From Ukraine to America: 4 Families

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Contact me at: echaika1@verizon.net

The research, studying and plain hard work that this site is based on was done over a 10 year span by my sister-in-law, Terry Ostrach Chase.
Click on the link to go to her websites:
http://www.TerryOstrach.com, http://www.ancestry.com (search for her name)

The town square of Nowy Dwor, Poland around 1908 or earlier. My grandfather Abraham Gilfenbain came from here, but the town of Bar in Ukraine where my father's family came from was described to me as being very like this, with wooden buildings,and no paved streets or roads. Note the light on the pole. I don't think Bar was that modern.

Elaine Ostrach Chaika

I am the daughter of Harry and Rose Gilfenbain Ostrach. My grandparents were Samuel (Zisse) and Bayla Zakman Ostrach, and Abraham and Jenny (Taibl) Butkovitz Gilfenbain. I recount the family history from my point of view as a daughter, granddaughter, great-granddaughter, and niece.

My contribution to this site --not counting the hours and days devoted to setting it up and writing it --is mainly concerned with my memories of what my elders told me, and what I experienced growing up in partially assimilated families, an upbringing midway between what my older aunts and uncles had, and the one my own children had. When I was a child, Yiddish was still the language of the home. My great-aunts were called Die Mema, and a great-uncle was Der Fetter. Grandmothers were Bubbie and grandfathers were Zadi. Many of my cousins I knew only by their Yiddish names: Motti, Tunni, Rifka... Even the radio shows we listened to were the "Jewish" ones. Eddie Cantor wasn't to be missed, nor was Jack Benny. Swing was the music of the day, and every time a klezmer riff came over the radio, my Aunt Sarah would sigh and say, "Jewish music." Actually, it was no surprise to us that so much Jewish music was in the Big Bands. Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, they all were Jewish, and although they were influenced by jazz, Jewish Klezmer, which they must have also been familiar with, made full use of the horns so prevalent in swing. There were even popular songs like "Bei Mir Bist Du Shayn." I grew up not always knowing whether some words were English or Yiddish.

All the prayers and blessings were sung using a Hebrew pronunciation no longer used. The Hebrew my brother and I were taught in Hebrew School was Vilna Hebrew, the variety used at the great Jewish university in Lithuania. After the founding of the State of Israel, the Vilna pronunciation was replaced by a more Sephardic one. In our house, Saturday was Shabbas (emphasis on the first syllable), Passover was Pesach, and we gave Shaloch Munos on Purim. Food was trayf or chomitz, if it wasn't kosher. Only kosher food was allowed in our house. Before Pesach, the house was a flurry of cleaning activity as we cleared the house of every trace of leavening. All the dishes were changed for the 8 day festival, and even the tablecloths were special for the occasion. The Braley Dairy delivered us bottles of milk with the label "Kosher for Passover." Apparently some of the cows were fed a special diet the month before so their milk wouldn't be chomitz (not Kosher for Passover). Even the soda was Kosher l'Pesach. Our Haggadahs were gruesome and boring texts bound in blue paper courtesy of Maxwell House Coffee, but the archaic language was made up for by the music. The Seders were chanted for hours by my father and his brothers, Morris and Simon, followed by everyone singing hymns together. Actually, as a girl, I was lucky as I could be in the kitchen, helping to prepare and serve the food, as well as clean up. We could hear the men chanting, but that didn't stop the women from gossiping away while the men were at it. My brother Herbie had to sit through the entire thing, but since even a child had to drink the full complement of wine, he always got shikka (drunk) and had severe attacks of the giggles. Women did sit down for portions of the seder, and, of course, they carried in a bowl of water and a clean towel for my father to ritually wash his hands before sinking back into the pillows placed on his seat. One of my aunts always opened the door for Elijah at the prescribed time during the seder. Whenever she did, our dog Flippy walked in. What was odd was that he never came in the front door except when it was time for Elijah to come sip wine from the special cup put out for him at the seder. We children looked intently at the wine after the door was opened, and it certainly looked to us as if Elijah was drinking it. We could see the level of wine go down, but just a tad. After all, Elijah had to visit a lot of houses that night.

Our house was completely kosher. Religion and being Jewish suffused every aspect of our lives. Women sat upstairs in shul. Lights weren't turned on or fires lit on Shabbos. I wasn't allowed to write or cut out paper dolls after sundown Friday. We never got in a car Shabbos or High Holidays, but walked together to our little shul. We didn't handle money on holy days. Our Sundays were reserved for seeing family, unto the second and third cousins. It was a way of life my children would find foreign. They don't even know their third cousins

The Families

Seidman-Ostrach Families in Bar, Ukraine, 1912

        Standing: Moishe Zakman, his wife, Schulim (Sam) Zakman (Seidman) , Rifvka Zakman, Doveed  Zakman,
Sitting: (middle row) Avrum  Zakman (the father), posssibly Odessa Seidman, Avrum & Shayndel's youngest girl or possibly another granddaughter, Shayndel Shatkin Zakman (the mother), Bayla Zakman Ostrach, my father Heschel Zvi Ostrach (later, Harry), Shimon Zakman
Front: Sarah "Sura" Ostrach, Esther Fage Ostrach

Avrum, a blacksmith, was the patriarch. His wife is Shayndel, a woman who suffered terribly from asthma all her life. My aunts and grandmother all remember her sitting outside with a bowl of steaming water in her lap and a towel around her head as she tried to breathe in the steam. At least two brothers are missing from this picture: Laban and Pesi. There was also a sister named Odessa. Either she is the unnamed young girl in the middle row, or she's not in this picture.

My Aunt Sarah, as a  child, sitting on the far left, said that she didn't know who that girl was.   Pesi came to America, settling in Boston, before this picture was taken. In America, he was called Benny and I recall him vividly from my childhood. Laban was possibly a twin, I don't know of whom, and was a soldier in the Tsar's army, dying there. How or why, I don't know, except that Jews were very harshly treated in the army, and a major reason for emigrating to America was to escape the Russian draft, which often required a 25 year enlistment.  My great Uncle Sam, standing between the women in the top row of the picture, told Jo Ann Seidman, his daughter-in-law that his father knocked out a couple of his teeth so that he wouldn't be drafted.

Sam, my Bubbie Bayla, and her three children emigrated to the United States.  Pesi had already emigrated before this picture was taken. Terry Ostrach Chase told me that Bubbie Bayla said this picture was taken so Pesi could see the family. The others in the picture all stayed in Ukraine.

Shimon apparently was killed in one of the two massacres of Jews in Bar during the Holocaust. The first was in August, 1941, and the second in November,1942. These were carried out by the Ukrainian militia who marched with the Nazis.   Jews from surrounding towns had been brought to Bar and confined to two ghettos. Rifka wrote my grandmother after the war, saying the whole family in Bar, except her, was killed by the "banditen," the bandits, apparently referring to Ukrainians, as Nazis would have been "Deitschen," I believe. I think that Doveed, in the top right, was the brother who sent the  Postcard (see Documents ) to my grandmother and grandfather. This asked her not to forget him. The post card dates from 1929, long after the United States refused to allow Jews to come to America. Jo Ann Seidman, Allen Seidman's wife, told me that Doveed had written to the Seidman brothers asking them to find a way to help him come to America. Apparently, this couldn't be done. The postcard has a sadness to it. He's stuck in the USSR and, since he can't see his siblings again, asks them to remember him. I don't know his fate or if he had descendants who survived the war and are still living in the USSR. So many lost relatives...

Butkovitz and Gilfenbain Families in Boston, 1919
        Standing: Tillie (Phillip's wife), Ida Butkovitz (Thal), a Marcus cousin, Anna Butkovitz (Bresky), Taibl (Jenny) Butkoviitz Gilfenbain.
Sitting: Phillip Butkovitz with baby son Nachim (Nookie) , Sarah Butkovitz (the mother), Scholom Butkovitz (the father), Abraham Gilfenbain, Rose Minya Gilfenbain, Chick (Israel) Gilfenbain
        Front: Davey Butkowitz, and Harry Gilfenbain.
Sholom Butkovitz, the family patriarch, had an identical twin Manya. Both were very slender with pale blond hair and light blue eyes. He was a tailor. Sarah was actually his second wife. His first wife, Pia, died, leaving him a widower with a daughter Rifka. Sarah was his first wife's sister, so Rifka was her niece, but she raised her as her own. My grandmother, Jenny (originally Taibl) actually arrived in 1906 with her father and sister Ida (originally Malke). He sent for his wife and the children later. When this picture was taken, Rifka, who was married and had children, had not yet come over. Sam, Sholom's younger son is not in this picture. I don't know why. In the other large family grouping in the photos section, you will meet Rifka Butkovitz Klayman and her children. Phillip, here holding his baby, later became paralyzed and we older cousins knew him only as the man lying on a cot in the kitchen of his Malden home, apparently listening to the talk swirling round but not contributing to it. Whether this was because he couldn't speak or was just too weak to do so very often, we didn't know. Selma Klayman Baker told me that Tillie, Phillip's wife and Rifka's husband were brother and sister. So Tillie's full name was Tillie Klayman Butkowitz. Since Rifka was married in the old country, and was still living there when this picture was taken, Phillip and Tillie were probably married before they emigrated.

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                                            The Immigrants' Songs

Songs lamenting the passing of the way of life in Eastern Europe were already being sung in music halls and even movie theaters which also featured live entertainment by 1912. The three player bars below each have one of these songs. All are in Yiddish, which the immigrants all spoke. The family who were already here may well have listened to these recordings. The first is a song I knew well as a child, Romania. The words mean, "Romania, there was once a pretty land where people ate Mammeliga (polenta), pastrami, and a glass of wine...." If you click on the second player icon, you will hear a lament for the lost shtetl of Nicolaya, probably laid waste by pogroms. The third sings "What once was is no more." However, the songs all sing of the good and sweet times there. The first two are tunes to dance to. There were many, many more of these songs.

When families left the Pale which spread from what is now Ukraine to Poland, they knew they were abandoning a way of life. However, both the dire poverty and the horrible massacres of Jews which began in the 1890's, could also be abandoned.

Click on the left hand "pause" button to start the player bar. To stop, click on the right hand square stop button. All three of these are early recordings, dating back to 1912 or earlier.

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Seidman-Ostrach Families in Bar, Ukraine, 1912