{"id":1896,"date":"2019-09-09T15:00:59","date_gmt":"2019-09-09T15:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jewishgen.org\/jewishgen\/testimonials\/?p=1896"},"modified":"2020-01-23T16:31:45","modified_gmt":"2020-01-23T16:31:45","slug":"postcards-from-pinska-viewmate-success-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishgen.org\/jewishgen\/testimonials\/postcards-from-pinska-viewmate-success-story\/","title":{"rendered":"Postcards from Pinsk
A Viewmate Success Story"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Linda Ewall Krocker<\/h2>\n\n\n

Long ago, a few years after my father, Samuel Philip Fisher, died in the 1980s, my cousin Renee and I sat down to interview her father Benjamin (Fiszelow) Fisher, who was also my great-uncle, and her aunt Pauline (Fiszelow) Fisher, my great-aunt. Ben and Pauline were the two youngest of five children. My father’s death inspired me to delve deeper into our ancestry and somehow helped me feel closer to him and the family, even those I’d never met. The interview was awesome. I still listen to the tapes I made just to hear their beautiful, thick Yiddish accents and to refresh myself on what they told us. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Grandfather Joseph Fisher
\n(Chaim Fiszelow)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

We learned so much more about my grandfather, Chaim\nFiszelow (Joseph Fisher),\nthe eldest sibling, and their other siblings, who grew up in Pinsk. I never knew my grandfather since he died in 1929, but I\nreally loved hearing the story about his journey to America. He had been\ninducted into the Russian Army, and we all know how dangerous that was for a\nJew \u2013 many never returned, or they came back maimed for life. My great-grandmother,\nChaja Ruchel Fiszelow\/Fisher (n\u00e9e Steinberg),\nmade arrangements with someone to plan his escape and\nhide civilian clothing for him behind a particular tree on a particular day and\ntime. As the story went, the clothing was not there, and my great-bubbe gave the man hell. The clothing was in place the following\nweek. My grandfather changed out of his uniform and was hidden in a horse-drawn\ncart (a “caretta” as my great-uncle called it) under a large pile of\nstraw. Along the journey they had to cross a bridge. Russian soldiers stopped\nthe cart and shot several times into the straw. Luckily for my zayde (and me), they missed him!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Great-uncle Benjamin Fisher
(Benjamin Fiszelow)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The interview revealed some history. Pinsk, now in\nBelarus, was part of the Russian Empire prior to\nWorld War I, was occupied by the Germans during the war, and then became Polish\nafter the war. So, while my grandfather came from Russia, great-uncle Ben and\nmy great-grandmother, who emigrated later, came from Poland — from the same\nhouse! The border had changed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ben’s brother Josel met and married the girl of his dreams, so he\nnever came to the United States. Ben recalled some cousins, in particular\nZaydel Steinberg, who played violin in the Pinsk Symphony Orchestra. Ben told\nus that the Polish soldiers considered all Jews Zionists, and that one day the\nPolish soldiers broke up a meeting of local Jewish men who were discussing how\nto fairly distribute food sent from the United States. The soldiers sorted out\n35 young and middle-aged men, including young Zaydel, forced these \u201cBolsheviki\nRevolutionaries” against the wall of the church,\nand shot them in what became known as the Pinsk Easter Massacre of 1919. Ben\nwas a kid when he saw them all die.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Fiszelow Family, Pinsk<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Great-uncle Ben Fisher and his mother Ida (my\ngreat-grandmother Chaja), had been the last to come\nto the United States in 1923, after my great-grandfather\u2019s death. Ben didn’t\nremember many details about the extended family, but he gave us enough to build\nout the tree. Since childhood, I had always assumed that since my family was\nall here, we had no one who perished in the Holocaust. Now I realize how naive\nI was. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Years later I learned that my cousin Renee had her father\u2019s correspondence from 1939-1945 from our Fiszelow and Steinberg family members who remained behind. There were postcards \u200bfrom \u200ba beautiful set of gilded Jewish New Year\u2019s cards…until they apparently ran out. They then \u200bused \u200bfolded paper as restrictions tightened and resources became less available. Most of this correspondence was between my great-uncles \u2014 \u200bmiddle brother \u200bJosel Fiszelow\/Fishelov in Kachinovichi, \u200ba suburb of \u200bPinsk\u200b,\u200b and his youngest brother Ben, and their mother Ida in the U.S. After Josel suddenly stopped writing and was presumed dead, Ben made attempts to get information from the World Jewish Congress and in 1948 contacted an unknown Fishelov relative in Israel in the hope of finding out what happened to Josel and his family. The unknown Israeli relative wrote a lovely letter back, though he didn\u2019t have any answers. I filed Pages of Testimony for Josel and his family at Yad Vashem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n
Postcards from Pinsk<\/b>
(click to enlarge)<\/caption>\n
\n<\/a>\n<\/td>\n\n<\/a>\n<\/td>\n\n<\/a>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\n\n

A few years ago, I visited Renee and we went to the U.S. Holocaust\nMemorial Museum (USHMM) in Washington, D.C. That\u2019s where I first learned about\nthe annual IAJGS conference that we had just missed! While at the museum, I\ntried to do some research on Josel and his family. That year, a\n1941 German census of Pinsk, which was circulating the world, was available in\nthe USHMM. By agreement, the database was not available outside of the museum\nor on the web. I found Josel\u2019s wife\u2019s and son\u2019s names in the database, but\nJosel\u2019s name did not appear. I learned years later that a List of Persecuted Persons\nincluded his death as a forced laborer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Renee gave me the postcards to see if I could get them translated,\nand my husband photographed them all, both sides. In all, there were about\nthree dozen cards, letters, and envelopes. I asked friends and neighbors who\nspoke Yiddish to try to read the cards\u200b, but no one could. The handwriting\nstyle and \u200bold style \u200bverbiage was very difficult to read\u200b, and a couple of\nlater letters were written in pencil on faded paper, which didn\u2019t scan well.\u200b I\nasked translators at Jewish genealogy events and called the local orthodox\nrabbi and asked if he knew anyone who could translate them, and after several\nphone calls, I realized I had hit a brick wall. \u200bI paid a couple of\nprofessionals to translate a few pieces. Their success wasn\u2019t as great as the\ncost. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u200bT\u200bhen I discovered ViewMate\u200b on JewishGen.org and I was thrilled\nto learn that \u200btranslators around the world could read them!  I uploaded\nthe digitized copies, a few a week, and was ecstatic when I got responses. It\namazed me that so many people would freely give their time to help people\naround the world translate so many languages. What a wonderful free\nservice!  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The postcards were smaller and easier to translate, but the\nletters have to be divided into small segments for anyone to attempt them, so\nsome of the letters are not yet done and may still hold secrets of my family\u2019s\nlast years of freedom before perishing in the Holocaust. One ragged letter, we\nbelieve from the youngest writer\u200b, Josel’s son, \u200bNuchem Berel, gave us the distressing\nnews that all the other family members had ultimately perished in the summer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Nuchem Berel Fiszelow<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\u200bI eventually discovered that Yad Vashem’s\u200b \u200bwebsite had no\ninformation about all the relatives uncle Ben had named, so I filed 21 Pages of\nTestimony with whatever information I had. I also discovered that Nuchem Berel\nhad survived and moved to Israel, where he also filed a Page of Testimony for\nhis mother. He may not have known how his father died, and Nuchem died in the\n1970s, years before I could try to locate him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I made a lovely scrapbook of the correspondence in safe protective\npages so that no one would need to handle the originals. My cousin and I\ndecided to donate the correspondence to the USHMM, who in return translated a\ncouple more letters. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u200bRemember the “unknown Fishelov relative in Israel”\nmentioned earlier?  \u200bSeveral years ago,\n\u200bRenee Googled the name Fiszelow and emailed a David Fishelov in Jerusalem. We\ncouldn’t figure out the connection. A year later she found another, Moshe\nFishelov in Tel Aviv. Small world, it turned out that they’re brothers, sons of\nthe 1948 letter writer, Nakhum Fishelov. Moshe paid a researcher to explore his\nancestry, and shared the Belarussian document he received. Google Translate and\ntwo Russian speakers here in the U.S. helped us make some sense of it, and we\nfound our connection. \u200b\u200bMoshe \u200balso sent me a Hebrew book his father had\nwritten about the story of his post-Holocaust migration from Pinsk to Israel\u200b\nand translated the relevant information. \u200bMaybe that needs to find a home in a\nmuseum, too\u200b.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thank\nyou, JewishGen. Thank you so much for ViewMate. It is\nan invaluable service that deserves to be brought to light!<\/p>\n\n\n\n


\nAugust 2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Langhorne, Pennsylvania, USA
\n
\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

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


\nLinda and her cousin\nRenee gathered valuable information about the family’s history when they\ninterviewed older relatives. If you have older relatives you haven’t\ninterviewed, we encourage you to do so before it’s too late.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Linda was fortunate that Renee had\nsome of her father\u2019s old postcards and letters from family members in Poland.\nTranslating the old-fashioned script proved difficult until JewishGen’s ViewMate<\/a> provided the breakthrough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A visit to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum<\/a> in Washington, D.C. proved fruitful for Linda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For more information about the Pinsk Easter Massacre of 1919, see an\naccount in the Pinsk Yizkor Book<\/a> on\nJewishGen. This\nWikipedia<\/a> entry includes photos of the\nvictims and a list of references. You can read an article about it from Haaretz<\/a>.\nAn account is included in the book The\nJews of Pinsk \u2013 1881-1841<\/em><\/a>, by Azriel Shohet and Mark Jay Mirsky.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Linda Ewall Krocker<\/p>\n

“Years later I learned that my cousin Renee had her father\u2019s correspondence from 1939-1945 from our Fiszelow and Steinberg family members who remained behind\u2026 postcards from a beautiful set of gilded Jewish New Year’s cards…until they apparently ran out.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":1916,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[47],"tags":[12,8,21],"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\/1896"}],"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=1896"}],"version-history":[{"count":57,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishgen.org\/jewishgen\/testimonials\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1896\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3015,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishgen.org\/jewishgen\/testimonials\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1896\/revisions\/3015"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishgen.org\/jewishgen\/testimonials\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishgen.org\/jewishgen\/testimonials\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishgen.org\/jewishgen\/testimonials\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishgen.org\/jewishgen\/testimonials\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}