{"id":1860,"date":"2019-09-09T14:00:17","date_gmt":"2019-09-09T14:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jewishgen.org\/jewishgen\/testimonials\/?p=1860"},"modified":"2020-01-23T16:32:13","modified_gmt":"2020-01-23T16:32:13","slug":"through-a-ukrainian-brick-wall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishgen.org\/jewishgen\/testimonials\/through-a-ukrainian-brick-wall\/","title":{"rendered":"Through a Ukrainian Brick Wall"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Shirley Ginzburg<\/h2>\n\n\n


\nWhen I reached\nthe end of my leads tracing my husband Allen’s Genirberg family, and could move\nno further ahead, I was tempted to declare defeat, humbled once again by the\nproverbial ‘brick wall’. There was no proof of my father-in-law’s existence in\nhis birth town of Dubno, western Ukraine. Of course, I knew his parents,\nsiblings, and extended family lived there prior to World War II. Finding a\npaper trail for these kin seemed impossible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the years\ndevoted to research, I frequently faced dead ends. My maternal\ngreat-grandfather had a name so common that I was quickly rendered helpless.\nAbraham Shapiro is like Johnny Johnson or James Smith. On-line searches produce\nliterally thousands of hits for names like these, unless one can winnow the\nnumber by offering up birth dates and marriage partners’ names to the data gods. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Memorial for Jews murdered during
\nWW II, Dubno, Ukraine<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

My paternal\nside was not much easier. Grandmother Dinah Kantrowitz\/Kanter (n\u00e9e Dalmatoffsky\/DeMatoff), must have flown on angel wings from north-western Russia to\nIllinois a few years prior to 1900 \u2014 because there is no account of ship\npassage under any of several names she might have used, and no record of\nlanding at any American or Canadian port of entry within a ten-year time span. Foiled\nagain!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When\nfrustration mounted with one lineage, or worse, when important details\ncontradicted each other, I turned to my husband’s family tree. Much is\nenigmatic there, too. Rather than having a too common name, his was peculiarly\nunique.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The surname GENIRBERG existed nowhere except on documents from 1950, connected to Allen’s\nuncle and cousins as they sailed to America. I consulted Dr. Alexander Beider’s Dictionary of\nJewish Surnames from the Russian Empire<\/em>,<\/em> and tried every crazy spelling and misspelling on various\nglobal search engines. I used the Russian, Yiddish, Hebrew, English, and\nUkrainian spelling options. Nothing remotely useful turned up. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But I am\npersistent. My husband and I approached the Dubno town historian in person\nduring a visit a dozen years ago, and were told that any civil documents prior\nto WWII were pretty much destroyed over time. Fire and flood, war and neglect\nhad taken their toll. Then, too, records might be held in Warsaw or Rivne or as\nfar away as L’viv, but not indexed or translated. We were hoping for public\nrecords listing the citizens who paid taxes, the military conscripts, business\nowners, births and deaths, information that could have helped us trace the footsteps\nof the Genirbergs. Without civil records, church records, even tombstones, it\nis as though these people never existed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
The Great Synagogue
Dubno, Ukraine<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

We left empty-handed\nand demoralized.  We needed a miracle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recently, that\nmiracle landed on my computer screen with a truly uninspiring title: \u201cPolonnoye\nArea Document Project Results\u201d. Translating these documents was a project of JewishGen’s\nUkraine SIG (Special Interest Group). Earlier, I had made a donation to support\nthese translations and, as a result, was rewarded with a document listing the\ntranslated data to date.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This particular\ndocument included over 2,000 surnames of children enrolled in Jewish schools.\nIt covered seven different towns, spread over many square miles, including\nDubno! That caught my interest. After scanning the first 75 names, I paused to\ncatch my breath. Mining this text was not going to be easy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was clear\nthat multiple translators with varying degrees of proficiency had tried their\nbest to recreate the trove of documents into English. They were interpreting\nOld Russian script (no longer used) and the Hebrew alphabet. Some of the\nEnglish entries were pocked with question marks, indicating that either whole\nwords or letters were missing, illegible, or puzzling for some other reason. I\ncould tell that the Hebrew lettering was actually not Hebrew, but Yiddish, the\nspoken language of the Jews in this area. This did not make things any easier\nfor the translators. In Yiddish, vowel sounds vary greatly depending on the\ndialect spoken, and in this case written, by the individual authors of the\noriginal document.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Historic castle & moat
Dubno, Ukraine<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

My heart went\nout to the modern scholars trying to decipher script penned with a feather quill\nand ink faded with age, lettering that resembled chicken scratches more than\ntext. The document was dated 1846. This is the earliest original information\navailable for this geographic region that I had ever seen in my decades-long\nhunt. Russia’s Alexander II had just freed the serfs. Tchaikovsky was an\ninfant. In America, Iowa had just been accepted into the Union, and James Polk\nwas President. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

1846. I let\nthat date sink in. Here was a simple list of students enrolled in grammar\nschool, which would not have caused a stir in any cosmopolitan European\ncity in the 19th<\/sup> century. But Dubno was an important, if primarily\nagricultural, crossroad where most of the non-Jewish population was illiterate.\nNevertheless, it was important to authorities that a list be compiled of the\nJewish boys being taught to read. In April of 1846, with additions made in\nSeptember and October 1846, scribes were employed to document cheder\nenrollment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The list of\nsurnames seemed endless. I sped past two or three hundred names, passing\nfamiliar surnames, some of them known on my family tree, but common enough to\nbe anyone’s ancestor, not necessarily mine:  Epstein, Shapiro. Town names\nwere entered willy-nilly, so I was especially vigilant when Dubno was cited. A\nfew hundred lines later, my eyes blurred with the strain of reading, but look,\nmore from Dubno!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Melamed, Ganik,\nKulish \u2014 no alphabetic rhyme or reason to the list. Then my mousepad-scrolling\nfinger stopped short. It was undeniable. Two brothers, Gershon and Toviya Ber\nGEYNEKHVARG. Our name. Slightly altered, to be sure, but unmistakable. I yelled\nfor Allen to come verify this was no apparition! We were elated. One of these\nlittle children could be his third great-grandfather. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Excerpt from the Polonnoye Area document project
click for original<\/b><\/a> (see lines 7 & 8)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Were there\nothers from this family?  I forced myself to begin scrolling again,\nstopping at all the names from Dubno. Five hundred seventeen students later I\nhit the jackpot, the smoking gun that proved the family connection. Tevye Ber\nand Gershon GEYNERBARG were listed side by side again. This time their names\nwere given with a spelling decidedly closer to our current version. I will\nspare you the linguistic technicalities, but that was OUR surname!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luck,\nperseverance, patience, and a bit of knowledge on my part came together in a\nspectacular way. What is the likelihood that an American-born grandmother could\nsolve a mystery that eluded everyone in her family and stretched back 175\nyears?  About the same likelihood as that of the recent translation of a\nsmall group of papers dated 1846, for the region which included Dubno,\nspecifically mentioning a pair of brothers, or possibly cousins, with the most\nobscure surname imaginable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

August 2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aptos,\nCalifornia, USA<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n

Research Notes and Hints<\/b><\/h4>\n\n\n

Records acquired\nby JewishGen’s Ukraine SIG<\/a>\n, and translated by JewishGen volunteers, provided the breakthrough Shirley was\nlooking for regarding her husband’s Genirberg\nfamily. Because she had donated funds for this project, Shirley received an\nadvanced index of the translated documents. These translations will eventually\nbe included in JewishGen’s Ukraine Database<\/a> . We encourage others to volunteer<\/a> their time or donate <\/a>  funds to JewishGen’s general fund or specific\nprojects. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can learn more about Dubno\nfrom JewishGen’s Ukraine SIG town page<\/a>  and the Dubno Yizkor Book<\/a> .<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shirley\nconsulted Dr. Alexander Beider’s Dictionary of Jewish Surnames from the Russian\nEmpire as part of her family name research. For information on the revised\nedition of this classic work, published by <\/em> Avotaynu in 2008,\nyou can read a review on Avotaynu Online<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sam Genirberg, an\nuncle of Shirley’s husband, is the author of the book Among the\nEnemy: Hiding in Plain Sight in Nazi Germany<\/i><\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Shirley Ginzburg<\/p>\n

“We left empty-handed and demoralized. We needed a miracle. Recently, that miracle landed on my computer screen with a truly uninspiring title: ‘Polonnoye Area Document Project Results’ \u2026a project of JewishGen’s Ukraine SIG.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":1892,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[47],"tags":[8,21,30],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishgen.org\/jewishgen\/testimonials\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1860"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishgen.org\/jewishgen\/testimonials\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishgen.org\/jewishgen\/testimonials\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishgen.org\/jewishgen\/testimonials\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishgen.org\/jewishgen\/testimonials\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1860"}],"version-history":[{"count":32,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishgen.org\/jewishgen\/testimonials\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1860\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1998,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishgen.org\/jewishgen\/testimonials\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1860\/revisions\/1998"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishgen.org\/jewishgen\/testimonials\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishgen.org\/jewishgen\/testimonials\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishgen.org\/jewishgen\/testimonials\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishgen.org\/jewishgen\/testimonials\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}