![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.jewishgen.org\/jewishgen\/testimonials\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/record_Gofman.jpg\")
<\/a>Dedicated to the Memory
of Riva Gofman
(click to enlarge)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
Riva\u2019s biographical information matched facts\nmy mother had told me. My mother\u2019s great-uncle and great-aunt were Ios (Yosef)\nand Sura-Mirel Sevransky. Ios and Sura-Mirel had several children, one of whom,\nmy mother had told me, was Rifka Sevransky, who had married a man from\nStavishche; my mother, though, could not recall the man\u2019s name. She did recall\nthat Rifka\u2019s husband had been killed in the Great War, along with my mother\u2019s\nfather. My mother also stated that Rifka and her husband had six children; I\nwas guessing that Miriam Glukhovski was one of the six \u2014 it had to be so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was clear to me that this Page of Testimony\nwas in memory of one of my relatives, and that Miriam Glukhovski was my\nmother\u2019s second cousin. Miriam lists an additional name for herself \u2014 Sara\nMirel \u2014 no doubt in conformity with the traditional Ashkenazi naming after a\nrelative \u2014 in this case, Miriam\u2019s grandmother and my mother\u2019s great-aunt\nSura-Mirel!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Miriam had submitted the Page of Testimony in 1991, about the time that I had decided not to pursue research into these documents. By the time I had located the Page of Testimony, it was 2007, eight years after my mother had passed away. This upset me no end because I was fairly certain that my mother and Miriam knew each other in Tarashcha. If it wasn\u2019t for my lack of vision in searching Yad Vashem for family, my mother might have had the joy of being reunited with her cousin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With the help of my Brooklyn cousin Elliot R.,\nI was able to determine from the Page of Testimony that Miriam lived in Israel.\nI have a relative, George S., who lives in Jerusalem, and I enlisted his aid in\ntracking Miriam down. It wasn\u2019t too long before my Israeli cousin found\nMiriam\u2019s daughter Maria living in Ber Sheva. Sadly, Miriam had passed away in\n2004. Luckily, Maria was very helpful and was able to provide information about\nthe family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Maria, her sister Asya, and their mother\nsurvived the war by moving eastward to Krym; anyone who remained in Tarashcha\ndied. In 1991 Miriam and her daughters found their way to Israel. Miriam\u2019s\nhusband Elshaia had died in 1942 while serving in the Soviet Army. She had\nnieces and nephews living in Canada and in the United States. One of Miriam\u2019s\nnephews, Roman S., lives about ten blocks away from me in Manhattan! I called\nhim right away, but either he did not believe that we were related or he did\nnot care to establish a relationship (some years later I was able to connect\nwith Roman\u2019s daughter). Other of Maria\u2019s contacts were more productive \u2014\nMiriam\u2019s Boston cousin Kira led me to Stella, another cousin in Los Angeles\nwho, in turn, has connected me to still other cousins, including those living\nin Germany. My relationship with Stella has been incredibly productive in\nresearching our family; her fluency in Russian has opened many family documents\nto me that I would never have been aware of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I have often wondered that if I had located Miriam Glukhovski early on, whether my mother would have easily accepted the \u201cre-birth\u201d of at least some of her beloved family. She had so deeply, and for so much of her long life, mourned the devastation of her large family that she might not have believed the miracle that my nonfeasance had deprived her of experiencing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Note: Along with the Page of Testimony, Miriam also submitted a photo of her mother’s headstone, shown above. Murdered by the Nazis in Tarashcha in 1941. Flanking the monument are Riva’s sons Naum and Itshok.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
May 2020
New York, New York, USA <\/p>\n\n\n\n
A slightly different version of this article first appeared in Dorot<\/a>, The Journal of the Jewish Genealogical Society (New York), Winter 2009-2010, volume 31, number 2. Reprint permission granted. <\/em><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n Research Notes\nand Hints<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n By entering his mother\u2019s surname into the Yad Vashem<\/a> <\/a>Database, Richard discovered through a Page of Testimony that some family members had survived the Holocaust, contrary to what his mother had been told in the late 1940s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n With help from a Brooklyn cousin and a\nrelative in Israel, Richard connected with living descendants of his mother\u2019s\nfamily. Engaging other willing family members in your research can yield\nsuccessful results.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For more information about Richard\u2019s ancestral town of Tarashcha, Ukraine, see JewishGen\u2019s Tarashcha Town Page<\/a> and KehilaLinks<\/a> page . Richard manages both of these pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n