Bialystok home for the aged

The return address on the 1937 postcard from Reizel is a street address in Bialystok, followed by the words “Dom Starcow”, which translate as “home for the aged”. Bialystok is a big city, and at the time, it was one of the major centers of Jewish life in Poland. What was Reizel doing there? And how did she end up in a home for the aged (rather than living with family, as most people seem to have done in those days)?  We may never be able to answer these questions, but given the size and importance of the Bialystok Jewish community, I know that there must have been records from these communal organizations. The question is – did any of these records survive the war?

There is an extensive web-page for the Bialystok Region Jewish Genealogy Group.  Volunteers have translated, indexed and posted numerous documents, including the 1938 Bialystok telephone directory, the 1946 list of survivors from Bialystok, a “Bialystok martyrs list”, business directories from 1895, 1903, and 1929, the 1897 Russian census of the region, the list of Bialystok children transported from Theresenstadt to Auschwitz in 1943, a list of property seized between 1945-49, and a list of names from a yahrzeit list compiled by the Bialystoker center in New York City. With the wonders of modern technology, I can sit at my computer in Arizona and, within 30 minutes, check all these lists for our relatives. There are no Korenbaums on any of them. I also don’t find anything that mentions a Jewish old age home, although there are dozens of books about Jewish Bialystok. We can probably find something there, but it will take months or years to find and read all of the books.

Jewishgen has a number of listserves for people doing Jewish genealogical research. I post a note to the Bialystok list, asking if anyone can direct me to information about a Bialystok home for the aged.

I receive only one response, from someone named Piotr, who I realize is in Poland. He directs me to an online list of Jewish properties in Bialystok, part of the website of the Museum of the History of Polish Jews. I wonder if Piotr works at the museum, but his email signature translates (thank you, Google translate) to “Events for you and your child in Warsaw”.  You never know who’s going to answer when you post to a list like this.

The webpage (in Polish) is labeled: Lista nieruchomości pożydowskich w Białymstoku

There are 30 or 40 properties listed.

About half-way down the list, I find the address from Reizel’s postcard:

ul. Kupiecka 32, mieściła się tam instytucja charytatywna "Cdoko gdejlo"

Google translate tells me that this means: Commerce St 32, housed a charity named “Cdoko gdejlo”.

I email Piotr again; does he have any idea what “Cdoko gdejlo” means? and does he have any idea where I might find more information about these organizations? He answers that it does not sound like Russian or Polish, but might be Yiddish. He says nothing about my second question.

I ask my father if he can figure out what Cdoko gdejlo might be in Yiddish? With his little bit of Polish, he is able to sound out the words, and realizes that they are “Tzedekah Gedalia”.  He speculates that someone named Gedalia gave money to found a charity, or someone founded a charity in Gedalia’s honor or memory. A few days later, I go back to the Museum website, and look around some more. I find a short description of Jewish organizations in Biaystok, that mentions the formation, in 1869, of Cedaka Gedola (Hebrew for “great” or “big” charity), to provide aid to the sick and needy.

There are also several other Jewish organizations nearby:

Kupiecka 21 (dziś ul. Malmeda), z budynkiem Szkoły Żeńskiej Chaima Bogdanowskiego  (Commerce St, now Malmeda Street, the female school building Chaim Bogdanowski)

Kupiecka 27, z budynkiem "Dwir" Mordechaja Bojarskiego (the building of “Dwir” Mordechai Bojarski)

Kupiecka 49, internat Białostockiego Stowarzyszenia dla Opieki nad Sierotami (Bialystok Association for the Care of Orphans)

Kupiecka 42, z budynkiem szkoły Tora we-Daet J.M. Rubinsztajna (the school building, Torah v’daat, J.M. Rubinstein)

From this list, I learn that Jewish communities have not changed much. Jewish schools, social service agencies and homes for the aged are often still located near each other, in “compounds” like this. And then, like now, the agencies were named for the wealthy members of the community.

In terms of our family story, I learn only that Reizel was living in a home owned by a Jewish charity.  Learning more about that charity, and finding any records it left behind, will be a much greater search.

Who is Reizel?

We have two pieces of information about Reizel:

·      An old photograph that was in my grandmother’s papers. My father and aunt both remembered being told that this was a photo of Reizel. My father thought it was a photo of his mother’s mother who had died.  But looking at it now, we realize it is a photo of an older woman. And we know that Reizel was still alive in 1937. So this must be a photo of the woman who raised Gittel.

·      The postcard from Bialystok in 1937.

So who was Reizel Korenbaum?

I had dinner a few weeks ago with Doug and Tanja, Korenbaum cousins who live nearby. They found me through the Korenbaum family tree, and we have become friends. It’s nice to have family around, even though the relationship is a distant one (my great-grandfather and Doug’s great-great-grandmother were siblings). We took out the family tree and studied it together, trying to piece together the stories that they have heard from their branch of the family and the stories I’ve been gathering. We notice that there is a long gap between the siblings of Kalman’s generation – almost 15 years. There must have been other children who died, or perhaps there was a second wife? If the dates are accurate, the first child would have been born when the mother was young (less than 20) and the last when she was 47. While not impossible, it seems odd. Could Reizel have been the second wife? The family story was that Gittel was raised by her grandmother. If Reizel was Kalman’s mother, then she would be that grandmother. But then she would also be the mother of Kalman’s younger sister Channah, Doug’s great-great-grandmother. Tanja remembers that they have boxes of old photos and letters, that others in the family saved. She offers to look through them and see if there are any pictures of Channah and her mother, or of anyone who looks like the picture of Reizel.

I email this theory to Rich, the family historian. No, he says, he’s never heard of a second wife in that generation. As far as he knows, there was only one mother. And the dates are accurate, he says. They were written in a family bible, which unfortunately, has disappeared. The last person who had it donated it to a synagogue in the 1970’s, and Rich has not been able to locate it. According to that bible, Kalman was born in 1855. If Reizel had given birth to Kalman, when (let’s guess) she was 20, she would have been almost 100 when she wrote that letter in 1937. That seems unlikely.

Rich suggests that maybe Kalman remarried after being widowed, and Reizel, his second wife, raised his children as her own. This would fit with Liba’s being her daughter. If Reizel was a widow with a small child, she might have remarried and raised her daughter and her husband’s as siblings.

I tell my Dad these theories. “No, no,” he says adamantly, “Kalman never remarried.” Gittel never mentioned her father marrying again, and Usha, the cousin he interviewed in 1972, also said that Kalman never remarried.  My dad goes on, “He was a drunk. Who would have married him?” as if that fact is all we need to end the discussion.

But Kalman was in Warsaw (we think); Reizel was in Bialystok (at least in 1937). Maybe he did remarry and no one knew?

As I think about this more, I come up with a third theory. For years, my father was certain that his mother was raised by her mother’s family. Could Reizel have been her mother’s mother? Could Liba have been her mother’s younger sister (because in the photos she looks young)? But Reizel’s name is Korenbaum. What if Kalman had married a Korenbaum cousin? We know this did happen – Doug’s grandparents were first cousins (both Korenbaums) who were married to each other, in an arranged marriage. But we also know that all of Kalman’s siblings stayed in Maloryta, and married other people from the same town. Why would he break this pattern? Could he have left to marry a cousin elsewhere in Poland? We know that Kalman was the only sibling who left Maloryta, but we don’t know when (before or after his wife died). How did he end up in Warsaw? And how did Reizel end up in Bialystok?

None of the theories really make any sense. We need more information.

A postcard from Reizel

We know that my grandmother’s mother died when she was very young. The story is that she was crossing the Bug River on a sled. Some peasants had cut holes in the ice for fishing, and the sled fell into the ice and she drowned. There may or may not have been others with her, including other children. Because their father fell apart, and could not care for them, my grandmother and her brother were then raised by other relatives. My father always thought they were raised by their mother’s family, probably by their maternal grandmother. When he asked his mother what her mother’s name was, she said Reizel. So he thought that Reizel was the woman who drowned in the river.

Going through family papers, my father found a postcard in Yiddish. He doesn’t remember where or when he found it.   

When he finally had it translated, this is what it said:

TO: Mrs. Chaie Gittel Silberman

82-84 Sheriff  St.

New York

USA

Sender:

Reizel Korenbaum

Bialystok

Kupiecka  (Commerce st.) 32

Dom starow (home for the aged)

Postmark: 11VII3728

Sunday the 7.12 Bialystok

To my dear daughter Chai Gittel and good health to the grandchildren.

I am in good health. Dear Daughter, you will be surprised because of my sudden writing this letter to you. I have no choice but to turn to you. As you know Leibl Lager (?) has got a match for his oldest girl. She is already "dating" some years a very accomplished young man only they will need some help with an apartment and some furniture for them to be able to marry. So I am asking you dear daughter to turn to Freidel's (?) sister, who might be able to help out and maybe you can also help. I am not asking anything for myself. I will accomplish this as helping a couple to marry is one of the greatest things.

Stay healthy from your faithful mother, mother in law, Grandmother Reizel Korenbaum.

If Reizel is writing from Bialystok in 1937, she is clearly not the mother who died young. And her last name is Korenbaum, so she is not from the mother’s side of the family. Could she be a grandmother? Aunt? Cousin? Did Kalman remarry and Reizel, his second wife, raised his children as her own?

There is no one named Reizel in the extensive family tree that the Korenbaum cousins have compiled.

And what is she doing in Bialystok? As far as we know, no one in the Korenbaum family lived in Bialystok. It is a big city, far from the places where the family was – Maloryta, Wlodowa, Warsaw (100 miles from Warsaw).

Whoever she is, she clearly thinks of Gittel as her daughter. And she is clearly in touch with Leibl.

And who is Freidel? And who is her sister who Gittel would have been in touch with in the US? Again, there is no one with this name in the family tree.

Why would her writing be considered “sudden”? Were they not in touch? Or was it the request for money that made the letter unusual?

The more we find, the more confusing it gets.