Meeting the Ilitovitches of Gomel

Wed 25 May

Today we saw some of 'our' Gomel with Yevgeny and Vitaly, who together with Vitaly's wife Yelena and son Dmitry are the only known members of the Ilitovitch family still living in the town. There may possibly be Levins here but we have not managed to find traces of any yet.

Vitaly and Evgeny - the last Ilitovitches in Gomel?

Yevgeny's mother Riva (Revekka) - Vitaly's grandmother - was one of the daughters of Shmuil Ilitovitch and Hodel Faigin; Shmuil was the older brother of Zlata (Sarah) - my grandmother - and Myer, the grandfather of Ralph and Mark. Dan's mother Raya (Ruth) was the eldest of Shmuil and Hodel's children - so, if you've followed us this far, Yevgeny is a first cousin to Dan, and second cousin to Ralph, Mark and me; Vitaly is a second cousin to Dan, and third cousin to the rest of us. So far as we're concerned, we're all cousins.

Ilitovitch re-United: grandsons of Zlata (myself), Shmuil (Dan, Evgeny), Myer (Mark, Ralph), and great-grandson of Shmuil (Vitaly)

Shmuil and Hodel had 6 children: Raya, Sheldon (we don't know his Jewish name at the moment), Leib (Leonard), Riva, Mikhlya and Shmuil. There were also 2 more who died in childhood. Shmuil died in 1919, and we think that possibly baby Shmuil was born after he died, and may have been named for him.

When Hodel died in 1921, Hodel's brother Aron took charge of the children. In 1923 he emigrated to America, taking the 3 oldest children with him, and placing the 3 youngest in an orphanage in Gomel. We presume that Aron Faigin signed the papers for the orphanage, because throughout their lives Riva and Mikhlya were known by the patronymic 'Aronovna' - 'daughter of Aron'. We have just visited Riva's grave with Yevgeny and Vitaly; 'Aronovna' is inscribed on her tombstone.

Riva (Rebecca) was the daughter of Shmuil, but throughout her life bore the patronymic 'Aronovna'

Now, thanks to the contacts we have managed to establish between cousins on either side of the Atlantic, we were able to explain to Yevgeny and Vitaly how these tragic and complicated circumstances came about. It was a very affecting moment, and I have now been in this position four times - with Yevgeny yesterday and Vitaly today, with Yevgeny's brother Sasha in Israel, and with Mikhlya's grandson Boris, now in London, who came with us on our Jewish East End walk a while back. (Sasha unfortunately died a few months ago after a long illness.)

We met at 11, and parted at 6. Yevgeny and Vitaly speak no English, and we speak no Russian; alright, I confess, I speak 6 words, badly - I haven't looked at the language for 45 years. However Bella, our guide and interpreter, somehow managed to take in all the complexities and keep the conversation going between all six of us for seven hours solid, making no small contribution herself.

Bella at work

We gave Yevgeny and Vitaly an album of photos of the various strands of the Ilitovitch clan; hopefully they will be able to make sense of the captions, which I wrote in English, of course. The photos are available online - I suggest you choose slow or medium speed, and full-screen. Yevgeny gave us a stack of photos, which we will scan and return to him by some devious route, as no-one seems to trust the Belarus postal system . . .

Towards the end of an extended lunch at a traditional Belarus restaurant, they asked how many relatives we had. When Ralph said "hundreds" (he actually said 1200, but let's not exaggerate), their jaws dropped in amazement. We have discovered relatives in the place our grandparents left over 100 years ago, and they - whose grandparents stayed - have discovered that they have relatives literally all over the world. If the greetings in the morning were emotional, the partings in the afternoon were doubly, trebly so.

There is much more to tell of today's visit, of synagogues and cemeteries, war and evacuation, pogroms and partisans, Jewish family life in the Soviet Union, and of course - overshadowing everything - the holocaust. But we'll leave that for another day.

See photos: Gomel

Destination Gomel

Tue 24 May

Gomel - myth or reality?

We had long thought that our Iliatovitch/Gitovitch family came from Gomel. Parents and grandparents spoke of it - though not very often - and the town took on something of a mythical character for us. So this journey was originally planned as a visit to Gomel. We even hoped to fly straight there, maybe via the Belarus capital Minsk. Fortunately we didn't manage to sort out a route, as the research has led us to a succession of other places across the west and south of the country.

Mikhlya Levin's family was from Streshin, a shtetl some 50km from Gomel. Dovid Iliatovitch was from Lida, in the north-west, and all their children were born there. At some point after 1891 they moved to Gomel, possibly after the death of Dovid, presumably so that Mikhlya could be nearer to her own family, including brother Leib (Leibisch).

We now know that 2 of Mikhlya and Leib's brothers, Itzka and Aron, both had children born in Gomel, between 1890 and 1907. Will we find any trace of them, or their descendants?

The Shraibmans of Pinsk

Mon 23 May

This afternoon I have seen the house where my grandfather Moshe Shraibman's brother Dovid was living with his wife Braina between 1912 and 1932. We were told the house was well-known as the 'Shraibman house', and served as a house of prayer as well as a home - it was probably a 'shtibl', an informal synagogue in a private house.  We know that Moshe's father Nevach (Noah) was a teacher of some sort - did he teach here? Did he live here? Did Moshe live here?

The 'Shraibman House' in Pinsk

We also went to a couple of other streets with family connections, including where Moshe's brother Menachem was living in 1912 - we don't know exactly where in the street the house was, but it seems to have been known as 'the coppersmith's house'. Was he a coppersmith?

We then went to see the site of the old Jewish Cemetery, where my Great-grandmother - Moshe's mother Shprintza - and at least two other family members are buried. The cemetery alas is no longer to be seen. It has been re-purposed, according to a local law that allows the authorities to re-designate burial land that has not been in use for a certain number of years. As our guide Bella so delicately put it, "they've built a kindergarten on the bones of Jews". Including those of Shprintza, Chaim, and Chana-Braina Shraibman.

The kindergarten in Pinsk - formerly the Jewish cemetery, where my great-grandmother and other Shraibmans are buried

I should point out that none of us knew of the existence of any of the people mentioned here until a week ago, when we received the research report from the Belarus Jewish Heritage Research Group. Now some of them are beginning to take on form and substance for us as we learn more about them and their lives.

We were met by Yosef Liberman, the President of the Pinsk Jewish Community, who took us round the Jewish area of Pinsk, showing us amongst other things a study group in a synagogue (very informal!) and the community's mikvah (ritual baths), which are apparently still in regular use.

Yosif also gave us a chilling document, listing the names of 16 Pinsk Shraibmans known to have been victims of the Holocaust. Up to 4 of the names may correspond to family members who appear in our research report - in other words, they could be our Shraibmans. However the reports are necessarily incomplete, and my feeling is that there may well be many more.

Yosif asked if we could help one of his projects by providing photographs of Shraibmans in emigration for an exhibition he is planning. I think I could probably find one or two for him.

See photos: Pinsk

Where were they from?

Sun 22 May

Yesterday and today we have been in Lida, where my Grandmother Zlata (Sarah) was born in 1886, and Novogrudok, where her father Shlema-Dovid was born in 1858. His father, Leizer Iliatovitch, obtained permission from the authorities to move his family to Lida in 1863. Both towns had flourishing Jewish populations in the mid-19th century.

The records we have found show that Shmuil, the son of Shlema-Dovid and Mikhlya Levin, was born in Lida in 1881, and their last son known to us, Hirsch (Harry), was also born there, in 1891. In between came Zlata and Myer, though we have not found the records for them.

Granny was born in Lida, not Gomel

Shlema-Dovid must have died at some time between 1891 and 1906, as in that year Mikhlya re-married. Her new husband was Abram-Lieb Shushan, aged 60, and they married in Gomel; she was 48. Presumably he died within a few years of the wedding, as by 1911 we know she was living in London with her sons Myer and Harry.

Mikhlya's family, meanwhile, were from a small shtetl near Gomel called Streshin. Her father Berka got permission to move his family to Gomel in 1867, by which time he had 6 children, of whom Mikhlya was the third. At some point Mikhlya from Gomel met Shlema-Dovid from Lida, but there is no information about their marriage. As suggested above, it appears that all their children were born in Lida. We will be in Gomel on Tuesday and Wednesday, and hope to visit Streshin on Thursday.

Tomorrow (Monday) we go to Pinsk, to chase up my grandfather, Moshe Shraibman.

See photos: Lida - Novogrudok

Receiving the reports

Belarus trip: Day 1
Fri 20 May

Straight from the airport to Minsk, and the office of the Jewish Heritage Research Group, where we met Yuri, who has been leading the research and organising the visit for us.

He handed us the reports on the Iliatovitch and Levin families, which had only just been given to him by the genealogist. He had not even had a chance to glance through them before we arrived, so all five of us - Ralph, Mark, Dan, myself and Yuri - were looking at them for the first time, trying to make sense of them.

Yuri has just received the reports from his researchers.

A number of things struck us as we worked our way through the material. First - they definitely have found the right people! Second, not all our direct ancestors appear in the records. This can be quite disconcerting - where's my Granny? - but is understandable when you consider that this area has been through a never-ending succession of wars and revolutions over the last 150 years, and has been ruled or occupied by the Tsarist Empire, Germany, Poland and the Soviet Union, before becoming an independent state in 1992. And of course most of the Jewish communities were wiped out in the Holocaust. So to hear that many records are missing is not such a surprise.

Nevertheless the reports are indeed full of surprises. My Great-grandfather, for instance - also of many of you - is named throughout as 'Shlema-Dovid' Iliatovitch. He appears to have had 5 brothers and sisters, but there is no record, here at least, of any descendants for any of them.

Mikhlya Levin, my Great-grandmother, was also one of 6 siblings, of whom two are recorded with children. Their son Shmuil Iliatovitch and his wife 'Goda' (Hodel to us) had a further 2 children whose names were previously unknown to us, and who must have died young.

The family trees reconstructed for both the Iliatovitch and Levin families go back to just before the turn of the 19th century. So there's quite a bit of history to explore!

So Movsha Shraibman *did* have a family

Until today no-one in my generation knew a thing about our grandfather Movsha (Moshe) Shraibman ('Shreibman' in Yiddish). We knew he came to England on his own, in a hurry, in 1905, but had no idea whether he had any brothers or sisters, who his parents were, or whether he managed to maintain contact with them after he came to London.

Moshe Shreibman - before or after he came to London?

The researchers in Belarus have now managed to locate records - in Pinsk - which show that he was from a family of (at least) 6 siblings, and that his father was from a family of four. See the resulting family tree. Information about individuals is scant but at least a general picture of the family is beginning to emerge. We have learned more through two months research than the collective wisdom of the family has managed to pass on over a hundred years.


One of the things we have learned is the names of the streets where his uncle and two of his brothers were living in 1912. We shall be visiting Pinsk next week, and our guide is trying to locate the streets for us. My forefinger is already poised over the shutter button.


Are any of our Shraibmans still living in Pinsk? Maybe we'll find that out next week as well . . .

Roots and routes

Sometime after 1900 Labisch Levin left his home in, or maybe near, Gomel, a town in the south east of what is now Belarus, and set off to build a new life in England. He may have thought he was heading for America, but London was where he landed and where he stayed. He, like many others, was hoping to escape the oppression and violence to which Jews were routinely subjected in the Pale of Settlement, the area on the western fringes of the Russian Empire to which Tsarist laws restricted them.

He was aged around 40, and brought with him his three children, and maybe his wife. Or maybe it was his second wife, Annie, that accompanied him, with her own child. Or maybe they came later. Not long afterwards, his niece Zlata, aged 18, came too, and stayed with the Levins for a while, maybe a few years. In their new country Labisch became Lewis, and Zlata became Sarah.

In 1905, in the aftermath of war and a crushed revolution, Moshe Shreibman, aged 20, from Pinsk, left his uniform and his family behind and made the same journey into the unknown. In London he became Morris. A few years later he met and married Sarah.

Within a couple of years, Lewis's sister Michla - Sarah's mother - arrived, together with two of her sons, Myer and Herschel. Another son, Eliezer, had died, or been killed; another, Shmuel, had married, and stayed in Gomel. Michla's husband David Ilitovitch had died sometime previously.

Between them, Lewis Levin and his sister Michla had nine children who survived into adulthood. These nine went on to have thirty of their own, and their children in turn have migrated to many different parts of the world. Many links have been stretched or broken. Now, a hundred years later, some of Lewis and Michla's great-grandchildren - and great-great ones too - are trying to find out who these mysterious people were, where they came from, how they lived, why they uprooted themselves, how they made new lives in strange places. And pondering the heritage they have left us.

Four of us - Ralph, Mark and myself from the UK, and Dan from the USA - are about to embark on a short research tour of some of the places in Belarus that we think might be significant in our families' histories.

View Belarus in a larger map

Between us we represent three of the four surviving children of Michla Levin and David Ilitovitch.

Coffee at the airport. What does the week ahead hold in store for us?

We hope to use this blog to pass on some of the stories we hear, and invite family members to contribute their own memories and tales. Maybe in this way we can get a little closer to those brave people who, a hundred years ago, took such a giant leap into the dark. And maybe get a little closer to each other, too.