EDITOR'S NOTE: This article is an excellent example of genealogical methodology.  The author shows intellect, patience, persistence, creativity, imagination, curiosity and generosity.  She goes far beyond collecting names of family members.  She uses as her springboard the native villages of her four grandparents and investigates them thoroughly, involving mostly inhabitants who were no relation to her ancestors.

She publishes widely and solicits and responds to messages from readers. She visits many archives and repositories, interviews experts and corresponds with relevant people all over the world.  She collects and utilizes media, sharing material with public archives.  She teaches and involves children.

This article was originally published in IGRA. Reprinted with permission of the Israel Genealogy Research Association.

I am dedicating this article to the memory of my good friend and mentor

Dr. Martha Lev-Zion (1940-2014) זכרונה לברכה

I am Esther Rechtschafner from Kibbutz Ein-Zurim. I am not a lecturer; but would like to tell you about my research.

My research deals with the places that my family came from in Eastern Europe, rather than being family centered. I have written a few articles about these places. It is nice when I do find a connection to my own family; but I am not always sure that such a connection is 100% correct. The elusive connection that I am actually looking for is proof of the family story that my Father was a descendent of the Gaon of Vilna. As time goes by, I began to realize that I may never find the link.

Ever since I was a child, I was interested in family history, and enjoyed the little episodes that I heard from my maternal grandparents. Yet that was the entire length and depth of my interest. I also enjoy reading history.

About 10 years ago, due to some blood test results, our family doctor questioned me about my family’s medical records. I wrote to relatives of my parents’ generation. A cousin of my father’s replied with the requested medical information. He also wrote that my paternal grandmother was born in Rezekne, which is located in southeastern Latvia. This was news to me.  For reasons later to be revealed, my father rarely spoke about his family. I decided to do a little research about this place.

I used encyclopedias at first, but didn’t find enough depth of information. Then I went on to libraries and archives: the National Library in Jerusalem, Yad VaShem, the Zionist Archives, the Central Archives of the History of the Jewish People and the Archives of Latvian and Estonian Jewry.  I tried to contact every person who had donated material about Rezekne. A friend of ours, Dr. Yona Katz, suggested, that I contact Professor Dov Levin, of the Hebrew University (Contemporary Jewry department). He gave me a few more ideas on where I could possibly find information. All at once, I had a lot of information. I summarized it for myself, hoping that it might interest someone in my extended family. The summary turned out to be an article! Professor Dov Levin said that it should be published and told me where to send it.¹ Somewhere along the line I also became acquainted with Ziskin Yefet, Dr. Evelin Waldstein and Dr. Martha Lev-Zion.

Using online vital databases, I was able to find information about people with the same name as my family, but I am not 100% sure of the familial relationships. Possibly a few Jews remain in Rezekne today. There were about 50 elderly Jews living there in 2006. There is a Jewish community in Riga. Evelin Waldstein is very active in the development of the Jewish Museum there.

One fact bothered me in connection with the history of the Jews of Rezekne: The Jews of Rezekne had bought land in Ein-Zeitim PHOTO MAP OF EIN ZEITIM near Safed around the turn of the last century.² I enjoyed the fact that Rezekne citizens invested in land in Eretz Israel. However something about this troubled me: To whom did this land belong? As far as I was concerned this land belonged to the Jews of Rezekne, who had paid their good money for it. However, there were two Jews from Safed who worked this land, officially preparing it for its owners. At the time, they claimed that the land belonged to them. I couldn’t understand this, for I couldn’t believe that there could be such a problem in the history of the resettlement of our country and at the beginnings of Zionism. I was sure that then everything was ideological, straight, beautiful and wonderful.

I decided that I had to check this out. I went again to the Archives of the Latvian and Estonian Jewry and to the libraries and archives in Jerusalem pursuing material. I found some very helpful material in the files of the Zionist Archives. More important though, the archivist remembered an article she had seen about Ein-Zeitim. I found this article in the Harmon Science Library on Givat Ram. I used the bibliography at the end of this article for further reference.

The article paid a great deal of attention to the problem. The original plan had been that after the land was prepared, and houses were constructed, which was to take about 10 years, Jews from Rezekne would come and settle the land. A few did come. They wanted their settlement to be built according to Halacha (Jewish law). Therefore HaRav Kook and HaRav Maimon were in contact with these settlers. I contacted the library at Merkaz HaRav to try to locate this correspondence but the librarian-archivist was unable to help me.

Since the two people who had worked the land wanted ownership, there was much correspondence, telegrams, and even a trial. In the end it was decided that the land belonged to the people who worked it, and did not belong to the Jews still in Rezekne. The people from Rezekne who lived in Ein-Zeitim were the owners of their land; the people who had come on Aliyah and who had lived on Ein-Zeitim but had left and lived in another part of our country, did not receive any financial compensation. Nachman Yardeni, a member of Kibbutz Kinneret, and a native of Rezekne tried very hard to try to change this matter. The day before I was to go up north to meet with him, I received a phone call from his son informing me that he had passed away. 

The settlement was unsuccessful. It was re-organized a few times without success. I learned that this was the case with a few settlements in this period. There is even a book called: Abandoned Settlements. I managed to locate a few people in Israel whose families had bought land in Ein-Zeitim. As happens I knew more of this story than they did. Interestingly, Ein Zeitim was previously settled in the 16 century, when it was a thriving agricultural community and a center for Jewish learning.

When doing this research, I stayed over in Jerusalem in the house of a good friend of mine, Riva Pinx Lutfi, so as to be able to spend as much time as possible in the libraries and archives. Upon returning to her house, after a day’s research, I told her of my findings. She suggested that I write it up. In this way, my article about the connection between Rezekne and Ein-Zeitim came about.³ Unfortunately she passed away 9 years ago; and therefore my article "The Connection Between Rezekne and Ein-Zeitim" was dedicated to her memory.

Something very interesting happened as a result of last year's IGS Conference in Beit HaTfusot. Museum DorLeDor had an exhibition there. I spoke to the representative and told her of my interest in Ein-Zeitim. She believed they had some information. I sent her the link to my article and she sent me clippings of newspaper articles concerning Ein-Zeitim. I could have gotten to these articles myself, after hearing the lecture by Martha Lev-Zion about historical Jewish Newspapers, but I didn’t. The idea simply didn’t occur to me. These articles provided additional proof of many facts written in my article.

A fact that is both interesting and sad is the comparison of the lives of the settlers in Rezekne and in Eretz Yisrael:

There they faced Anti-Semitism. Here they had the problem of Arab raiders.

There, they couldn’t rely on the local police. Here they had reason to complain about the protection that they received from the police force of Safed and other Jewish guards.

The only solution was to work the land by day and be their own watchmen at night.  I suppose this is a case of “àí àéï àðé ìé, îé ìé?” or “every man for himself”.  

After finishing the article on Rezekne, I felt that I had to write about Cherkassy, the place from which my maternal Grandmother came and a place about which I had heard stories.⁴

Cherkassy is located in the southeastern part of the Ukraine, near the Dneiper River (150   kilometer southeast of Kiev and 100 kilometer north of Odessa). I was happy when I found information that corresponded with what my Grandmother had told me such as Anti-Semitism, the pogrom of 1888, Chassidim and the growing of sunflower seeds. I learned a lot about the history of Cherkassy, the Jews of Cherkassy and the derivation of the name – CHERKASSY.

I received the latter information from the director of the Cherkess Museum in Rechana.  A member of that community telephoned me for information on the history of the city Cherkassy which the director of the museum had told him he could obtain from me. He told me that the Cherkess people envy the Jews because we were able to return to our land. He said that some of them dream that they should be able to return to their ancient homeland.

I found an interesting newspaper article on microfilm.  I didn’t use this information, in my article because I thought that it described an impolite action: During a community meeting, the women in Cherkassy threw etrogim, because they didn’t like what was going on politically in their kehillah-congregation. I now think that I may have made a mistake and could have put this information into my article. It seems clear to me that this was a planned action. Perhaps it was a sign of the beginning of "womens’ lib"?

I remembered that in one of the books that my Mother’s Uncle, my Grandmother’s brother, the British Jewish author Louis Golding had written, he had referred to Cherkassy. I found the book, The World I Knew,⁵ and found the information I was looking for. While skimming through the book I found something he had written about his father. His father had also been an author, a writer of commentaries about Jewish books. After lecturing in the local Beit Midrash (Study-Hall), he would keep this material all to himself in his drawer. Louis Golding wrote that he did not want to be like his Father in this respect, that he wanted to share what he had written with others. I then decided that this was the correct thing to do a far as my articles were concerned.

After World War II, the city of Cherkassy developed into a nice modern city. There is now a Jewish community there. It is obvious that these Jews are very dependent on sh’lichim (representatives) from Israel and charity from Jews from the rest of the world. The Jewish community could not exist without this aid. The community is adopted by a joint project of the communities Afikim in Israel and four New Jersey towns.⁶

I managed to locate a Jew who came recently from Cherkassy and who was very active in the Jewish community there. He told me about the strong desire of the Jewish community to know about Judaism. A young student from there, (who studied in the "Ofek" progam for young Russians in Ein Zurim) told me he didn’t understand what being Jewish meant until he was about 16, and met with Anti-Semitism. A Russian doctor, who I met in Kupat Cholim, can’t pronounce my name; so she calls me “Cherkassy”.

I decided to write about Sveksna⁷, the shteeble (small town) that my Maternal Grandfather came from. It was clear from stories I had heard, that Sveksna was a very beautiful place and that the Jewish community there had been very organized, especially in education.

My Grandfather and his sisters managed to pass on the love for the beauty of Sveksna to their children, grandchildren and it was passed on even to some great-grandchildren.

Sveksna is located in the southwestern part of Lithuania. It is a small place, especially in comparison to the other places that I have written about. The largest population was when it had 200 Jewish families there. The majority of the inhabitants were Jews. I found a folder containing information about Sveksna in the Association of Lithuanian Jews in Israel Archives in Tel Aviv. Most of it was in Yiddish and Russian. I tried to get help with the translations but was only partially successful in this respect. I was told that this was a Lithuanian Yiddish. I knew that if my Father were alive, he would not have had a problem. The Russian was hard to decipher because of the handwriting.  

By way of the internet, JewishGen and other websites, I was able to locate others that expressed interest in Sveksna. I wrote emails to all of them. Therefore I received information that aided me greatly. I was happy when information that I found related to what my Grandfather had told me. For example:  the river, the gardens, the system of education for children, the Anti-Semitism, the Church and conscription. I came across the website of Dr. Ruth Leiserowitz. There were photographs there of the remains of Synagogues in past Jewish communities in Lithuania. Among them was a picture of the Synagogue in Sveksna. I contacted her by email, and was happy to receive other photographs of Sveksna from her. The more I found out about Sveksna, the more I realized that it was a small place in Jewish Lithuania. I believed that the history of the Jews of Sveksna could not stand alone; but needed to be based on the history of the Jews of Lithuania. Therefore I began my article with a synopsis of the history of the Jews of Lithuania. When JewishGen accepted my article, the condition was only to publish the part about Sveksna.⁸

The Jews of Sveksna, as the Jews of so many other places, suffered greatly during the Holocaust. I came to understand that only six Jews had survived the Holocaust. I tried to locate them but with no success. Then, I decided to look for information in Yad VaShem about the small work-camps in which these people had suffered in order to see who donated this material. The librarian in Yad VaShem had no idea what I wanted, but in the end, helped me find the information. I found an interview with a man from a neighboring village, who had been together with the young men of Sveksna. I telephoned him. He told me about what had happened in those camps. They had been transferred as a group from camp to camp. He told me a bit about the Sveksna survivors, and if he thought they were still alive.

I also saw a film in Yad VaShem, which had a connection to Sveksna. It showed the women and children being marched to their death, to the pit which they themselves had previously dug. The film began with Nazi propaganda. There was a bit about Nazi culture.

Our youngest daughter saw an advertisement for students to write about Jewish communities in Eastern Europe that were and are no more, and to thereby get scholarships to the Hebrew University. She translated my article into Hebrew and received a partial scholarship. She was honest and told them that the article was mine.

After my article appeared on the web, I received many emails, letters, and/or phone calls from people who also had come from there or had relatives who came from there. Some had heard stories about it, or had visited it.  All commented on the beauty of Sveksna.

We received an email from a Christian French lady. She wrote that her father–in-law, who was a Christian, had told his family that he had come to France as a soldier at the time of World War I, from a small town in Lithuania. After he died, his family went through his private belongings. He was born a Jew, in Sveksna. There were documents to prove this which she sent on to me. By information, which she sent recently, we both believe that this man was a cousin of my Grandfather’s.

A man from England wrote me that he has a cousin in Rechovot, Rivka Zur, who was the daughter of one of the six survivors of Sveksna. I wrote him asking for some information about this cousin. I telephoned her. She came to visit me. She described in detail about her family and about her father. She and her husband had gone on a trip to Sveksna and she showed me the movie they had taken there. The house where her father grew up is now used as a laboratory. I showed her the pictures that I had found in the Lithuanian Archives in Tel Aviv. One was of her aunt, who was then still alive and living in Tel Aviv. She told me that she had another aunt who had come on Aliyah in about 1935, and was still alive and living in Rechovot.

Afterwards her aunt Zipporah (Sandler) telephoned; I visited her a few times. Even my husband Mordechai accompanied me. She is a very interesting person. To listen to her life story is like listening to the history of our country. Her oldest son Ya’akov Sandler was formerly the mayor of Rechovot. This is an honor for the Jewish community of Sveksna - that was. I spoke to him and his wife on the telephone. They had also visited Sveksna and sent me copies of their photographs. His wife Nili commented that upon entering and touring Sveksna, everything was just as Zipporah had described it.

A few years ago, at the national meeting of the Israeli Genealogical Society in Givatyim, the keynote speaker was Dr. Ruth Leiserowitz. During a recess, I approached her to introduce myself and to ask her about the list of user names that appeared on her website. She confirmed that Hanna Seiff of Sydney, Australia was the wife of Naphtali Ziv, one of the six survivors of Sveksna. She was kind enough to send me Hanna’s e-mail address.

A wonderful connection has developed between us, via e-mail. I sent them copies of my articles about Sveksna. Naphtali is always willing to answer any questions that I may have. I once asked him if during the war, he thought that the war would ever end. His answer was that he knew it would end; but thought that he would not make it. He was able to decipher the Yiddish letters that I had gotten from the Sveksna file in the Lithuanian Archives in Tel Aviv.

Most of the letters were written by Naphtali’s sister Liebe (who later came on Aliyah, and is buried in Herzliya). She had spent the war period in Russia. She sent the letters to her cousin Gittel who lived in Israel. She wrote of how elated she was to find out that Naftali was still alive, and asked Gittel to please tell her brother Max, who lived in South Africa, that he should not worry about her,  but rather devote all of his attention to Naftali’s welfare.

This is the story of how Naftali and Liebe found each other: Liebe was still in Russia. She wrote to a cousin who lived in New York, asking her to please inform all the Jews who formerly lived in Sveksna that no one from Sveksna had survived. The cousin had this letter printed in a Jewish newspaper there and added her name and address at the end of it.  A copy of this Jewish newspaper found its way to a displaced persons camp in Germany, where a friend of Naftali’s was lying sick in the hospital. When visiting him, Naftali was shown the article and asked if his sister had written it. Naftali wrote to his cousin and through her, was then able to get in touch with his sister in Russia.

A short while ago Naphtali and Hanna sent me a copy of his DVD interview about the Holocaust. They also sent something else of great importance. Naphtali had in his possession quite a few old photographs of Sveksna. He decided that I should have them and then decide what should be done with them. About three years ago I donated them to The Central Archives of The History of The Jewish People in Jerusalem. Naphtali and Hanna were very happy to receive a nice “Thank-You" note, from Hadassah Assouline, who was then the director of this Archive.

About three years ago, I received an email from a Christian family in northern California. They wrote that they had seen my article about Sveksna and were sorry that they had not seen it before their trip there. They had taken a trip to visit friends who had gone to Lithuania as messengers of goodwill. While in the area, they also visited Russia, and were jailed there because of a problem with their documents. They fell in love with Sveksna because of its beauty. They decided that they would like to open up an orphanage in the hotel there. They are willing to pay the price - one million American dollars. Yet, it seems that more money comes in by the way the building is currently being used: It is being used as a brothel. They needed the name of the countess of Sveksna. I was able to get it for them by way of Dr. Ruth Leiserowitz.

I tried to hint to them that they should donate this money to any place/organization in Israel, but they love Sveksna. The wife has a nice name: Holly Wood. She once studied here as an exchange student. They sent me photographs of their trip to Sveksna. They sent quite a few photographs of the beautiful church there, which was first built in the 16th century.

I received a very interesting email from a Christian Englishman, who is of Lithuanian descent. He wrote that his Grandfather had come from Sveksna and had told him a great deal about it. My article had provided him with important historical information, and some information corresponded with what his Grandfather had told him. This sounded interesting. I wrote him an email, asking him if he had MSN CHAT. He contacted me in this way. I was lucky enough to succeed in transferring this conversation to a word document, thereby saving it. It became clear to me that his Grandfather had been a Nazi.

I shall relate two key sentences from this CHAT:

In particular there is a small valley in Sveksna which has a small stream running through it. He witnessed there the murder of a group of Jewish people; he said it was an awful sight to see, and the stream ran red.

I would like to tell you though that my grandfather was in the SS. I often have wondered whether he partook in the brutal atrocities as something he could not talk about. He always told me he saw so much, but would never tell me if he did anything to any of the people. He told me about the rejection of the Jewish population before the Germans and the war came...

As is now obvious, I had collected much material, particularly pictures of Sveksna. I had enough material to write another article. This article is entitled: "Pictures of Sveksna". It should appear on the web soon⁹.

Ralph Salinger of Kibbutz Kfar Ruppin happened to see the Vitebsk website which I organized and wrote me an email about it. He also described what he has done and is now doing. In my opinion, he is a real Zaddik. I am referring to the fact that he has gone to Lithuania a few times and spends time cleaning gravestones with shaving cream;¹⁰ and lecturing in schools.  At the time, he wrote me about his then pending trip and his destination- Vilkaviskis. I looked on a map and realized that he would be very close to Sveksna. I asked him, if he would mind going into Sveksna to find out any information he could about the Jews that once lived there. Ralph was most kind and did so. He met the local historian, a man named Peter. Ralph forwarded me Peter’s address and suggested that I write him a “thank-you" note, which I did. Thus began a correspondence between Peter and myself. I learned how to translate to Lithuanian by way of the internet. Peter first made it obvious to me why he thinks the Nazis were right in doing what they did to the Jewish citizens of Sveksna and Lithuania as a whole. This is based on the economic talent and intelligence of the Jews. He sent me a copy of his pamphlet about Sveksna, which includes a bit of information about the Jews.  I sent him copies of my articles about Sveksna. He made a few comments. He was willing to answer my questions about life in Sveksna today and about the past. Sometimes his answer was “it was not documented," "we have no records”. He carried on a bit of a correspondence with Naphtali and sent me the high school records of Naphtali and his older sisters. Then he commented that Naphtali hadn't finished high school. He seemed to have conveniently forgotten where Naphtali was from 1941 onward.

Peter gave my name to a politician and a Jewish tourist guide in the area. The politician, who is also a biology professor in a University there, wrote me a few emails. He asked me to join an organization to become a citizen of Europe; but I wouldn't agree to this for political reasons. The tour guide telephoned us. He had seen a copy of my article and had no further information to give me. He asked me to recommend him as a tour guide to people going on trips to this part of Lithuania.

Peter wrote me that he was writing a book about the history of the town of Sveksna and wanted to use my article as information about the Jews. I discussed this matter with few people, whose opinion I value, and received negative replies. Finally I decided to let him do it, but on my terms. My thought here was that if my article could influence one Lithuanian to think more kindly of the Jewish, it would be worth it! There is a Memorial Monument in the Sveksna area. Until recently, there was an annual ceremony. It was usually organized and financed by Mr. Sam Sherron, one of the survivors, whom I located with the help of Naphtali. He lives in Pennsylvania. Up until a few years ago, he would go to Sveksna every year for the Memorial Ceremony. Now he is a sick man and for the past few years, there has been no ceremony. The year 2011 had been proclaimed as the Memorial Year for the Holocaust in Lithuania. Therefore there was a Sveksna ceremony in September. I wrote Peter to enquire about it. He said that it was good but that only a few people participated.

After the war, there were no longer any Jews in Sveksna. I wrote in my article about a woman whom Jewish tourists had met in Sveksna and who claimed to be Jewish. When I wrote the article I did not know any more details. I believe that I have found out the whole story with the help of Zipporah and Peter. This is an example of Jewish identity and a Jewish Neshama-soul.

Here is the summary:

 A baby girl was born, out of wedlock, in Sveksna, between the wars. Her mother was from Sveksna and her father was a refugee who had passed through Sveksna. The mother’s family did not want her to keep the baby because the mother would have been scorned by the Jewish community should she have done so. The Rabbi did a big mitzvah in cooperation with the Priest. The baby was given to a local farmer and his wife who did not have any children. The baby was baptized, brought up as a Catholic, and was very religious. An important factor in her upbringing and education was hatred for the Jews. Since she had all the proper papers, she had no problems during WWII. Everyone in the area knew her story, and in fact, she looked Jewish. Her black hair and black eyes testified to this. After the war, she became a Nun and a nurse and worked in the local hospital. After the Holocaust, she was given the house that had previously belonged to her Jewish grandfather and she lived there. She had many crucifixes in her home.

Her biological family left Sveksna before the Holocaust. Her mother had gone to France, married, had two children but was killed in the Holocaust.  Her mother’s sister and two of her brothers had gone to Belgium and the oldest brother had come on Aliyah. After the war, the girl wanted contact with her biological family. She wanted to leave Lithuania. She met with her aunt in Latvia since her aunt couldn’t get a permit to enter Lithuania. She met with her Father. She wanted to come to Israel. She was not allowed to do so, for she was a Christian and no one would sign for her. It is not known if her Uncle was still alive then but she was unable to leave Lithuania.

In the 1990’s, she evidently decided to return to her Jewish origins. She then became known as the only Jew in Sveksna. She was happy to show Jewish tourists around.

Even if she did so for economic reasons, this does show a sign of love of our people! She died a few years ago and was buried in the Catholic Cemetery in Sveksna.

Recently I received an email from a Catholic Irish woman. Professor Dov Levin had referred her to me, as the "Sveksna Expert". She discovered who her real father was and that he was from Sveksna. She has recently learned about Jewish history, due to this searching. Her family name does not appear on any of my lists, but they may not be complete.

Currently I am unsure whether her Father was from a Sveksna family. However, the place she found listed as the place where he came from, was listed under the following names: Sweksna/Sveksna, Kovno, and Smeksna,Vexna,Veisknai. She may be referring to Veisknai, which is also known as Vexna. She now is almost finished with a book and still has the feeling that her Father was from Sveksna.

I received some new information about Sveksna. Zipporah gave me information about the layout of the shtetl and her family home. I have collected maps of Jewish Sveksna. Naphtali recently sent me a very detailed map of what he remembers. I am presently in contact with the young curator of the Sveksna museum. Somehow, I feel that I have a responsibility to my grandfather and perhaps even more so to those of Sveksna who were murdered in the Holocaust, to collect as much material as I can about Sveksna. Perhaps this will provide the basis for yet another article.

Now, it is time to write about Vitebsk, the home town of my Paternal Grandfather. [photo hersman?] Vitebsk was different. Vitebsk has a Memorial book, which is printed both in Hebrew and Yiddish. The book is over 400 pages long.

Vitebsk is located in Eastern Belarus and was once included in the Pale of Settlement of the Russian Empire. My great-grandparents left Vitebsk in 1919, to Velikye Luke. They left after all of their children had left and when the Zionists were being badly persecuted. Their youngest son, Matityahu Gerschman, had been jailed a few times for Zionist activities. He afterwards came on Aliyah and was a judge here.

The Jewish community of Vitebsk was a very cultured community. However, I think that if I would put the Jewish culture on one side of a scale and the suffering from Anti-Semitism on the other side- they would both weigh about the same.

After the war, the city of Vitebsk developed into a nice modern city. The city is very proud of Marc Chagall. There is a Jewish Community in Vitebsk now. It is obvious that these Jews are very dependent on sh’lichim from Israel and charity from Jews from the rest of the world, and that the Jewish community could not exist without this aid.

After this article which appeared on the web,¹¹ I received many emails and comments about it. I received more information and pictures. A young man from Vitebsk, who is not Jewish, sent me material and asked if he could help me acquire more material.

Mr. Dave Fox, who happens to have been the founder and past coordinator of the Belarus SIG (Special Interest Group), sent me photographs and picture postcards of Vitebsk, that he had received and didn’t know what to do with.  A student in the Yeshiva on Ein-Zurim, where I then worked as house-mother translated the Russian captions of these pictures for me. I located the places that were in these pictures on the map of old Vitebsk that I had found in the Vitebsk Memorial Book, and on a new map from the internet. This was good, for after a while, I felt that I knew my way around Vitebsk. This feeling was similar to the feeling that I had when I came on Aliyah and felt that I knew my way around our country.

A short while afterwards two girls from Vitebsk participated in the Ofek program in Ein-Zurim, and I was able to find out more about these places, and what still exists today. One of these girls came from one of the oldest Jewish families in Vitebsk (400 years). The fact that the Nazis killed many Jews at the river bank, spoiled the joy of looking at some of these nice pictures.

I wrote an article titled “Pictures of Vitebsk”.¹²

Someone who was impressed by my articles contacted me. I was asked to organize a Vitebsk website for JewishGen. It was explained that I had enough material in my article to do so, and that I would receive help organizing the technical side of the website. I asked for a few weeks to think it over. Since Yeshivat HaKibbutz HaDati, where I had worked as house-mother for over 22 years, was to close after Yom Kippur, 4 years ago, I knew that I would have the time. I accepted the offer. I worked hard. I wrote many emails to people who looked for information about Vitebsk on the internet. This is how I received so much information about families from Vitebsk. I was happy to put pictures of my family on the title page. Perhaps this was an expression of hope to find a relative.

I still receive emails, letters and telephone calls from people who are interested in Vitebsk and the other places that I researched. I try to help them. By mere luck, I happened to be able to match two parts of the same family.

After finishing the organization of the website, I realized that I had an omission. Via my research and correspondence, I learned a lot about the BUND (Algemeyner Yidisher  Arbeter Bund In Litepoyln Un Rusland Jewish Workers Union) in Vitebsk.

Many people had written me that members of their families had been active in the BUND there. I understood that the few sentences that I had written about the BUND were not enough. I also knew that my Father was against the BUND, probably because of the position of the BUND regarding Zionism and religion. I made a conscious effort not to be biased and collected material. I decided that I should start the article explaining the BUND. I found a pamphlet in the educational library of Yad VaShem about the BUND in Belarus, and was allowed to copy it. Ok, very good, but I needed information about the specific subject. I contacted various offices here and abroad that appeared to be connected to the BUND and related organizations. Each one told me to try another place. Someone suggested that I try YIVO (Yidisher Visnshaftlekher Institut) Institute for Jewish Research.  Previously, I had had some contact with a librarian in YIVO, Leo Greenbaum. When another office notified me that all the files had been transferred to YIVO, I contacted him again. Yes, they had the information, but I would have to come there to be interviewed about why I needed it, and then perhaps be allowed to see it. I reminded them, that I do not live in New York. They asked if I couldn’t send a friend or a relative. I realized that this would be a bit complicated. I do still have a few relatives and friends in the New York area, but was not sure that I could actually explain and make them understand why I wanted this material. The only cousin that I have there, who actually would have had the time and patience to do so for me, is a bit of a character. I explained all of this to them.

About two weeks later, I received a big envelope in the mail, containing many documents about the BUND in Vitebsk. I was delighted. I only had one small problem: about 50 documents were in Russian, and about 35 in Yiddish. I asked the leader of the OFEK program, to help me. He didn’t know what he was getting himself into. He distributed documents to all of the students, and they gave him Russian summaries. He translated and typed up all of these summaries and returned everything to me. I was lucky. I went to friends of ours in the area who knew Yiddish, and asked for their help in translation. This was not easy. Quite a few people returned the documents to me saying that this was not a Yiddish that they understood. Professor Dov Levin explained to me that the BUND had developed expressions of their own. I then needed my Father so much, for he would have been able to help me easily. After I finally got all this information, the writing of the article¹³ came easily. Afterwards I donated these documents to the Central Archives of The History of The Jewish People.

I think it important to add here, that from the beginning, Hebrew was to be the official language of the BUND. The change to Yiddish was to make it easier for people.

I understand that the BUND in Vitebsk was similar to the BUND in all other places. The members faced much Anti-Semitism and great economic problems. There was also the problem of Jew against Jew (the Jewish boss versus the Jewish worker). The BUND organization was able to ease the conditions of the Jewish worker. A friend of mine told me that her Father, a religious Jew and a Zionist, once made the following remark in connection with the need for the BUND: “Zionism was very nice, but we had to eat!” The history of the BUND is similar to the history of the Jews in Eastern Europe, and perhaps the world over. The BUND stood for changes for the good of the Jewish people. The BUND suffered a great deal, as did all the Jews of this period.

I learned something very important from the writing of this article: I learned that I should study Yiddish, which I am now diligently undertaking.

I was proud of myself for writing all these articles, but felt that I had left out something important my husband Mordechai’s family. After all, I am part of this family almost 47 years. The Rechtschafner Family has a very interesting story, particularly during the Holocaust. Everyone in the family knows something of the story, but no one knew the whole story. For example, our oldest daughter knew the story of how her grandmother offered a border guard her wedding ring when they were asked to pay a high sum of money to cross the border from France into Switzerland.

Some parts of the story were written as school “Roots Projects”:

Our youngest daughter interviewed a cousin of her grandmother’s before her first trip to Poland; one nephew interviewed his grandmother; Mordechai’s sister’s granddaughter interviewed her; three of our grandchildren wrote about their great-grandparents for their Bar/Bat Mitzvah projects; our oldest granddaughter wrote about the family before her trip to Poland this past summer.

I started to write up what I myself knew and to collect material. There are many documents and pictures. Mordechai’s siblings live in Australia. His niece Debbie, who also happens to be the vice-president of the Melbourne branch of the Australian Genealogical Society, invited her mother, aunt and uncle to her house once a week to interview them. Mordechai’s brother, who is the oldest child, said he did not remember a thing. After a few weeks, the brother began to look forward to these meetings. A good part of the article is based on what he remembered. He was about six years old when the war began.

This article¹⁴ was very long and heavy and it gave our computer problems. I added appendices with stories of the families of relatives with whom we are in contact. Up until a bit over two years ago, this marked the end of my written articles. There is a common thread in all of my articles. I refer here to the plight of all of these Jewish people and communities, the problems of Anti-Semitism and the desire to continue living as Jews.

One day, out of the blue, I found material for a new article, not about the suffering of the Jewish people; but about my own father’s suffering. I was present at a lecture that Dr. Martha Lev-Zion gave about International Historical Newspaper Sites. I played around with these sites a bit but I didn’t find any information. Then I found the name HERSCHMAN (my maiden name). The name appeared many times in newspapers in the small town of Catskill in upstate New York, beginning from the year 1922. 

A good find, but very sad… I located information about how my paternal grandmother and uncle were killed in an automobile accident. [PHOTO HERSCHMEN] The articles made it obvious that my father, who was driving and was then 18, was NOT guilty. The other car was driven by a drunk driver who was driving on the wrong side of the road. There were a few trials. The last one was about 12 years after the accident.  The last verdict was: "no verdict". I discussed this with our middle daughter, and she said that now I should let myself understand the obvious: that my father had always felt himself guilty for the deaths of his mother and brother, even if objectively, he was not guilty. I also found information about the education of my father and his brother and about my grandfather’s business.

I copied these newspaper articles and wrote up a summary of what had happened.¹⁵ It was difficult because it was so sad. Having a summary of part of my father’s life, I felt that I had better write about his entire life and how he continued his life after the accident because he was not a sad person. He was very educated, both in Jewish and in secular subjects. He was often described as a "scholar". If I have to sum up my Father’s life, I would say that he loved his family, the Jewish people, the Jewish religion and perhaps most all, he loved the State of Israel. This is the only article which I translated into Hebrew. I did so for our grandchildren.

Recalling that my grandmother and uncle were buried in Kingston, New York, I decided to do a bit more research on this subject and I wrote to the town municipalities and the area's Jewish communities. A Rabbi Hecht from Chabad wrote back asking for more details. My Father had been friendly with a Rabbi Hecht in Brooklyn and this Rabbi who responded turns out to be his grandson.

I decided to write an article about my mother and her family.¹⁶ This was the only article that I was actually pressed to finish. Many cousins sent me information. I received wonderful help and information from Rosemary Eshel, who deals with English genealogy. Now the article is finished and has been forwarded to family members and family friends. I am happily receiving comments, corrections and additions from cousins. I learned how to use the application Dropbox because I needed to find a way to share a huge photographic supplement which was too large to send by email.

Since I first wrote this article I have been continuing with my research. I hope that this summary of my research has interested you and has shown how unexpected results can be attained through such research and with a bit of luck.

Notes

1. Rezekne: The History of the Jews in the City of My Roots 22 pp.

Rezekne website: now in preparation

2. Interestingly, this is where my husband, Mordechai, used to do his military reserve duty.

3.  The Connection Between Rezekne and Ein Zeitim  17 pp.

4. Research on Cherkassy 31 pp.

Cherkassy Website

5. Golding, Louis, The World I Knew, Viking Press, New York, 1940

6. The United Jewish Federation of Metrowest – Essex, Morris, Sussex and North Union

7. Sveksna website

8. Sveksna:  Our Town 50 pp.

(My original article contains a synopsis of the history of the Jews of Lithuania) 60 pp.

9. Pictures of Sveksna (appears on the Sveksna website) 26 pp.

10. Often people would spray shaving cream on tombstones and then level off the stone so that the depression of the letters showed up in photographs in bright white.
Subsequently, it was found that this process could damage the inscriptions, so this action is NOT recommended.

11. Vitebsk 38 pp.

Vitebsk website

12. Pictures of the Vitebsk That Was   28 pp.

13. The BUND in Vitebsk 19 pp.

Sharsheret HaDorot, June 2011, Volume 25