Russia

Foreword

About 2004, I started writing a biography of my family, and almost immediately realised how short I was on detail of my parents’ and grandparents’ history. I struggled for a short time, spoke to any and all surviving friends and members of the family but got precious little information other than I already had.  So I gave up, and the project was shelved.

January 2013, the whole family was over for Shabbat dinner at our place and a conversation led to one of our daughters going to our entrance hall cupboard where we kept all our photo albums and bringing down one album that contained a Heritage Project she did at the age of 14 while a student at Masada College. While leafing through this album, I realised that she had questioned my parents extensively and recorded most of the details which I was missing, so I took my project off the shelf and resurrected it.

Helen will be contributing to this biography with her side of the family which has a very rich background from Poland.

The aim of this biography is to record our family history so that down the track our children, grandchildren, and whoever will follow them, will be able to have a factual record of our past including photographs, and not need to rely on fading memories.

Over the years I heard endless stories from Russia and China from both my parents and Babushka, my maternal grandmother, as did Helen from her parents and relatives. But unless we actually record these stories, they will be lost forever never to be heard of again. The rest of our history will be from our personal experiences.

On October 2015 I got to stage four of my biography where Helen and I got married. Michael Vetz (cousin Natalie’s husband) started his family tree on a site on the internet called My Heritage, and requested from me the names and photos of Natalie’s branch of the family which is my family. I supplied him all the information he requested including our paternal grandmother’s name Gittle-Esther, which is also Nellie’s Hebrew given name.

Within a couple of days, a Michael Moz from Maale Adumim, a town in the West Bank near Jerusalem, contacted Michael Vetz through the website, and said that we may have relatives in common. He said that his wife Yulia’s great grandmother, Roda Romanovsky, is Gittle-Esther’s sister.

I was shocked, because except for a photo of Gittle-Esther’s tombstone showing that she is Bat Reuven, daughter of Reuven, and age and date at death, I had no other knowledge of her background. I contacted Michael Moz and he sent me a detailed background going back three generations showing the link between Yulia and Gittle-Esther.

Michael Moz was also able to track the name Leymonshtein going back three generations, supplying me information which I had no knowledge of and would not have been able to find.

This was a complex jig-saw puzzle showing how the Romanovsky and Leymonshtein families united when my father Michael married my mother Tanya on the 15th September 1936.

The family tree extends down to Nellie’s and our grandchildren.

Leymanshtein

Russia

My family’s background was always spoken of as Russian, yet our original name Leymanshtein, particularly the shtein part of the name, suggests that somewhere in history the paternal side of the family may have originated from Europe, possibly Austria or Germany. This is particularly likely as my dad’s family came from a town called Vyazma which is situated between Moscow and the western end of Russia. Michael Moz’s research shows that my great grandfather Leyba Leymonshtein was only allowed to settle in Vyazma after serving in the Tzar’s army for 25 years. My dad was never able to shed any light as to where the family originated from before Vyazma as records were not readily available, and this sort of information was usually passed down the line verbally.

My Parents

Dad

Michael (Misha) Leymanshtein was born 28th March 1911 in Vyazma, Russia, to Isaac and Gittle-Esther. This was the official date told to us.(See later story) He was the youngest of four brothers and had no recollection of his father as he died when my dad was 5 years old. Dad’s three brothers in order of seniority were Lyola, Sima and Arcadia.

Lyolya              Sima              Arcadia

Earliest photos of dad  1926   -  he is 15

Mum

Tatiana (Tanya) was born in Vitebsk to Fania and Moisey Rayak 15 th May 1911. This is the earliest photograph we seem to have, showing Babushka mum and her older brother Ephraim (Yifim) on the horse.

Fania Rayak (my Babushka) Yifim 11 and Tania 6

Mum together with Yifim and Babushka, my grandmother Fania Rayak, came to China around 1928. Over the years Babushka, mum and dad told a host of stories from their early days in Russia. I suspect that mum was a bit of a free spirited wag notwithstanding the fact that she was a kindergarten teacher. An exercise book which she kept from those days had poems and songs she was quite happy to recite and sing for me with a mischievous twinkle in her eyes. Most were on the risqué side, albeit mild by today’s standards. The songs were known as  “chistooshki”. 

Mum’s schooling was done in Russia and was typical of the time and place.  Mum had to ride a horse bareback to school and back. While that in itself may not sound like a big deal, the problem was that the road she had to take went past a forest so she had to keep an eye out in case a pack of wolves or the occasional bear would come out of the forest. When that happened, mum said that you had to let the reins go and allow the horse to do its own fleeing because attempting to control the horse could lead to a disaster. Winter in Siberia is quite harsh, so every child had to bring to school every day a log of wood for the fire and when the last logs were used up, everyone went home.

Mum aged 14 with Bobka                                   Mum aged 16          

Mum had a dog called Bobka. It was her pride and joy, and she spoke about him with great affection. The joy on mum’s face in the photo with Bobka is only surpassed by her obvious dress sense and the skill of the Russian hair stylists. 

                   Smiling has finally arrived in Russia                        Mum and friends       

                             

                                               

Mum, Fania (Babushka) and Yifim                  

Mum told the story about a group of friends going up a high mountain on horseback. While up there, they were looking down on the clouds below and saw major storm activity taking place. When they finally came down, they were confronted with a catastrophe of untold dimensions. Huge hail flattened the crops and killed a lot of cattle. For a farming community that depends for its livelihood on its crops and dairy products, that’s a calamity of major proportions with actual starvation a distinct possibility.

School was followed by the Gymnasium, the Russian equivalent of high school. After that, mum went to a teachers’ college to become a kindergarten teacher. I had the distinct impression from her that it did not require major qualifications to become a teacher in Russia. She admitted to not being very academic but more intent on enjoying life and riding horses at every opportunity.

Mum’s cheerful smiling happy class in teachers’ college

(Mum is first on the left on the floor)

The Grandparents

Maternal

My Grandmother (Babushka)Fania Rayak (later Grinshpoon)

Babushka showing off her beautiful earrings 

which in time went to mum and later to Nellie. 

Babushka was a rather plump, typically Russian Jewish grandmother. Her life revolved around providing for the needs of the family and not much else. Her cooking prowess was legendary. During the entire time that I had known her, she prepared meal after meal, baked cakes and then prepared the next meal. When I was still little, I played cards with her, cheated continuously but in typical grandmotherly fashion she let this happen and allowed me to be the winner. Oy, what a grandmother wouldn’t do for her grandson. Her only other claim to fame was crocheting bed socks for one and all, and I could never convince her that real men do not wear bed socks.

Babushka had a sister, Pasha, who went to live in the US. I met her once when she came to visit us in Jerusalem around 1953. She had two sons.

Pasha

My Grandfather (Dzedushka)

Binyamin Grinshpoon

(Babushka’s second husband)

The only grandfather I knew was Binyamin Grinshpoon, Babushka’s second husband. My memories of him are few as I was about seven when he died. But I do remember him from Shanghai, where he was always dressed in a three piece suit, neat and elegant as befitting a tailor. He was tall and had white hair. He called me Doovid. Every Pesach he made the horseradish (chrain) himself. During the Seder he would sniff the horseradish and say that someone put kerosene into it. Needless to say, I always wanted to sniff it, with the usual result being that I would take a great whiff and while I suffered everyone chortled.

When I was about 5, I had a toy gun, the sort that shoots little pellets or stones. I went out with my gun one day, and saw a rickshaw driver asleep on his rickshaw with his bald head protruding provocatively over the edge. I did the natural thing and shot a little stone point blank into his head. I then had enough brains to run home like hell, race inside and hide under the dining room table. Dzedushka had the task of talking the rickshaw driver out of tearing me apart with his bare hands.

Binyamin Grinshpoon

Grandfather

Moisey Rayak

(Babushka’s first husband)

I never knew my maternal grandfather Moisey (Moses) Rayak. He died when mum was three years old. The story is that during one of the pogroms, a common occurrence in Russia in those days, being a communal leader he went to the police station to sort out a problem on somebody else’s behalf and never returned.

Babushka was married at fifteen, had her first child at sixteen and had a total of five children with mum and Yifim the only survivors. The other three died either in birth or from  one of the childhood diseases which commonly cost many children’s lives in those days.

Grandparents

Refer to the Family Tree for more information.

Paternal Grandfather

Isaac Leymanshtein

My other grandfather, Dad’s father Isaac, died when Dad was five. According to my Aunt Galia, Sima’s wife, who supplied me with the only bit of information I have, is that he was a soldier in the Imperial (Czarist) army, went to war and never returned.

 Paternal Grandmother

Gittle-Esther Leymanshtein

Dad’s mother Gittle-Esther, died in 1931 age 55. From the photo of the tombstone we also know that her father’s name was Reuven.

Refer to the Family Tree for further information.

            

    

The Great Grandparents

Refer to the Family Tree for more information.

The only information I had about any great grandparents was the name Reuven, father of Gittle-Esther, which is seen on the photo of her tombstone. The rest came from Michael Moz.

On the maternal side, Babushka’s father’s name was Shmuel as Babushka was often referred to in the Russian tradition as “Fania Samoilovna” being the name and patronymic.

Babushka’s father Solomon                        Babushka’s mother

        (Surname unknown)                              and father Solomon   

The Uncles

Yifim ( Ephraim, Mum‘s brother)1906-1987

Mum’s brother, my uncle Yifim, five years her senior, was born in Vitebsk, and according to Mum and Babushka, was a brilliant student with a promising future. Mum said that to get peace and quiet while studying, he would lock himself in the toilet and scream to all for silence. He took his studies seriously and went on to become an engineering student. Yifim could not settle down in China and Babushka took him back to Moscow in Russia to study engineering. Sometime after the Russian Revolution, an article in a Russian paper said that an engineering student was killed during a disturbance, so Babushka made the assumption that it was Yifim, and nothing could convince her otherwise. Contact with Yifim was lost and while mum and dad made attempts to trace him via the Red Cross, they were to no avail. Apparently he had a wife and daughter at the time contact was lost with him, and he requested not to be contacted and that he would make contact when possible.

Yifim during student days and in high school uniform.

      

Yifim in the Engineering faculty at the university

After a great deal of searching, I was finally able to trace my uncle Yifim (Efim being short for Ephraim but commonly pronounced Yifim). What a pity this wasn’t achieved when Mum was still alive. Below is an excerpt from the Russian Jewish Encyclopaedia.  Next step will be to try and trace Yifim’s wife who would be around one hundred and not likely to be alive and the daughter who if alive, would be around eighty years of age.

Russian Jewish Encyclopaedia Surnames starting with the letter R

Surname	Given name	Patronymic	Birth date	Birth place	Death date	Death place	Occupation	aka (other name)	Entry number
ROTENBERG	Yevsey	Iosifovich	1920	Tula			History		5823
ROTENBURG	Iosif	Solomonovich	1908		1983	Saratov, Russia	Engineering		5825
ROTHKO	Mark		1903	Dvinsk, Vitebsk	1970	New York	Artist	Rotkovich Markus	5826
ROTKOVICH	Yakov	Aronovich	1909	Vilna	1975	Kuibyshev	Linguistics		5827
ROYAK	Efim	Moiseevich	1906	Vitebsk	1987	Moscow	Artist	Rayak	5848

Unfortunately Michael Moz discovered that this was not our Yifim but someone with the same name patronymic and year of birth. This one was an artist and the photo is that of another person, not our Yifim. Michael suggested that he may be a cousin. As these were turbulent times in Russia, I am reluctant to dismiss the information I found at this point in time.

Lyolya

Dad’s oldest brother  married Fania Falik, and had one daughter. Genia was born 16 August 1925. After Harbin they went to Israel in 1953. Genia lived at first on a kibbutz and later in Haifa. Lyolya and Fania lived in Tel Aviv where Lyolya had a job. Later they bought a flat. Both Lyolya and Fania passed away and Genia, who never married, is still living in the same flat in Tel Aviv. During our visits to Israel we always met and spent time together. Genia was a piano teacher and taught piano most of her life. In more recent years Genia was working as a volunteer teaching English in schools. A very active lady despite her years, she is a cultured person, and is a regular at concerts and art galleries.

 

Sima

Sima, the second oldest brother, moved to Tientsin, married Galia and had two daughters, Ann and Nadia. When they all arrived in Australia, Dad took Nadia to school to enroll because Sima’s English was lacking and Natalie tells me that on the spot they Anglicised her name to Natalie, by which name she was subsequently known except in the Russian speaking community. Sima did not endear himself to the rest of the family as Galia was not Jewish and that carried substantial stigma on both sides. They left China in 1955, 6 years after the Communists took over. They were only let out when Sima lost his job with the French Bank when they ceased operations in China. They came to Sydney and we became very close. Dad got Sima a job in the same place he was working in, BGE, which occasionally led to some confusion despite the fact that Sima spelt his name Leimanshtein.

Arcadia, Sima and dad

Arcadia

Arcadia, the third oldest brother, married Freda Falik who was Fania’s ( Lyolya’s wife ) sister.  They had one son Isia (Ike). They moved to Israel in 1950, and lived across the fence from us in Kiriyat Chayim. Ike was mad about planes from childhood, but was too tall for the Israeli Air Force so joined the army. After he finished his army service he joined the air force and became ground crew. He met and married Freda (same name as his mother) and later they all moved to Fort Lauderdale in the USA. They had a son and a daughter, Danny and Linda. Both Arcadia and Freda have now passed away. Ike was working for Pan American Airlines and had a senior position in maintenance until they went bankrupt unexpectedly and he lost his company pension and finished up in less than good circumstances. Communications with him were few and far between.

Arcadia and dad

MOVING TO CHINA

The Russian Revolution 1917-1918 was in full swing. Any land owners, bourgeois or moneyed people, were dealt with summarily with minimal fuss. The Stalinist regime was reputedly responsible for the death of an estimated  9 million people depending on whose statistics you use. You only needed to be reported by someone who claimed that you owned land or used workers to enrich yourself or were a speculator, for a court to find you guilty and sentence you to be shot or sent to a labour camp in Siberia for a lengthy sentence from where you would be lucky to return. A ruthless Communist regime became well entrenched.

So it was in this atmosphere that Babushka left Russia to travel to the nearest country which was China where a large Russian Jewish community was gathering in the three main cities. This was around 1915 and mum was about 4 and Yifim about 9 years old. All property was abandoned and any ownership forgotten. Babushka took with her only whatever she could physically carry and manage herself.  Gold bricks were commonplace at the time and mum remembered that there was one on the table and it would take both her hands to be able to lift it. Babushka stitched this gold brick into a big doll that mum had and was dragging around with her everywhere. If someone would have spotted the fact that the doll was unusually heavy, there would have been very dire consequences for my Babushka.

In addition to the gold, Babushka also took all the silverware she possessed as it was a readily bartered commodity. In China fortunes were made by unscrupulous people who bought silverware at bargain prices from desperate refugees who exchanged their silverware for food or money.

Babushka took with her a sack of flour and a primus for the journey and used to make pancakes, blini, during stops at railway stations. This was for sale and for their own consumption. My Babushka was a resourceful lady.

Both Mum and Yifim had problems settling in China. Harbin Tientsin and Mukden were mentioned frequently but I am unable to piece the events accurately. Eventually Babushka took them both back to Russia to complete their studies. Yifim was enrolled in the engineering faculty at a University in Moscow and mum, at first to a Gymnasium, the equivalent to our high school, and later went on to a Teacher’s College.

Returning to China, Babushka settled in Shanghai, and used her resources to buy a three storey house in Chwacki Avenue, a lane off Bubbling Well Rd, the main road running the length of Shanghai. She made this into a boarding house for young Jewish men and it became her source of income. Babushka’s late husband Moisey must have left her reasonably well endowed for her to be able to establish herself as well as she did.

In the early thirties, Babushka married Binyamin Grinshpoon whom I always knew as my grandfather. He moved into Babushka’s house and established his tailoring business in a back room and was apparently highly regarded.

                             1947                                  

 Babushka and Binyamin in our back garden in Chwacki Avenue Shanghai

In the meantime, my paternal grandmother, Gittle-Esther, was left with four boys on her hands. Lyolya the oldest, left Russia and went to China when he was 17. In Harbin he got a job in a tobacco company. Two years later, Sima the second oldest followed his brother and worked in the same tobacco company. They left Russia apparently because they wanted to avoid going into the army. My grandmother followed a few years later bringing the two youngest boys, Arcadia and my dad as well as her sister Berta. This was around 1919. The trip took some 6 months and was a nightmare. Time and again they were offloaded when the train was needed for the movement of troops fighting the Red Army, and when someone remembered, a train was sent for them to continue their journey. In the meantime they were simply left at railway stations to fend for themselves. At one point, my dad developed typhus, a deadly disease. The train was stopped and the whole family removed from the train in the middle of nowhere for fear that the disease would spread to everyone else on the train. Local peasants looked after them until my dad recovered.

In Harbin, the two older boys worked to support the family while Arcadia and dad went to school. They had a Chinese nanny to look after them. My grandmother decided that as they were going to live in China permanently, dad had to go to a normal Chinese school. As a result, dad became fluent in Chinese and gave us heaps of laughs when counting to ten or speaking sentences in Chinese.

In 1931 at the age of 55, my grandmother Gittle-Esther passed away. Sima, Arcadia and Lyolya were all married by then and dad at the age of 20 moved to Shanghai and took up residence in Babushka’s boarding house where in time he met the landlady’s daughter Tanya. The rest as they say is history.