The Motherland: My Catalyst to Visit

 

            

Thank you for joining me on this journey!

Warsaw, Poland 

late 1910/early 1911

then a part of the Russian Empire

The little boy on the right is my grandfather, Abraham Brenner, then Avram Bronfenbrener. He's about five years old and ready to board a ship to the United States, where his father, Chaim, has already settled. My great grandmother, Feige Waldman (my namesake) sits with her youngest, Mollie. In the back left is Ruchel (Rose) and to the right of Feige is Chana (Hannah). The young girl next to my great grandmother is Sjandle (Rose). My grandfather Avram (Al) is the little boy to the right. Gittel (Gussie) already emigrated, following her father. Sadly, Mosze had already been murdered at age 10 just months earlier. I knew most of these people growing up, except my great grandmother, who died just weeks before I was born in 1954, giving me my name: Faye (Feige in Hebrew) Brenner. 

It wasn't until 2004 that I learned that there is one child missing from this photo, a little boy named Mosze Chil, who, in November 1910, was murdered at age 10 in the town of Frampol, where the family was living with Feige's mother after Chaim left for America, also the birthplace of my great grandmother, Fanny (Feige). This discovery was the impetus for my cousin and me to visit our fathers' Motherland, which, at the time of their emigration was the Russian Empire, now Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland. Beth Heyman is the middle child of my father's brother, Gerald Brenner, who started this entire journey when he told me the story of our grandfather's older brother. At that time no one even remembered his name, but genealogical research uncovered most of the details. 

Chaim and Feige Bronfenbrenner

Hyman and Fanny Brenner

 

Jean and Abraham Brenner

March 11, 1927

While I always knew that my paternal grandfather's family was from Poland (I thought that the odd name of their hometown was humorous -- Szczebrzeszyn -- or "broken nose" in Yiddish, but that is another story to be told when we are there. I only know that the rest of the family was also from the Russian Empire, from the Pale of Settlement. Genealogical research established the birthplace of the rest of my father's family. My paternal grandmother, Jean Dembowitz Brenner, was born in the United States, the oldest of seven children. She passed away when I was only seven years old, before my youngest sister, Jeanne (her namesake) was born. Her mother, Rose (Ruchel) Deutch Dembowitz, was always Bubbe, Yiddish for grandmother, out living her daughter. Rose dies at age 94, and even my son got to meet his great great grandmother. 

One of my frustrations doing research was that Rose claimed a number of different places as her birthplace. This was not unusual since Rose could not speak English when she arrived and didn't read or write the language. One documents claimed her birthplace as Kiev, in current Ukraine and Gdinsk (a bit closer in name to her actual place of birth), in current Poland. I was able to confirm Dvinsk (now Daugavpils, Latvia), home to the artist Max Rothko, with documentation from her brother and sister. Rose emigrated from Dvinsk by herself at about 15 years, first traveling to England where she lived in Leeds for a year and on to the United States at age 16. Rose supported herself as a tailoress, first living in Brooklyn with her brother and then moving to Rochester, New York to marry. 

Dembowitz and Ginchansky Families

(Ginchansky is Samuel's sister Ida's family)

circa 1919

Dembowitz Family

Samuel -- man sitting to the right

Rose -- woman standing back right

Jean (1907) -- back left

Lily (1909) -- standing second row on the right

Anne (1911) -- girls sitting in front row on right

Esther (1916) -- sitting on Samuel's lap

missing Harold, born in 1921, after photo was taken

There was one more mystery -- the birthplace of Samuel Dembowitz. Research on Sam was much easier than my great grandmother. He and his sibling identified their place of birth as Marijampole, then a part of the Russian Empire and once a part of Poland, and now in southern Lithuania, close to the border with Poland. My father had told me that a family legend that Sam started himself suggested he was descended from Lithuanian royalty, although that was always unlikely since they were a poor Jewish family. Sam was a house painter, first in Marijampole, and then in the United States. Many of his and Rose's family would, at one time, work for Sam, including my grandfather.     

An interesting discovery was that Samuel's mother, Rokha, died when Sam was only 11 years old. His brother Morris was 15 and his sister Ida (Asne) was 7. Sam's father, Aaron, remarried and had three more children with his second wife, Gitel Yosafson. The family moved to the larger city of Kaunas. They changed their name to Dembovicious. Eventually their son Abelis immigrated to the United States and then to Argentina and finally to Texas. After Aaron passed away, his mother would join him in Argentina. His two sisters remained in Lithuania. Gutel died of natural causes at the start of World War II, and Teube was imprisoned in Stuthof Concentration Camp, although there is no confirmation of what happened to her after she was transferred out in 1944.  

My cousin and I started planning our heritage trip to the motherland of my father's ancestors before the pandemic. After postponing it to 2021, we still felt it was unsafe to travel so we rescheduled it again for 2022. Our itinerary originally included my mother's ancestral homes in what is now Ukraine, forcing us to cancel once again after the war broke out. Finally, dropping Ukraine from our plans, we are off to the motherland in two week.         

Our Itinerary

                 Riga, Latvia                       capital of Latvia

                    Daugavpils, Latvia             birthplace of Ruchel Deutch  

                    Vilnius, Lithuania               capital of Lithuania 

                    Marijampole, Lithuania      birthplace of Samuel Dembowitz

                    Warsaw, Poland                 capital of Poland

                                                                birthplace of Mollie Bronfenbrener

                    Krakow, Poland                  home to Jewish Culture Festival

                    Frampol, Poland                 birthplace of Feige Waldman

                    Szczebreszyn, Poland        birthplace of Chaim Bronfener

                                                                and Feige and Chaim's children 

                                                                with the exception of Mollie.             

        Come back on June 18th to follow our trip to our Motherland.