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June 18, 2007

Only a few weeks ago, Aaron Ginsburg contacted me.  {Aaron - how exactly did you find me and my contact info? Answer-I found you all over the internet when I searched your last name, and finally found a corporate e-mail address} Aaron has parlayed his interest in genealogy and his Pokross family roots into trying to act as a "clearinghouse" for all the various Pokrass/Pokross/Pokrassa/Pokrasse etc families - all of us are from different towns in the same area of Russia / Ukraine near Kiev.  I had a similar interest but more narrowly defined and was just tracking down Pokrassas.  I passed on what I had to Aaron including contacts I had made with Pokrassa families in Argentina and Volgograd Russia.  I also remembered I had received a letter 30 years before from Alan Hait regarding his search for the Pokrass family but I had found no links to any of the above even though I am confident we are only a generation or two away from each other

That seemed to start the snowball rolling downhill and the more information I gave Aaron the more dogged he became.  This Sunday morning at 6AM on Father's Day my phone rang.  At that hour I sleep rather deeply and my wife had to give me a sharp elbow to pick up the phone - my only thought was ****, who died?  But it was Aaron who had Dmitry Pokrass in Kiev on the phone who it turns out is the great grandson of my Grandfather's younger brother Lyov, who went back to Russia from France and we all thought had perished along with his wife and young son in the Holocaust.  As it turns out not only did the son survive but there was a second son born 14 years after the first that no one here knew of who now lives in Baltimore USA, spelling their name Pokras or Pokrass.  It turns out the Russian family knew Lyov had two brothers but never knew there were also 4 sisters.  So we are now getting to know each other after 70 years!!!  I emailed some photos I had of Lyov and his two brothers and several photos I had of Lyov his wife and eldest son to Dmitry - this confirmed everything - Dmitry confirmed it was of his great grandparents and his Grandfather.

Gary Pokrassa