My name is Mark K.<\/em> Indeed, there was a letter that I included on my KehilaLink that was addressed to Simochka<\/em>, a nickname for my mother Sima. The letter, that I estimated to have been sent in or about 1928, was from a relative of my mother. In that letter, the writer, whose name was Fruma, declares how intensely she missed her American sister Feiga, who I well knew since childhood; Feiga was the wife of my great-uncle Kalman Sevransky. I knew next to nothing about Feiga, however \u2014 little more than her maiden name and her sister\u2019s name (that I learned of from that very letter) and that Feiga and her husband Kalman lived in Brooklyn where they were the proprietors of a livery stable located in the courtyard behind their house (as a child, on visits, it was a thrill for me to see the giant horses in their stable). <\/p>\n\n\n\n Mark\u2019s email made it clear that Feiga and Fruma had another sister; a sister that may have survived the Holocaust. I responded with my own email within an hour after receiving Mark\u2019s email. In it I expressed surprise at this new family connection, a discovery made possible by the existence of my Tarashcha KehilaLink. In earlier years I had serendipitously found other members of my mother\u2019s family who had survived the Holocaust; each time, it seemed unlikely that I would ever learn of others. Yet, discovery was happening again! Unsurprisingly, I was anxious to see Mark\u2019s photos, and I also had questions about who, when, where, and how. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Later that same day, 8:16 pm ET:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hi Richard:<\/em> Reading this latest of Mark\u2019s emails, I very much wanted to\nknow whether Fruma and the other family members survived the Nazi onslaught\nand, if they did, how this was accomplished. \nI was also curious about the use of the name \u201cZelda\u201d, which is neither a\nSlavic nor a Yiddish name. I later learned from one of the photograph captions that\n\u201cZelda\u201d was, in fact, Mark\u2019s maternal grandmother Zhenya. I inferred Zhenya\u2019s\nmaiden name, Basovsky, by virtue of knowing that her American sister Feiga\u2019s maiden\nsurname was Basovsky; I did not entertain the possibility of different fathers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n By now, it was late evening, 10:12 pm ET, of that first\nexciting and unique day. The flurry of emails continued unabated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Dear Richie,<\/em> I now knew that there were three sisters: my great-aunt (by\nmarriage) Feiga; Fruma, of whose life I learned only that she had escaped the\nNazi plague by evacuating to Kazakhstan; and Zhenya, who was Mark\u2019s maternal grandmother.\nZhenya had two daughters, Busya and Feiga (a.k.a. Fenia); the latter was Mark\u2019s\nmother. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Mark ended his 8:16 pm ET email signing it \u201cMark and my sister Maya\u201d \u2014 revealing\nanother family member\u2019s name. I learned that Mark\u2019s maternal grandfather was\nkilled in action early in the war and that because of the grandfather\u2019s\nsacrifice, Mark\u2019s family safely spent three war years in Kazakhstan, returning\nto Boguslav after the war. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n Years ago, my mother told me that our family did receive a\nletter, sent from Moscow after The War by a distant relative who declared that\nshe was the sole family survivor \u2014 clearly, she was mistaken; whether there\nwere other letters, and whether my great-aunt Feiga ever learned of her\nfamily\u2019s war-time odyssey, I cannot say. I did stay in touch with Mark, for a\ntime, with emails and telephone conversations. I could not tell him very much\nabout his great-aunt Feiga, knowledge of whose American life was his mother\u2019s\nforlorn quest; all that I could offer was that Feiga and her husband Kalman\nwere childless, that they were beloved, and that they had passed away in the\n1960s. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Mark sent me copies of the photographs that he had in his\npossession. These included a photo of Fruma that allowed me to associate a face\nwith her fascinating letter to my mother in which she provides a vignette of\ndaily life in pre-war Ukraine, and in which she makes clear that her heart ached\nfor being separated from her far-away sister. I placed Mark\u2019s photos on both\nthe Boguslav and Tarashcha Kehilalinks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I, in return, sent Mark a copy of the Sevransky Family history together with a copy of my mother\u2019s Tarashcha memoir. Unfortunately, Mark gave me an incorrect home address and the books were lost, swallowed up in the byzantine pathways of the Post Office despite the efforts of that august agency to trace the mis-addressed books. As a consequence, I made a \u201cfatal\u201d mistake for any family historian; I stopped communicating with Mark rather than just sighing and moving on and continuing to learn more about my extended family. I have since been unsuccessful in reconnecting with him. Nevertheless, despite my blunder, my Tarashcha KehilaLink did endow me with the blessing of an unanticipated, if truncated, gift. Mark, for his part, with persistence, succeeded in attaining his mother\u2019s belated goal of locating her American family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n May 2021 Note: This article originally appeared in JewishGen\u2019s Newsletter and Blog<\/a>. <\/em> Richard Baum was contacted by Mark in response\nto one of the KehilaLinks webpages Richard had created on JewishGen\u2019s website\nregarding his mother\u2019s ancestral towns. As a result of this new connection,\nRichard learned more about his mother\u2019s family and Mark fulfilled his own\nmother\u2019s wish to find her American kin. \u201cMark\u2019s email made it clear that Feiga and Fruma had another sister; a sister that may have survived the Holocaust. I responded with my own email within an hour after receiving Mark\u2019s email. In it I expressed surprise at this new family connection, a discovery made possible by the existence of my Tarashcha KehilaLink.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":2959,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[69],"tags":[67,30],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":" Mark's great-aunt Fruma","source_text":"","source_url":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishgen.org\/jewishgen\/testimonials\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2901"}],"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=2901"}],"version-history":[{"count":70,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishgen.org\/jewishgen\/testimonials\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2901\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3019,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishgen.org\/jewishgen\/testimonials\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2901\/revisions\/3019"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishgen.org\/jewishgen\/testimonials\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishgen.org\/jewishgen\/testimonials\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishgen.org\/jewishgen\/testimonials\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishgen.org\/jewishgen\/testimonials\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
It was my pleasure to find your site on internet.<\/em>
This site is related to Tarashcha, Ukraine.<\/em>
But what is the most amazing that I had found the letter of my grand mom sister
to Faiga Sevransky who is another sister of my grand mom.<\/em>
I did tons of researches for more than 10 years to find some information about
their life in America and I wasn\u2019t much successful.<\/em>
This year is more successful.<\/em>
Your site is inspired me so much and in fact I also have more old pictures I
could share with you.<\/em>
Please do not hesitate to start communication with me.<\/em>
The memory of the family is so valuable.<\/em>
Me and my family live in Brooklyn.
My best regards.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nThank you very much for your response.<\/em>
\nYou are the person who saw Faiga Sevransky here in America.\nThis is already WOW.<\/em>
\nI wanted to get in touch with those people who saw here\n<\/em>[sic].
\nI wanted to know much more that I know about her life in America.\n
\nand that was my mom request to get that information before\nshe died.<\/em>
\nAbout proves that Faiga on your website is that Faiga which\nphoto I have is no hesitations.
Everything is matching perfectly<\/em>
\nFeiga had correspondences with my grand mom on constant\nbasis, that is why I have
those photos with me. I will send you those photos as soon as I do the<\/em> electronic copy of them.<\/em>
\nAlso I have some Family picture where the whole \u201cmishpucha\u201d\ntogether and Faiga\u2019s sister
Zelda on it. I have Fruma\u2019s picture. with my mom and my aunt Busya.<\/em>
\nThose pictures you will get shortly as attachments.<\/em>
\nMy best regards to you and your family<\/em>
\nMark and my sister Maya<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nMy Family name from my grand mom side is Ivriy [sic]<\/em>
\nMy grand mom last name is Ivriy she married Meir Ivriy. I\nwas called after him.<\/em>
\nMy real name is Meir as well.<\/em>
\nMy grand, grandfather name is Gershan. More about Gershan \u2014\nHe was legendary person in
City of Boguslav but this later.<\/em>
\nMy Grand Father participated in War II as a solder from the\nfirst days war started.<\/em>
\nHe was killed in 1942.<\/em>
\nMy family was evacuated to the Kazakhstan and spent 3 years\nthere. Family had priority #1,
because of my grandfather-war participator. <\/em>
\nThis what I know from my mom. Fruma was there as well.<\/em>
\nI never saw letters from Faiga Calman from America because\nparents were not shared
this information with kids, they were afraid of K G B. <\/em>
\nBut I remember someone was translated those letters from\nHebrew [sic, Yiddish] to Russian.<\/em>
\nAfter war all family return back to Boguslav.<\/em>
\nIt is tons to say.<\/em>
\nIn fact fill free to call on my cell.<\/em>
\nBest regards.<\/em>
\nMark <\/em><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"fruma,](\"https:\/\/www.jewishgen.org\/jewishgen\/testimonials\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/Feiga_Busya_Fruma-1024x568.jpg\")
\nNew York, New York, USA<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\nResearch Notes and Hints<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
\nYou can check to see if there is a KehilaLinks\nwebpage regarding your own ancestral town here<\/a>.\n
\nIf there is no KehilaLinks page for your town,\nplease consider creating one. Click here<\/a> to learn how.
\nRichard was unable to reconnect with Mark\nbecause they did not keep in touch over the years and old email addresses no longer\nyielded a response. Once you make contact with previously unknown relatives,\nit\u2019s advisable to maintain some level of connection in order to keep contact\ninformation current.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"