Ruth and Joseph get married in Chicago in 1933

Ruth Levinson and Joseph Levin got married in Chicago on 22 August, 1933, as evidenced by the Illinois, Cook County Marriages database for 1871 - 1968.

Joseph was 37 and Ruth was 28. So here we still have Ruth born in 1905, later in the 1940 Census, she is listed as being born in 1903. 

https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:Q21K-BR2R?cid=fs_copy

1940 and 1950 Census Findings

In the 1930 Census, both sisters Ruth and Gene were living in Chicago. They listed their ages as 25 for Ruth and 23 for Gene. This would mean Ruth was born in 1905. 

In the 1940 Census, Ruth is now married to Joseph Levin, so has his name, and is a mother of Max (18), Irving (16), Zena (10), and Joan (5). Now Ruth is listed as 37 years old, putting her birth year as 1903 and not 1905 as in the previous census.

In the 1950 Census, Ruth and Joseph now have only two kids living at home Joan (15), and Iris (5). Here Ruth listed a middle initial L. 

The source for this data is familysearch.org. A very well designed site by the Mormons. 

Another find

Another interesting find, this is from 1930 US Census. I was able to locate records for Ruth and Gene. Here is what we learn from this little gem:

• Ruth was 2 years older.


• Sisters did not disclose their real age, Ruth would have been 25 and Gene 27 not 25 and 23 as the record indicate here.


• Both of the sisters worked as seamstresses; Ruth sewing sporting goods and Gene curtains.


• They lived with a man named Benjamin Krantz and his wife Sarah, 2 sons Milton and Herbert and daugther Charlotte Bressler with her husband Michael Bressler.


• They listed their country of birth as Russia


• They listed date of immigration as 1922, we assumed it would be 1921, because in Ruth's passport there is a stamp from Dover, England on October 5, 1921. This means that they took their time crossing the Atlantic, or took it easy in England for a while.

If the landowner's family knew our sisters and it probably is safe to assume so, and the youngest of them, Herbert (b. 1919), would be alive now, he would be 87 years old. The others are amost certainly dead, his brother Milton would be 96.

I am still trying to figure out if the address can be placed based on the census form.

Benjamin Krantz was a tailor in 1920 and became a real estate agent in 1930. He died in Tazewell, Illinois in November of 1966.

Things learned at our first family gathering

Rivka was funny.
Was worried about her kids all the time, as Anya's father and grandfather worry and wanted to be updated on their whereabouts.

Was known for her cooking, never used recipes and was very competitive when it came to others praising someone else's cooking. Wanted to be know as the best cook, and generally it was so. On many occasions she cooked for large number of people. Was messy in the kitchen as Anya's grandfather was. He liked to cook on Saturday's and would make a big mess, which made his wife very upset at him.



Sherri and Harriet told us a story of how they were trying to record Rivka's recipes by following her. After she would put the ingredients in, they would measure the amounts and record it. Sherri brought a pastry to the party that Rivka made. Sherri tried to make a dish using one of the written down recipes and it called for six cups of water. When the outcome was not as expected and she called her grandmother to find out what she did wrong, she was surprised to learn that cup in Rivka's methodology meant not the standard measuring cup but a cup leftover from a jewish memorial candle. She had a lot of those sitting around, so she often used it for measuring.

She saved all the food leftovers. She made a mean crumb cake. Rivka talked about having to survive in the woods after running away from pogroms during WWI, she was always against any food being wasted. As a tradition she used to take grandchildren to Morrison's cafeteria and her rule was that they could get anything they wanted as long as they finished what they got. Sherri used to get only deserts and that was just fine with Rivka.



She never drove. After Joe died she stayed by herself in the big house.

In the dining room of the big Levin house Kosher was kept. At one time they ordered a wall paper that had a repeating food print on it. When the paper came in, to their surprise one of the items on the food collage was bacon. They told their kids that it was beef.

Rivka was called "Bubby" grandma in Yiddish, and Joe was called "Zeidi" - grandpa in Yiddish. They spoke Yiddish to each other, but wanted the kids to speak English, so they spoke English to them. Both still had accents by the time they died.

Rivka was never sick. When she finally had to visit hospital as cancer was onsetting and the doctor asked her, "When did you last visit a hospital", she answered "when I was born".

When Rivka and her sister came they first visited Netherlands and London. They came through Ellis Island but were not let into the country immediately. According to Zena, Rivka said that it was something about Sheina's eyes that kept the immigration officials from letting them in. Perhaps they worried about some desease that could be detected by looking in her pupils. I think hypotitus can be detected this way. But after waiting at least several days, she was finally let through.

We also learned that they had a cousin in the south that sponsored their coming ot America. One of the cousin's daughters is still alive in South Carolina we think. Need to follow through with Sherri.



We learned that Joe had a brother. As Joe was about to marry Rivka who he met on his "find a new wife" trip to Chicago, his brother warned him that she is only marrying him for his money. Joe broke all relations with the brother and never spoke to him again. Joanne told us that at some point after her father died at a bar mitzva for one of her children Rivka informed her that one of her cousins from Atlanta will come. Joanne was surpised, as she did not know about any cousins in Atlanta, and Rivka said that this is the brother of Joe's that he would not want them to contact. This story reminded me of the way Gershko left his first wife after her parents made antisemitic remarks, calling her a "Sarah". This was considered an antisemitic remark in Russian culture.

Iris told us that after Joe died and Rivka lived by herself she was very light on her feet. Iris and her husband would invite her out and she would almost always accept. Iris talked to her several times a day. Rivka liked to watch "Saturday Night Live" and would dicuss it afterwards with Iris.


Iris helped her prepare for the citizenship exam that she took in the 1961.

The photographer who took all of family photos and event photos lived nearby and his daugher Shelly is now wife of Steven, Zena's son. She told us that her father sold off the business and that one of the new owners has all the negatives. His name was Gerald Pollack. We thought early on that he could be one of our links to the family, since his name was stamped on the few photos we had. We could not locate him in the phone book or internet. He was a very prominent Savannah photographer, especially in the Jewish community.

Joe had a store that served mainly african american community selling to a lot of railroad workers, shipyard workers and sailors. He and Rivka were known as Mr and Mrs Joe. They were well respected by the blacks in the community. He knew a lot of the conductors on the trains and used to send packages up north this way.

Rivka also sent food packages by Greyhound bus to Swainsboro where Harriet and her family lived.

Swainsboro was not a place with a lot of Jews, so Harriet encountered a lot of prejudice in school as the first Jewish student there.

We called Iris exactly 16 years after Rivka, her mom died (using Jewish calendar).

At one point Joanne mentioned that her son was born in June and Anya followed by asking on what date. I knew what the answer would be, she said 6, which is Anya's birthday too. I knew it would be 6 because so much of this story is too strange to believe that there are no coincidences and I almost expect things to fall in place.

Joe Levin changed his name from Levinovich when he came to America from Joe Levine later on in his business career, because there was a man not paying his bills by the same name and he wanted to avoid confusion. The name Levin pronounced with emphasis on the second syllable.

Rivka was described to have never met a stranger. This is precisely the way Anya's grandfather was described by Vadim.

Wrong again

Well, it turns out that we though wrong about the people in the photos. The two sisters that went to America, were not in the original photo that Gershko had. In this photo, altered by the sisters they have pasted themselves in to have the photo of the whole family. So our original face comparison was way off.

Silver Meteor

We took the train to Savannah. The Silver Meteor that goes from New York to Miami. We left DC after a sleepless night working on school and work projects and a full day of turning those projects in at work/school. The 11 hour trip was not very easy. Since we traveled in coach, we had to try to sleep in the seats. The cars have as much or more room than a first class airplane cabin and the seats are rather large, with flip out leg rests ala "lazy boy" and a foot rest. It seems that these seats were built for large people, because neither Anya nor I could be comfortable. We had dinner on the train. The food was "nothing to write home about", may be "something to blog about". Did I just coin a phrase? The bathrooms did not have water and were rather smelly.

I asked myself afterwards if driving 9 hours would have been better. I still stand by my original claim, that 11 hours of relative uncomfort in a train is better than 9 hours of driving.

The make up of passengers surprised me. The train was relatively full with the conductor assigning seats to people when they arrived and he found out their destination. I think they were arranging people in such a way as to not wake up those who are going to Miami before they needed too. So when it was our time to get off they could turn on the light in the otherwise dark train, as most of the passengers in our car were going to Savannah or Charleston.

Most of passengers were black. Not poor black, but lower to middle class black. I do not think these were people that could not afford Southwest fare to Miami, i think they were there by choice. If this Silver Meteor train had the kind of service you get on Acela trains, I would travel this way in a heartbeat.



The advantages to me were: I could cancel at any time before travel.
Advance fair gives lower prices and anything before 3 days- is advanced, as opposed to 21 or 14 days for air travel.
We left the house 50 before departure time and we had 20 minutes to kill once we were on the train. There was no security or lines.
Trains have power plugs and you can occasionally get out and stretch your legs. The whole trip had a very lazy feeling to it, as opposed to high stress mood that aiports bring out in people.

Once we arrived to the concrete box that passes for train station in Savannah, I noticed a mural on the inside that showed various historical places in this southern tourist destination. One of the places was Union Station. I later found out from long time Savannah residents that the beautiful Union station was torn down after interstate needed to be build inplace of traintracks. There was some debate and now people mostly regret it. I saw some footage of it later and it was indeed a beautiful building. Union Station in DC has become a hub of commerce and is a nice place to visit even if not taking a train trip.

Wow and wow

Thanks to everyone who has sent us emails, welcoming us to the family. Especially Sherri and Harriet. In our pictures they were Zlata and Haya. It is a bit strange of course to actually succeed in this quest. We did not really expect to actually find our relatives. We were thinking at how many stages we were close to giving up. Anna's father Vadim was often the driving force, urging us to keep trying.

Now, naturally we'd like to get to know as many of our new cousins and let them know us. We are planning a trip to Savannah in a couple of weeks when Max's wife Audrey turns 80. We know of Audrey from telephone book pages that we had. These were from ~1962. We are excited to meet all our new relative in person. We are leaving on Feb 23 on a train trip to Savannah.

Levinzon snapshot

Gershon was the brother of Ruth and Gene Levinzon. We now know that Ruth in fact married Joe Levin around 1932 and became mother to Joe's two sons and daugther and had two more daughters after that. Meanwhile, the younger brother, Gershon had a family of his own in Russia.



He married a russian woman named Valentina, here pictured with her two granddaughters.



In 1952 he had a son - Vadim, below with his wife Tanya.



and in 1954 a daughter - Inna.



Gershon lived in Kaliningrad, with his family. Kaliningrad was a german city, known for centuries as Koenigsburg. The Russian army kept it after the war for its strategic significance. It is a port city on the Baltic sea.



Gershon often mentioned his sisters in America and wanted to find them. It was rather difficult to keep any kind of contacts with the west at the time, so no progress was made. After Ruth sent him letters and packages in the 1960's the contact was lost.

Anna and Irena in Kaliningrad



Gershon had a full life, he was a well known and a well respected man in town. He had a dry cleaning business and was involved in various other endeavors. He was able to provide for his family even during tough times. Perhaps there was always a fear of what he had to go through at a very young age.



He died in 1991 of a heart attack. His wife Valentina died in 2001 and they are buried together in Kalningrad.

At Gershon's and Valentina's graveside



In 1992 Vadim's family moved to Israel. Inna and Valentina stayed behind in Kaliningrad. Inna still lives in the very house where she grew up. She is an accountant and works for the customs. Since Kaliningrad is surrounded by three different countries, she has plenty of work. She does not have any children.

Inna with Anna and Irena in Tel Aviv



Vadim and his family live in Petah Tikva, a suburb of Tel Aviv. He is a support engineer for a industrial chemical company and his wife Tanya works at the Post Office. He is an avid photographer and has lots of photos to share.

Below is the whole family at the Tel Aviv Zoo.
From bottom to top, left to right:
Anna, Irena, Michael (Anna's husband), Vadim, Tanya, Inna, Irena (Michael's mom)



Vadim has two daughters Anna and Irena. Irena, still lives with her parents. She just recently finished her service in the Israeli Army.



Anna married Michael in 2002 and now lives in Washington DC. Michael and Anna passed through Atlanta and Savannah on numerous ocasions, never realizing how close they were to the lost family members.

Anna is studying fine Art in Maryland, Michael (the author of this blog) is a software developer.



We would love to hear from any of the newly found relatives. Please email us at levinzonfamily AT yahoo.com

The whole family at the Batlic Sea

It is certain

The sisters have confirmed that it is indeed them in the photo, so our search is complete. It is really incredible that we were able to find family that was seperated almost 100 years ago.

At last

We made contact with three sisters from the Savannah article. We think that they are sisters in this photo. On the left is Zena Kaplan and in the back is Joann. We are awaiting verification from them, that they are indeed the ones in the photo.

Breakthrough

We wrote a letter to the Georgia Historical Society asking for any information they might have about Levins or Levy in Savannah region during the 60's. They did and I think we might have something to help with our search.

The main finding was this article in Savannah Morning News from December 15, 1975.

From this we learned the names of all siblings:

Max Levin
Irving Levin
Iris Hornstein
Joann Vitner
Zena Kaplan

We learned that the family was indeed rooted in Savannah as we thought. We also learned for a fact that the sisters name was Ruth and the fact that they were both from Poland validated that we are on the right path. Also, mentioning of Chicago helped. Joe Levin in the article looks like Joe Levin we have in our photos:

In the article Ruth talks about growing up on a large farm and having to leave to America where they had relatives. This was new information to us as Gershon did not talk about that.

This is the biggest piece of information we've had since we started searching and this was very exciting.

Sisters aging

Just a look at how sisters have aged from the old family photos.

Sheina
Ruth

Zlata

This is Zlata, she is the youngest of grandchildren of Ruta Levin. We think she is the highlighted one in the group photo.

Haya Levin

We know that Ruta (Rebekkah) Levin had a granddaughter from her youngest son. Her name was Haya. We have this photo of her taken by Turner Photo Service, in Swainsboro, GA. We can assume from it that she either was graduating from high school or college around Swainsboro. She looks old enough in this photo to have been a college or a technical school graduate. Yellow robes usually mean science degree.

In swainsboro we found two colleges: Swainsboro Techical College, which was founded in 1963 and East Georgia College founded in 1971. If this is indeed a college photo, it would likely be Swainsboro Technical College that Haya attended.



In the photo below we can see Haya with all the other grandchildren of Ruta Levin. This photo is taken on March 2, 1962 by studio of Gerald Pollack in Savannah, Georgia. We can estimate that in this photo Haya is around 10 years old. This would place her at college age around 1968. We also know by Ruta Levin notes on the photo that Haya is the youngest son's daughter, which means that she more than one. Haya is a good starting point for us, because we know that her last name would be the same as her grandmother's - Levin or Levy.

Yizkor Book

Jewish books of dead are maintained for villages and cities wiped out by nazis. From this yizkor book we were able to find out about Levinzon family members that died in Drogichin, this was sent in by Ruta Levin, one of the sisters we are trying to locate.

This is the entry in the book:

An eternal memorial to my dear
Mother Feiga-Zissel Levinson (60)
Sister Chana (32), Tzvia,
husband Feivel Gurvitz
Sister's children: Natan (8) and Yaakov (10)
Brothers: Yisrael 27, Avraham 25, Levinson
All perished. May G-d avenge their blood!
Gershon Levinson
Disappeared in Russia
All were from Osevetz
Ruta Levin (Savannah)

We can gather a few new things from this. We learn the brothers names: Israel, and Avraham and two sisters that we do not know about. Interesting that Ruta at this point does not know where Gershon is. We do think that she is the one that corresponded with him in the 1960's. We of course know Gershon's story well, since he is our grandfather.

The same page also mentions that Hershko sent a letter to Joseph Feldman in May of 1941 and we can see the stamps from the envelope in this image. I guess at this time Poland was occupied and thus the nazi stamps. Strange to imagine that letters were still getting through to America.

Background story

My father-in-law, Vadim Levinzon, has been trying to locate his long lost relatives. His father Hershko (Gershon) had several brothers and sisters. We know for sure that he had at least 2 sisters and 2 brothers. The family lived in village Osovetz near town of Drogichin in Poland. Hershko was born around 1916, he was the youngest child.

Pictured is the Levinson family. We are not certain of the names of the brothers and sisters. Left to right front row: Hershko, father (Yankel), mother(Feiga) Back row: Rivka (Rebecca or Ruth), Avraam, Sheina, Yakov
Hershko's sisters moved to America sometime in the 30's and we are trying to find their families. We are not even sure of their names, we know one was named Sheina and one probably Rivka (Rebekkah). We know that one married someone by the name of Levin or Levy, perhaps named Joe. We think that they might have lived in Chicago. Hershko corresponded with the sisters in 1966-1970. We have some of the photos they sent him. The photos were taken in Nanjemoy, Maryland and some in Savannah, Georgia.

Summary of what we know

• Hershko Levinson born in 1916 in Osovitz
• two older sisters Sheina and Ruth (Rebekkah) moved to America in 1930's
• Ruta married Joe Levin
• Sheina lived in Chicago
• Ruta lived in Savannah, GA
• Sisters corresponded with Hershko Levinson 1966-1970, until Soviet regime shut correspondence down
  
• Hershko had a friend named Joseph Feldman, who also lived in Chicago and kept in touch
  
• Ruta had a granddaughter named Haya
• Ruta had at least one son - father of Haya
• Haya was possibly a student at a college in Swainsboro, GA
• Ruta had a daughter named Egudes (Judith)
  
• Ruta had a daughter India
• Ruta's youngest granddaughter was named Zlata
  

Here are some of the photos we have.

Grandchildren of Ruta Levin

Ruth Levin with her family

two sisters in Chicago at Feiga's house.

Joann with her husband