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