The Minkowsky Family Conection
The Minkowsky Family Connection
This is an incredible story of how the three family branches reconnected thanks to vague knowledge that each of them had about a family relation to a famous cantor - Pinchas Minkovsky, and thanks to a JewishGen message posted by Ofer of Haifa, great grandson of Rivka, that was answered by David of Philadelphia, grandson of Aaron.
Our connected family tree is managed on Geni. You can click each name here to get to the Geni profile page where you can find more information about them, photos, and documents. And, if you already joined Geni (it's great and free, as David describes here), you'll also see your relation to them, and the detailed chain of relations leading from you to that person.
1. The Family of my Grandfather Godik and Cantor Minkovsky
Like many people, I started to be interested in my family roots a bit late - being about 50 years old, in 2010, and as always is the case, it was too late to talk with many older family members. What I knew about my grandfather Gad (Godik) Bernstein was that he was born to Zvi and Rivka in Ukraine, and he had a brother and sister in Israel (Shmuel and Manya) and a sister, Fanya, in Russia behind the Iron Curtain.
And… I remembered that grandfather Godik once told me that a famous cantor named Pinye Minkovsky belonged to his family. I easily Googled the cantor Pinchas Minkowsky – but how are we connected to Minkov(w)sky ?
The first step was talking with Yitschak, son of Manya, the last of the 4 cousins still alive, and he thought that Rivka, Godik’s and Manya’s mother, was born as Minkovsky. He also thought that a relative we both knew, Baruch Maniv, was actually a Minkovsky, Maniv being a Hebrew variant. I then found Baruch’s sons (living in my town, Haifa) – Shmuel and Tsofar, and they confirmed that Maniv is Minkovsky, and also told me that Baruch’s father was named Shmuel, and that they also knew about a relation to cantor Minkovsky.
2. Meeting David Mink
Next step: I started to research the cantor’s family, and posted a message on JewishGen asking for any information. I soon received the following reply from a guy named David Mink:
David Mink
“I too am related to Pichus Minkowsky. There were several brothers and sisters. He and his father Mordechai, and brothers Aaron and Wolf, are buried in Philadelphia, in the same cemetery as my father. I have not been able to draw the direct link, although I know that when my grandfather came to the US in 1905, his destination was the home of Wolf who lived at 304 South St, Philadelphia. My grand father's name was also Aaron Minkowsky.”
Oh, we now started a speculation period exchanging numerous guesses and assumptions. David knew that the name of the father of his grandfather Aaron - was Israel. Then, I got from Shmuel (son of Baruch Maniv) a handwritten family tree created by his granddaughter many years ago as a school task, and apparently she interviewed her grandfather Baruch – and in that tree, the parents of Baruch’s father, Shmuel, were specified as Israel and Chaya !
So we speculated that it was the same Israel, with Rivka, Shmuel and Aaron being his children. And maybe the famous cantor, Pinchas is Israel’s brother? But more evidence was needed.
Next event: I managed to contact Irena (Volodya’s daughter from Russia) and she sent me some family pictures which I shared with David. The following one was quite a shock for him:
Edith & Norbert
This was his response:
“I am blown away! That is Norbert and My grandmother, Edith. Did Irena know how it traveled from the US to Russia?”
Well… this strengthened our family ties assumption – at least we were 100% sure we were family!
In the meantime, I extended my research of the cantor’s family. I connected with Akiva Zimmerman, an author of Jewish cantors books. In an amazing coincidence, he was just starting to write a book on Pinchas! I helped him with getting archive material for the book and he provided me valuable information and pointed me to an amazing autobiography of Pinchas, that was written in Hebrew around 1920, which opens a vivid window into the Jewish life of the 19th century Ukraine (the first chapter was translated to English). Akiva also had a rare picure of Pinchas's father who was also a cantor - Mordechay (Motel-Gadi) Minkovsky.
I learned that Mordechay's father was R' Gadya, and beside Pinchas he had 4 more sons (2 of them also cantors) and 3 girls - all migrated to the US. I built a separate tree of cantor Pinchas's family on Geni, and with David's help, connected many relatives - descendants of Pinchas's siblings (mostly in the Philadelphia area).
3. The Zhytomir Documents Connect Everything
At this point we had on Geni 3 separate family trees that were waiting to be connected... my own tree rooted in Israel and Chaya, David's tree rooted in "his" Israel (we still needed final proof that our Israels were the same person), and the cantor's tree rooted in his grandfather, R' Gadya. I already knew that my grandfather Godik was born in Zhytomir, so I assumed that the answers were there. Fortunately, through Akiva Zimmerman the author, I connected with the CHABAD Rebbe of Zhytomir, who had an assistant that helped with inquiring the Zhytomir archive. We searched for all documents containing "Minkovsky"... and voilà... 14 docouments were found, each in both a Russian and a Hebrew version, where the following 3 confirmed the Shmuel-Rivka-Aaron connection:
The three family trees connected
4. More Siblings and the Unknown Picture, The Mysterious George Mink, and Old Peisakh Minkovsky
I mentioned above that we got 14 Minkovsky documents from Zhytomir - and beyond our Shmuel, Rivka and Aaron, we learned that they had 6 more siblings! So 9 altogether:
Mordechay Ben-Zion (1869 - 1870)
Shmuel (1876 - 1904)
Rivka (1878 - 1955)
Sura (1881 - 1911)
Aaron (1883 - 1918)
Rachel (1888 - 1888)
Shifra (1890 - 1941)
Juda Baruch (1892 - ?)
Moshko Gad (1895 - ?)
Among the old pictures of my grandparents, I found one of an impressive lady, with the name "Shifra" on the back...
Shifra
But as I wrote in the beginning, sometimes the people who know are not here anymore to tell us., and I was left wondering who she was.. But now this riddle is solved! And later when I received old pictures from Jonathan's wife - I saw the same picture - but here on the back was written "Shifra, sister of grandmother Rivka" - so she is indeed sibling # 7! As far as we know (not 100% !) Shifra was not married or had any children, but according to the sibling list above - there is still a potential to discover unknown family branches of Sura, Juda Baruch, and Moshko Gad.
Another discovery of the Zhytomir documents was the birth record of a son of Shmuel named Gad, born on 1898 - from his first wife (i.e. half brother of Baruch Maniv). Now, for a long time David was researching the mysterious relative George Mink, that served on the US Navy and became a known Communist that was believed to be a spy involved in Stalin's assassinations, even in the Trotsky case.
Gad Minkovsky/ George Mink
And now the connection was made - it is Gad Minkovsky who changed his name in the US to George Mink!
This is a fascinating story that definitely deserves its own place!
And lastly - I connected on JewishGen with a woman named Beatrice Markel who ordered a research report of the Minkovsky family at Chabno, Ukraine (near Chernobyl - now called Polisske), based mainly on censuses information. I was able to connect R' Gadya to this report, and thus to extend our Minkovsky tree up to our oldest known ancestor - Peisakh Minkovsky born around 1730! I managed to connect all the people mentioned in the report to our tree - and we even got connected to Beatrice Markel (she is my fifth cousin twice removed). So now we can show long generation chains on Geni, e.g. from David's grandson Axel to his 7th GGF Peisakh.
5: Reunion of the Family Branches
