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In 1902, my great great grandparents Rachel Bornstein and Meyer Yablonsky got married and lived in Szczercow, Poland. They had five children: Jacob (who exclusively went by Jonah), born in 1903; Beryl, born in approximately 1905; Leah, born in 1909; Mindl, born in 1911; and Harry, born in 1912. Their village was generally poor, Jewish, and Yiddish-speaking, although many of the residents spoke “up to five languages, and it would not have been uncommon for the children to know even more”. My grandmother said, “it wasn’t quite like Fiddler on the Roof, but it was similar enough”.
(From left to right): Mindl, Harry, Rachel, Meyer, Joe, Leah. In Minneapolis, year not known
Meyer and Jonah were the first to leave Poland for the United States, and left in approximately 1920. They came through Ellis Island and ended up in Minneapolis, as Meyer wanted to work on the railroad. Leah was the next to follow, in 1923, and then Mindl, Harry, Rachel, and Beryl after her. All members of the immediate Yablonsky family left after World War I, but well before World War II, as tensions in Poland were starting to rise, especially for Jews. Pogroms, hate speech, and discrimination had been around for hundreds of years, but it was starting to get especially dangerous.
At some point in the journey to the United States Beryl contracted encephalitis. He was turned away at Ellis Island and sent back to Poland, where he stayed with friends. He contracted encephalitis a second time and died in Poland. My grandmother is unsure of when he died, as she had not been able to find a record of his death or his grave.
The Yablonsky family had left some extended family behind in Poland, including Meyer’s niece, Rhoda Yablonsky. She was married and had a child Kreindl, who died in the Lodz Ghetto. Rhoda’s other four children, Meyer, Irving, William, and Steven, moved with her to the United States after the war.
Mindl and Leah, ages 5 and 7
The four Yablonsky children grew up in Minneapolis, living with their parents and getting work once they were old enough to do so. As my grandmother recounts, “my mother [Mindl] had always said my grandfather [Meyer] was very lazy, but he went to work anyway”. Jonah started going by Joe, and Mindl eventually started going by Mildred. Joe married Bessie Smerteuko as a young adult. Leah married Jossel Itman, and Mindl married Nathan Litowsky. Harry married Ann, who later died of cancer, and got remarried to Bertha Blumenkrantz in 1962.
Mindl, my great grandmother, at age 16
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