Success Story

by  Stephen A. Cohen

Five years ago, I began searching for a town that my BASIST family called Kremenshaw. My paternal grandmother  Sophie, who settled in New York City and her brother Samuel (who settled in Memphis, TN) told their children that it was near Vilna which is now called Vilnius and is the capital of Lithuania.

After frustrating searches through the available Jewishgen databases and major libraries, inquiries were sent to Jewishgen's digest. Members responded that they thought that it was in Poland, Ukraine, even Germany.

Listings in the JGFF (family finder) established contact with two members Alma Cahn & Steve Sherman who were distant cousins to each other, both researching GERMANSKY.

Steve had uncovered a very interesting fact that in the building that the first GERMANSKI family lived in Brooklyn NY, also lived the family of Wolf  & Dora BASIST (Wolf was another brother). Since Steve knew that his great grandmother's maiden name was Annie BASSIST, he naturally assumed that they might be related. To this day we are still not positive of that relationship.

However Steve also had evidence that the GERMANSKI family came from Voronova in the Lida District of Belaus. As I had still not located my much sought Kremenshaw, I joined the Lida Research group headed by Ellen Sadove Renck.

The Vornova yizkor book listed several BASIST families as did several other towns in that area. Then in 1998, Ellen made a startling find in the 1929 Business Directory - Nowogrodek Province.

This Polish business directory (Lida was part of the Grodno Gubernia 1919-1940) listed a previously unknown town Kreminshok at Latitude: 5408 Longitude: 2522 . Voronova was 2.3 miles WNW. This town was not listed in Where Once We Walked.

What was even more startling was that the town was also called Germanishki, which was so similar to Steve & Alma's family name of GERMANSKI.

Recently after an exhausted search for his family town of Kreminchaw David Harris, researching UMANSKY, found my original inquiry about Kremenshaw by searching the Jewishgen digest archives.

Dave has since located a 1900 map at the Library of Congress that listed the town as Kreminzow and on the map as Hermaniszki.

Genealogy may be a difficult hobby for those who do not like working at it, but I have found that through the warmth of our membership, it to be a very rewarding past time.



Copyright © 2000 Stephen A. Cohen
HTML by Irene Newhouse
 
 


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