Snyder/Gouline/Highstein/Bass - 2023 New Year / 5784 Rosh Hashana Genealogy Letter
L'Shana Tovah Family,
This family letter come 9 months late, as the secular New Year was a hard time for me. I’m sure you all are well aware that my Mom, Cevia Rosol, z”l (of blessed memory), passed away on December 28, 2022 after a turbulent 8 months, closely following the death of her husband of 43 years, George Rosol z”l, who passed away on May 2, 2022.
Here is my Eulogy for my Mom, for those who missed it:
I miss my Mom already. My name is Michael Snyder; Mikey to her. I thought that bringing her from Maine to Maryland would allow me and other family members to have a renewed and extended opportunity to spend quality time, share experiences, and create bonding memories. Sadly that did not happen.
My Mom wanted to live her life on her own terms. She loved her husband George more than anyone else on Earth. Now she has joined him for eternity and hopefully they are at peace.
Mom was creative, artistic, well organized, and a bit stubborn. She was a good mom to me. I was the oldest and she instilled in me the traits of honesty, love and empathy for others, and independence. Unfortunately, I missed out on the musical and organizational skills.
After Mom and George moved to Maine, I loved visiting them at their home du Jour. they found a way of settling in interesting towns with lots of fun places to explore and shop for antiques and keepsakes. I hope I can speak for Phyllis and Aaron when I say we looked forward to our annual pilgrimages to Maine.
My brothers and sisters: Carol, Shep, Jon, Rachel and Dorene; I’m sure had a different relationship with mom. I’ll let them explore and explain.
I also, agreed with Mom that it was a good thing to welcome George's four children Joe, Lynn, Martin, Paul, Richard, Enrico, and Susan into the brood.
In the interest of being inclusive in my remarks I’m glad that her grandchildren Aaron, Gus, Ben, Colleen, Carl, Dani, Andy, GV, Kevin, Valeria, Lauren, Lea, Spencer, Aki, Meredith, and Rebecca; and great-grandchildren, Hannah, Riley, and Griffin could all be here in person or in spirit.
Mom followed my study of our genealogy, as she’d reach out to me for explanations of the latest additions. So, I have to delve in a bit deeper.
Cevia Highstein Rosol was born April 18, 1936 to Charles Highstein and Jeanne Gouline Highstein in Baltimore. Her father emigrated to the U.S. at the age of 8 from Birzai (Lithuania) in the Russian Empire with his family. Her grandparents, Max and Celia, started a Tavern in Baltimore that became a Confectionery during prohibition. Her father, Charles, was a Dentist who served in WW-1 and as an Air Warden during WW-2. Sadly he died of cancer from exposure to X-rays when Cevia was 8 years old.
Her mother, Jeanne, emigrated to the U.S. when she was 2 years old from Lutzk (Ukraine) in the Russian Empire with her Mother, Rachel, joining her Father who came earlier. Jeanne’s father, Jacob, was a Merchant, Salesman, and eventually founded a Building Supply company that ultimately allowed the family to be well off.
Jeanne worked for the Social Security Administration and as a Census Taker. Cevia’s family were Orthodox Jews that kept kosher and were active in their synagogues. Both her grandfathers and father served as temple presidents at one time in their lives. Her mother was active in Hadassah and Brandeis woman’s clubs. I’ll spare you most of the details on the 2430 members of her family tree, going back over 10 generations on some branches, but I will touch on just a few more.
After George, Cevia’s second love was music. She shared this love with George, as they met through music; sought opportunities to create music; and made friends with fellow musicians. Growing up she was inspired by music and found it gave her a creative outlet and much joy.
As I mentioned, my mom lost her father when she was 8 years old. Her brother and sister (Norman & Harriet) were 10 and 9 years older than she was. In adulthood she loved them dearly as well as thier many children. Thankfully she was accepted into the Glass family by Aunt Ida and Uncle Benny and she became a quasi-sister to Sheppie, Marty, and Phillip; all 4 being within 13 months of age. Uncle Benny ran a record store and she loved sharing their love for music. She fondly shared that she was Philip Glass’ first accompanist, well before he became famous. She loved Philip dearly and tracked his career until she passed.
When I think back on time I spent with mom, I’m reminded of travel around the countryside with or without the Sarubin’s; looking for antiques or eating at Peter Pan, Cozy Inn, Plain & Fancy, and any restaurant that served clams, oysters, crab cakes and lobsters. In the backyard we had crab feasts. In our kitchen we were treated to gourmet cooking as my mom had an expansive repertoire of recipes. I remember frequent attendances at Town Drama and trips to museums, art galleries, and cousins-club gatherings. Of course Scrabble, jigsaw puzzles and other board games were a big part of our life together.
I end as I began, As I said, I loved visiting Mom in Maine annually, or sometimes a bit more. I thought that bringing Mom from Maine to Maryland would allow us an opportunity to spend quality time, together as we did for her 80th birthday party. Sadly that did not happen.
I pray you are at peace.
Usually, in my Family Genealogy Letter I share the names of new distant Great-Great-Great-Grandparents going out 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 generations. I still stand at 95 direct “documented” ancestors, going back up to 9 generations, as I took a different tack this past eighteen months. But, first, let me tell you about other genealogical activities worth sharing.
I was appointed to the Board of Directors for the Jewish Genealogy Society of Greater Washington (JGSGW.org), serving as the Technology Coordinator of my local society. This means I get to help with technology projects like getting expanded Zoom service by piggy-backing on the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies (IAJGS.org) service. I’m also researching a new website platform to modernize and provide more flexibility.
I attended the IAJGS annual conference in London, England in late July and early August 2023. They offered over 250 breakout sessions, and the conference was kicked off with a Welcome from King Charles III, through Robert Voss, His Majesty’s Lord-Lieutenant of Hertfordshire who is only the second Jewish person wo hold one of these positions in the history of the United Kingdom.
During the conference I organized the 10th annual “Descendants from Volhynia Dinner” that I’ve been organizing since 2018. We had 21 “family members” go to Mriya Neo Bistro in Kensington, London. These off-site dinners have been a highlight of my IAJGS conferences as we get to share stories, discuss research, meet new relatives, and have a great time with good food and drink. All are welcome, whether they have ancestors from Volhynia, think they may have family from there, enjoy the company of descendants from Volhynia, or would just like to make new genealogy friends. I had a variety of small plates including a herring starter, borsht, potato and onion varenyky (a dumpling), and sour cherry varenyky for dessert. I also, enjoyed a red wine from Odessa that I shared with others.
At the conference, I attended a number of lectures on the Holocaust, information on documents being scanned by Ukraine archives to protect them from the war, and using AI in genealogy.
Other excursions around London included visiting the Novo Beth Israel Cemetery at Queen Mary University of London for a friend, Fish & Chips at Gordon Ransey’s restaurant on the River Thames, a Beatle-like stroll across Abbey Road, and a wonderful Reuben at Selfridges.
Finally, at IAJGS, I engaged with a professional genealogist, from Israel, who hopefully will reach out to my potential relatives in Petah Tikva and maybe break through the brick-wall on Jacob Gouline’s family history.
On a related topic, on returning from the conference, I was sent 4 pages of recently discovered 1938 census records that list Galon family members from Zhelutsk, Ukraine. These pages came from Victoria Chymshyt, the Secretary of the Rivne Synagogue, in Ukraine where I met her when my sister Carol and I were there in 2018. I’ve been helping Vik and her community since the war began with funds to pay cell phone bills and buy sundries. She is currently a refugee in Poland, with family left behind. She has documented how my efforts help other Rivne refugees and folks that stayed behind.
So, what have I been doing for the last 18 months, if not looking for distant ancestors?
On or about Tisha b’Av in 2022, I had an epiphany. As many others whose families were safely here in the United States, I believed that my family was not impacted by the Holocaust. But I was wrong. When I heard about a genealogist who posted a list her family members on Tisha b’Av and Yom HaShoah who’d perished in the Holocaust; I started to do the same. With very little effort, I found 20 family members who perished and began honoring them over 10 years ago. On Tisha b’Av in 2022, I was inspired to dive a little deeper and organize my list.
I also had the following interaction on Facebook with another genealogist. Someone posted:
Through family trees that I found on Ancestry.com, I am related to many famous Rabbinic families from the 15th and 16th centuries: for example, Shaul "King for a Day" Wahl Katzenelenbogen is my 14th great grandfather; Rabbi Meir Katzenelenbogen Maharama of Padua is my 16th great grandfather; Rabbi Yechiel-Michel "Martyr of Nemirov" is my first cousin 13 x removed; etc. My concern is that nobody has actual documentation on Ancestry.com of how they are related to these ancestors, so how can I know that I am related? I can't even find my paternal grandmother's ancestors a few generations back, so how can I know these are my ancestors?
I responded:
I’ve been giving this a lot of thought since I discovered this post. 7, 8, 9 generations are the best you can do with documentation available through JewishGen, LitvakSIG, and JRI Poland. This takes you back to a 6th great-grandparents. You get 0.56% of you DNA from these individuals. That’s 1 part in 200. Not a whole lot of influence. We have 206 bones, so statistically I get one bone from each of my 9th generation ancestors. So I dedicate my distal phalange of my big toe to my 6x great grandfather, Benjamin Krieger (b 1725.)
If I believe the tree data, I can trace myself to RASHI as my 30th great-grandfather. At that generation, I get 4.3 billion ancestors that provide the same contribution as RASHI. Since our entire genome is 3 billion base pairs. Then, statistically I only got 1 base-pair from RASHI. I dedicate the very first C on my 2nd chromosome to RASHI. Not a whole lot of influence there. So, why does it matter? At some point this is just an academic exercise. This part of genealogy is, and can only be, for the fun of the hunt. Documentation at this point is also just for fun, as in the Genealogy Death-Match game that’s played at IAJGS. Convince me otherwise.
** Note: Genealogy Death-Match is an event that involves documenting ancestors back as far as you can go on one family line, with the audience voting on who did the best job. It’s setup in a game-show style.
Taking my words to heart, I realized that mancestorsy members who perished in the holocaust were more closely related than many of the ancestors, I was looking for. So, I had a second reason to do a deep dive on these holocaust families. My goal was that by Yom HaShoah 2023 (April), I was going to create a memorial book to share with my family and community.
To add to my effort, I had a discussion with my Rabbi at Temple Beth Ami about why we do not do more to commemorate the Holocaust. He turned it around on me and asked what I could do. So, last month, using my research, I taught a class at out weekly Live & Learn sessions on Personalizing the Shoah: Finding your Broken Branches. I’m also going to teach a similar class to the 7th graders who have as part of their Religious School education, classroom instruction on the Holocaust.
Since I started my deep-dive into learning about my relatives who perished in the Shoah, my list, has grown to 210 people, aged 1 to 90, in 12 family groups. This has complicated my research, but it has been a rewarding experience. My mother, who had been following my research over many years, remarked over the last year of her life on how amazing it’s been to find these missing family members. Upon seeing updates to my family tree, she remarked “Now I know why my family seemed so small while growing up.”
I have to admit that not all of these 210 people, I’ve found, are all my blood relatives. As you’ll see in the trees I’m sharing, there are in-laws in many of the trees. When I found these people, I asked myself, “who would say kaddish for them, if not me?” As I think about family, when we have family events, my sister-in-law’s families, and my brother-in-law’s families are there as part of the gathering. They too are family! So, from a memorial perspective, I include these “family members” who also perished in the Shoah!
In my Memorial Book, Personalizing the Shoah: Finding your Broken Branches, you will find the lists of individuals from the 12 families; my Scoutmaster Minute on scout-age children; a spotlight on my cousin, the dentist, Abraham Szkurnik; a spotlight on my cousin Metuka Segal; Yizkor Books, I own; and links to some other Holocaust resources.
This Memorial Book is not complete my any stretch of the imagination. I’ve since found a few more families that I will add to my Memorial Book in the near future. I am sure as I begin to work with the 7th Graders they will teach me, while I teach them.
My Memorial Book can be found at:
https://imsnyder.s3.amazonaws.com/Ancestry/Personalizing+the+Shoah+-+Family.pdf
My list of Family Members in the Project on Geni is at:
https://www.geni.com/projects/Michael-Snyder-s-Family-that-Perished-in-the-Shoah/people/4488362
I know this letter was bitter-sweet, so, during this holiday season, May this remembrance teach us all.
Wishing that you, my family and friends, have a good and sweet new year,
I. Michael Snyder
blog: http://clayinmyboots.blogspot.com/
Researching: Snyder, Highstein, Bass, Bashes, Musicant, Khait, Shenker, Kreiger, Paliukar, Zaidel, Kats, Tamshe, Altschul, and Khazan.
In Lithuania: Birzai, Pasviten, Linkova, Pasvalys, Krekenava, Pumpėnai, Pakruojis, Varniai and Vilkija.
Researching: Gouline, Galon, Oks, Gertsberg, Shkurnik, and Barbas
In Ukraine: Radyvyliv, Lutzk, Kremenets, Zholudsk, and Rafalivka.
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