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       Date Last Updated: 18-May-2012

Vitebsk Families Stories and Pictures

 
  VITEBSK FAMILIES STORIES AND PICTURES  
 


The Yudovin (Judovin) Family

This information was donated by SL.

My connection with Vitebsk is my grandmother whose name maiden name was Hannah Yudovin (sometimes spelled Judovin). She was born in 1887 in or near Vitebsk and came to America in 1912 shortly after marrying Benjamin Belinsky (from Moldavia). They settled in Buffalo, NY. In America, they changed their last name to Bailen, and my grandmother began using the name Anna instead of Hannah.

My grandmother had sisters and some brothers, but I only know of one who came to America, an older brother, Isaac, who changed his last name to Smith (an extremely common American name); he died long before I was born.

My grandmother died in 1956 or 57. However, some of my grandmother's family must have eventually come the U.S. because I have a letter (maybe a few) from a Yudovin family in Brooklyn who wrote to my grandmother back in the 1940's---it's in Yiddish and I've never had it translated. My mother said it was from my grandmother's cousins. I never met them, probably because my grandmother lived too far away to see them. When my mother married in 1945 she moved to New York, but they she didn't maintain contact with them.

Below is a picture of my grandmother and her sisters. In the lower right hand corner is the photographer's information in Russian. My grandmother, Anna Juodvin Bailen (or Henne Yudovin), is the woman standing in the middle, back row.

I put c. 1905 because she married in 1912 and emigrated to America that year. She is at least a teenager in the picture and would have been 20 years old in 1907.

 

Yudovins