaya?). This information should prove especially interesting to my family members.

Berko’s father, Leib, may have been a grandfather or uncle of my Great-granduncle Leib (for whom he was named?) and his brother, my Great-grandfather, Moishe Murovany. Since Leib and Moishe each had a daughter named Gitl, it is quite likely the two Gitls were each named after their paternal grandmother. We eagerly await the release of more archival records to substantiate our guesses and add valuable information to help complete our family tree puzzle.

Posting this information is not only helpful to me as a diary of my findings and adding additional facts for my family members, but also as a resource for others to research their Chudnov family history.

Raisa’s maternal ancestors (no relation to me but landsmen from Chudnov), Raisa’s mother was Anna Tesler from Chudnov
Raisa’s maternal grandmother, great-grandmother, grandmother’s sister, great-grandmother’s brother Peretz King and grandmother’s younger brothers

Tuesday’s blog post, Don’t Hang Out Your Dirty Laundry, dated August 9, 2022, followed by Where’s Chudnov? on August 16, 2022, will be the final two blogs posted in this series. Please continue to send your thoughts by commenting directly on the post or email me at sharon.mark.cohen@gmail.com. I always appreciate your valued input. You spool my thoughts and inspire my dreams.